Newletter October 2017
There’s no doubt: fake news, biased sources, trustworthy information are the hot topics of our day, thanks to President Donald J. Trump, the person who’s done more for calling attention to the need for media literacy education than any leader in recent memory.
These hot topics lead to deeper discussions, as well. What is the truth? How do we seek it out? What is censorship? What should be – or not be – censored? What is bias? To what extent is bias present? What is character? How does character factor into our judgments? Whom do we trust? Should we trust that democracy provides us with the best path to success, freedom, fairness, and justice? Is “power to the people” worthy of our confidence? This issue of Connections explores some of these issues by focusing on confirmation bias and the role it plays in our decision-making.
As that august source of information (Wikipedia) says: “Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.[1] It is a type of cognitive
bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.” Confirmation bias is endemic: it is human and it is unconscious. It is a heuristic that media literacy – through a cognitive heuristic process that can be taught and learned – is designed to challenge, at the very least. Through the internalized filtering system that media literacy education can provide, children and adults can learn to be skeptical consumers and responsible producers of information and media messages. The idea is to encourage citizens to be risk managers rather than just fact checkers – people capable of working with imperfect information (since information is always imperfect), yet making wiser choices in their own selfinterest, and that of society.
- : http://www.consortiumformedialiteracy.org/images/NEWSLETTERS/confirmation%20bias%20and%20media%20literacy.pdf
- : Consortium for Media Literacy
- : Consortium for Media Literacy