Media literacy heuristics

[rebeccmeister]

One of the highly useful media literacy heuristics I ever learned was from siderea, who taught me to ask, "What is new and different in what I am reading/hearing about/seeing?"

I frequently teach this heuristic to students. Part of being a student is learning how to learn and how to summarize. This heuristic is really useful for summarizing information from a textbook chapter or a lecture. Don't try and include everything, focus on what's new and different.

In this article, the analogies of the "centaur" and "reverse centaur" are really useful, and new to me:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur



What are some of your media literacy heuristics?

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

That is a most excellent essay. Thank you for the link.

[twoeleven]

It's a useful heuristic in some circumstances, and not in others.

For media literacy, a common heuristic for distinguishing facts from disinformation is confirmation. Ideally, confirmation would not present any information that is new or different. The lack of confirmation, or partial confirmation with significant differences, suggests some or all claimed facts are wrong.

This happens all the time, especially with new events. It suggests that people interested in them look harder at them until such time as the differences go away, or if the differences persist, start to ask questions about sources.

In doing science, whatever we mean by that, we look for the same sort of confirmation. We call it reproducibility. Partial reproducibility often causes specialists' antennae to perk up: what's the difference between two apparently identical experiments? But as you know, the answer frequently is "the more exciting claim is wrong".

But on the other fin, when writing about science, it's a useful thing. In fact, some medical journals already require a statement of what's new and what was known in a paper. It's a fine way of deflating hyperbolic claims and press-release science. I wish more journals would do that.

So, yeah, teach it about summarizing, but maybe not about general media literacy.

As to my heuristics? Don't take Cory Doctorow too seriously. :) He loves neologisms. Sometimes they're useful, and sometimes not.

If one is going to claim "in automation theory a centaur is", one might think that an online search for "automation theory centaur" would produce more than one hit on the first page of results that's not citing Doctorow. Hmmm...

[coffeetime]

“There is no alternative” is a cheap rhetorical slight. It’s a demand dressed up as an observation. “There is no alternative” means: “stop trying to think of an alternative.”

Someone explain that to the CIO at my org. He absolutely doesn't get it.