Covid-19, Participatory Culture, and the Challenges of Misinformation and Disinformation

This morning, I will be delivering some keynote remarks reflecting back on our white paper, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, which was written more than 15 years ago. I was honored to be asked to deliver keynote remarks at the opening session of the Global Media and Information Literacy week co-hosted by UNESCO and the Government of South Korea. My remarks centered around the issue of mis/disinformation in a networked culture. In preparation for this talk, I was interviewed by a Korean journalist, Bon-kwon Koo, who has given me permission to reproduce the exchange here, having been able to use only excerpts in his reporting. I thought the work product from this exchange would be of interest to my readers — especially those involved in Media Literacy Education. When his article appears, I will provide a link here. I am also told a video of the opening event will be posted soon and I will embed it here when it is. I am going to be sharing some more reflections on that white paper and its legacy in the weeks ahead.

I will be posting the final segment of my interview with Doron Gailli on my blog on Wednesday. Sorry for the delay but I wanted to insure circulation of this time sensitive information.

UNESCO has been providing literacy education and emphasizing media literacy for a long time. This year, the theme of the MIL feature conference is ‘Resisting Disinfodemic’. UNESCO seems to be placing particular importance on combating the flood of disinformation during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

-Why do you think UNESCO decided to make the theme of the conference ‘Resisting Disinfodemic’?

Misinformation/disinformation is one of the biggest problems facing the world today, having a corrosive effect on many democratic countries, both because of active efforts by the Russians and other state players to divide their enemies and rivals, but also because of locally produced conspiracy theories and polarizing claims. As someone who studies participatory culture, I am particularly concerned by the ways that everyday citizens become involved in circulating (and in some cases producing) such disinformation in a world where young people get much of their information about the world through social media. We want to see every citizen more conscious and more accountable about the information they put into circulation and we want them to develop stronger discernment skills for verifying the reliability of sources upon which they depend. In both ways, media literacy can play a key role.

 What will you be emphasizing in your keynote speech for 2020 Global Media and Information Literacy Week Feature Conference? 

As always, I stress the agency of everyday citizens to make a difference in the world. I will be reflecting back on my white paper, Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture, which was published by the MacArthur Foundation sixteen years ago, showing how the key media literacy skills identified there remain essential in our own times by looking at how youth activists around the world are deploying those skills to make a difference on issues that matter to them. In many ways, the new youth activists – ranging from Greta Thunberg to Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez to Emma Gonzales of the March for Our Lives movement , to cite a few examples—are shaped by their acquisition and deployment of core skills in accessing, interpreting, critiquing, and deploying media (including popular culture) as resources for social change. I also argue that the three problems my report identified – the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethical challenges associated with new media – have not been addressed and create the context for our current problems with dis/misinformation.

The WHO has also been warning about a disinfodemic regarding COVID-19, and in fact, it does seem that a huge amount of disinformation about COVID-19 has been circulated, which has caused significant damage. 

-More people are being educated now than at any time in human history, and they also have greater access to tools that let them easily verify the source of the information. But still, the negative influence that disinformation is having is greater than ever. Why do you think this is happening?

I would bring this straight back to the lack of core media literacy skills. The tools are there. The access is there. We have social mechanisms for collectively verifying information. BUT the average citizen around the world has a limited grasp of how to use those tools effectively. I had a family member describe the conspiracy theory site, QAnon, as their prefered “fact checker,” showing a deep lack of understanding of the concept of media bias.  Young people get most of their information through social media: they act as each other’s filter, forwarding things to each other that they think are significant. Most of that news comes from traditional news agencies; some of it comes from websites which are deeply biased in their perspective; some come from people actively producing and circulating “fake news” (a term which has lost its impact through misuse by our political leaders). And the problem is they are all coming at us through the same social media platforms and consumed without much awareness of the original sources. We are seeing national political leaders forward misinformation without even asking their staff to verify the information – just because they thought it was interesting or shared with them by a supporter. So how do we expect young people to sort out the nature of this rapidly flowing content? Short answer – through acquiring and deploying core media literacy skills to filter content and by developing a sense of responsibility to their peers to insure the quality of information they put into circulation.

-Currently, many countries and companies are devising legal and technical solutions to cope with fake news and disinformation. Do you think they will work?

All of the experts agree – these solutions will help but they will not solve the problem. There is no substitute for an informed, engaged, and responsible public to hold each other and especially to hold themslves accountable for the quality of information they share with each other.

- What do you think is the most important media literacy skill in this age of post-truth so full of disinformation?

Judgement, which my white paper defined as “the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources..”  In a networked and participatory era, judgement is closely linked to several other skills: Collective intelligence, “the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal,”; Networking, “The ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information’ and Negotiation, “the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives.” In other words, judgement is not a skill that can be practiced by individuals in isolation from others. In a networked culture, we are mutually dependent on each other to insure the quality of our information environment and that includes engaging with people who bring different perspectives to bear on that information. The notion of  Negotiation, say, seems more and more urgent as we discover the very different realities that people of different races or living in different countries experience on a daily basis. If we are to weigh the caliber of information, we need to do so with eyes that question our own priviledge and our cultural isolation, listening to others whose perspectives and experiences differ radically from our own.

 Some have said that we have become excessively dependent on digital media, particularly with the decrease in in-person contact during the pandemic. There are also widening gaps between individuals' digital media usage capabilities.

- What do you think is the wisest attitude to take towards using the media during the current pandemic, which doesn’t look as if it is ending any time soon?

The lockdown has revealed the flaws in arguments based on the concept of “screen time.” Our concern should not be ultimately about the screen and what it is doing to us. Our focus should be about what activities we are performing through those screens. Right now, most of our day is screen time, but we are using screens for a broad range of purposes, from work and education to socializing and recreation. And this has always been the case. Similarly, the old argument was that the screen was isolating and to blame for our lack of interaction with others in our community. Today, we are socially distanced and many of us turn to the digital as the only means of maintaining social contact with the most important people in our lives. Covid-19 has turned many myths about digital media on their head. So, the wisest attitude comes back to the idea that what we do with and through media is far more important in shaping our lives than suspicions about what media is doing to us (the tired old media effects arguments). We need to think through our choices and use media responsibily. But right now, for the short term at least, we have no choice but to rely on screen media for many of the core functions of our society. Beyond that, as you note, we should be concerned with questions of equality of access and participation, which are impacting who has access to education, who can apply for jobs, who is isolated from their communities, etc. The impact of what I call the Participation Gap has never been clearer than it is at this moment and the question there is what we as a society are going to do about it.

-Classes in a lot of schools are being replaced with online education. This, in some ways, increases educational gaps between students. As online education spreads across the world, what do you think is the new media literacy capability? 

Many of us anticipated this situation two decades ago. We urged the development of rich educational resources and activities that took advantage of the affordances of the new media environment. We called for professional development to prepare teachers to teach under these conditions. We supported research to better understanding how learning might most effectively occur online. For the most part, none of these things were supported by key decision-makers effecting education. They were blindsided by a problem some of us saw coming twenty years before. A key element in our vision for online education was the importance of media literacy. This is what we called the transparency problem. Just because you are using media does not mean you automatically understand how it works or the role it plays in your life or how to use It effectively to serve your ends. Most young people lack mentorship in how to deal with the complex social and ethical issues they encounter with online communities. We have already discussed the impact of limited skills and personal responsibility over processing news and other information which flows through our social media platforms. So, to create online education without developing robust media literacy training is criminal (or at least should be).

 As someone who created the term Convergence Culture, you have been speaking up about the use of today’s convergent media for a long time. 

-You have emphasized the importance of users’ capability to participate independently and actively rather than the technology for convergent media itself. What do you think is required in order to have this kind of capability?

I would question the use of the term, “independently,” in the above. My work stresses collective rather than individual agency. I describe the new media literacies as social skills and cultural competencies because they refer to things which are best achieved through networks. The modern world is too complex for us to go it alone. None of us know everything, most of us know somethings, and what we need to learn is to share knowledge, debate the quality of information, and teach each other the skills we need to survive. We see something like that occuring in the most robust participatory culture communities – whether it is the norms and practices that have grown up around Wikipedia, the multiple forms of literacy involved in participating in a fan fiction site like Archive of Our Own, or the sharing of technical skills and resources in an affinity space like those surrounding Minecraft. These are places where people learn from each other and at the same time hold each other accountable. 

-How can gaps between users in an interactive media environment be reduced?

First, we need to recognize that the problem goes beyond technical skills and access, as important as these are in the contemporary world. Governments often feel they have solved the problem by insuring access through schools and libraries, but this creates a different kind of gap since those who have access at home have different relationships to these platforms and practices than those who only have limited access through schools. And the problem is not simply technical. The participation gap is concerned with social and cultural obstacles. Do you have the skills you need to participate? Do you know how to find the most meaningful communities to help you learn and grow? Do people listen to you when you post things or are you facing systemic forms of descrimination? Do you feel entitled to create and share media with others? Do you have the mentorship you need to help guide you to make the right choices when you go online? And so forth. These are, again, not questions of technical skill development but of media literacy. 

 The concept of the media audience is changing from consumers to “prosumers”, and the idea of participatory media that you have been emphasizing for a long time is now widely recognized.

- You have emphasized the role of the user's participatory culture and collective intelligence in media use. Is the ability to participate sensibly something that can be acquired naturally through the use of new media, or is it something to be nurtured through new literacy education?

The idea that young people acquire the skills they need on their own through axccess to digital media is a myth. The result is that there is a generation of feral children of the internet who have been raised by the wolves of Web 2.0 and toxic game culture. This myth lets the adults off the hook: how could we help if our children are digital natives and we are simply digital immigrants? Children still need guidance, adults helping them acquire needed skills, competencies, and literacies and providing help in confronting complex problems as they arise. We do not give them the support we need through either a laissez-faire (emphasis on lazy) response or through one which involves spying on children. Our young people do not need us snooping over their shoulders; they need us watching their back. And yes, this requires media literacy education whether formalized through schools or informal through parental advice or the kinds of participatory culture communities I discussed above.

- Participatory culture has been spreading widely, with users who used to be audience members are now acting as content producers. Previously, education has been conducted mainly on the premise of embracing the media as trusted sources, but now there are arguments that media education that is appropriate in terms of “prosumers” is required. What do you think should be new in media education regarding this matter?

We would not consider someone as literate if they can read but not write. We should not consider them as media literate if they can not produce as well as consume media. But in a network culture, this consumption/production frame doesn’t go far enough. They need the skills required to meaningfully participate in this media environment, which include skills around negotiating differenes as they move across communities, processing information collectively, taking ownership over the quality of information they circulate, and using networks to effectively mobilize others to help confront social problems.  These are some of the core literacy needs for people who are going to live and work in a networked culture.

You have emphasized users' agency rather than media technology in Convergence Culture, but in today's social media and the media environment, which is so highly focused on customized algorithms, I think algorithms created by tech companies have greater influence than individuals. 

- In a situation where we are surrounded by 'invisible algorithms', which have a huge impact on users' content consumption, what are the greatest needs in terms of media literacy at both the individual and societal levels?

For sure, alogrithmic manipulation represents a serious challenge to the capacity of individuals and communities to exercise agency in a digital environment. One challenge here is that so few of us understand how these algorithms work, what roles they play in shaping the choices available to us and channeling us in certain directions. It is not that we can not take collective action to restrict or resist the use of algorithims but it is that they are so little understood by most people around the world. We can not take collective action against an enemy we can not see, whose actions remain hidden as trade secrets, and whose core assumptions often start from racist and sexist foundations. So, as with so many problems, the first step has to be a more robust media literacy program – not just for youth but for the society at large. Media literacy here is not enough, though. We can’t simply read our way past these algorithims. We are going to need to take collective action to shift governmental and corporate policies that are adversely effecting our lives. We are probably not going to get rid of algorithimns but we do need to build in safeguards that protect our privacy, allow for meaningful overrides, and insure greater transparency, among other things. But these goals can only be pursued by an educated citizenry.

I found your discussion with Sonia Livingstone very interesting.

-What do you think is the most significant thing about 'digital natives' that many adults misunderstand?

Let’s start with the offensive assumptions about “natives” and “immigrants” that shape how these terms are understood. Digital Natives is in effect a theory of the noble savage straight out of 19th century settler mythology. Digital Immigrant starts from the premise that immigrants know nothing and bring nothing of value to the new world – in short, a kind of digital nativism, Hopefully, few of us would accept those premises about actual indigeneous peoples or immigrants, so why should we accept them in response to the digital world. Beyond that, the myth assumes that all youth have equal access to digital networks, that they acquire skills directly from their use of those technologies with any reflection or guidance, and that the skills they acquire are adequate to dealing with the complex problems they are confronting. None of these things are true. And these myths let adults off the hook from any responsibility to provide assistance and guidance, to learn enough themselves so they can help their children. And given how long we have lived in the digital era at this point, do people automatically lose everything they acquired as “digital natives” when they become adults or have we crossed the point where many adults can not longer be meaningfully discussed in those terms. The best participatory culture communities are those where youth and adults learn from each other without strong enforcement of assumptions based on age. 

-What do you think the adult generation, who are digital immigrants, have to teach the digital native generation, and what should they learn from them?

Well, for starters, the generation of parents today grew up playing Super Mario Brothers, hanging out in chatrooms, and engaging with fan discussion lists. They have plenty of practical experience with many of the social issues their children encounter online even if they do not know specific platforms, like Twitch or TicToc. If there ever was a generation of digital immigrants who were as clueless as they are often described, that generation is now the grandparents, not the parents. Beyond that, there is great wisdom in the elders about human relations, about traditional literacies and research skills, which can help guide youth’s online choices. The anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote in the 1950s that grandparents will have experienced an enormous amount of dramatic change in their lifetime and we should rely on them more to think through how we adjust to change. We also find something powerful takes places when adults and youth interact with each other online around shared interests and passions, such as within fandom or gaming, without a fixed relationship (like parent-child or Teacher-Student) but rather a fluidity where expertise and skill is transferred back and forth across generations. Our fears about stranger often gets in the way of such interactions. But if it takes a village to raise a child off-line, the same is true online, and many youth are finding their mentors or wide elders through such relations.

Although active participation among users has increased greatly in the current interactive media environment, social polarization is becoming more severe and communication between groups with different views is becoming more difficult. It seems that the active participation culture alone is not enough. What media capabilities are newly required in this interactive media environment?

This brings us to what I call the ethical challenge. The technology enables our participation, but it does so without regard to whether we adopt forms of participation that are socially constructive or destructive. The rapid growth of the internet population meant that there was not any system for enculcating shared ethical values. We have put massive communication capacity into the hands of people who have never used it before, who have not been encouraged to reflect on their obligations to each other or to be accountable to the information they put into circulation. And not surprisingly, some of them are using that capacity in very irresponsible ways. The dark side of the web is very real and having bad effects on our culture. The solution is to focus more attention on how we build up ethical norms within these communities and how the community holds its members accountable for those violations. The idea of self-regulation through norms and social contracts is much more acceptable among digital paticipants than legal regulation and thus apt to be more effective in the long run. Here, again, all roads lead back to media literacy education as a space where people can have such discussions and internalize a different set of values for their online lives.