News Literacy, Media Literacy, Digital Literacy, Civic Literacy – Day 1

BREAKOUT REPORT

Session One: March 1, 2010

• Facilitator: Diana Mitsu Klos, American Society of News Editors
• Scribe: Susan Knudten, Rose Community Foundation

This conversation is about literacy, not in a language sense, but in a news sense.

• How do I know what to believe? 
• What do I need to know to be an engaged citizen? 

Questions from session participants included:

• How do we make people feel empowered to use multiple options instead of like they have to pick one source for news? 
• How do we know what’s true? 
• Digital literacy can be a barrier – how do we overcome that? 
• What can/should we look for when considering funding for media projects? 
• How do we educate future journalists to look deeper into stories to see larger trends/issues? 
• How do we get all members of a community to rise up to the same level of media literacy? 
• How do we put media literacy education into practice? How do we develop best practices? 
• How can digital literacy be used to cause change? 
• What role does interpersonal trust play in digital literacy when people get their information forwarded from personal contacts? 
• How do we educate our community about new media? 
• A lot of our efforts are how to use existing tools but that can be problematic – tools are too complicated or not user-friendly. What about developing new tools? 
• How can we improve a social networking site that we have created? 

Question: How much of a priority is it to engage people of all ages in civics?

Response: Long Beach has a live blog-radio show that can be heard through the computer. A second version has popped up that is Spanish-language.

How are these sites marketed? They use Facebook and word of mouth through a farmer’s market; lots of volunteers are involved.

Question: Is anyone else funding something like this?

Response: As a funder, we want collaboration and for projects to connect to other projects. We want to see a blog, Web presence, Facebook presence, etc.

This can be a challenge for the grantees. Smaller communities are working through the “ownership” issues of who is responsible for managing a site, etc.

Question: Once you ask the grantee to set up a website or a blog, how do you/they drive traffic there?

Response: We created a news story. We did research and got interesting information to share. By creating our own news story, we got a lot of attention. We keep information on our website and are repurposing the information and doing fresh research.

Question: We are bringing together people who are vying for the same dollars. How do you get people to want to take a risk when they may be criticized or someone will steal their idea?

Question: Has anyone had conversations with school systems or library systems about how to introduce elements of civic literacy?

Response: We just funded a program through a library. Whether you’re in the library or not, if you have a computer you can use your library card to gain Internet access. This program existed but no one knew it was out there. (Learning Express – info at www.connectedcorridor.org)

Another project: Middle school kids refurbish old computers that were warehoused, parents are trained on how to use them, then they are given to families. (Digital Divide – info at www.quantumfnd.org)

Comment: Civic literacy is lacking. People talk about ideas in all types of forums but they have no idea how government works or who their own government representatives are. This is not limited to young people. (LOTS OF AGREEMENT WITH THIS CONCERN.)

Response: Times have changed – we used to memorize existing knowledge. We probably shouldn’t encourage that anymore. You don’t necessarily need to know something as much as how to find out that information if you need it.

Counter: It is important that certain things should be memorized – forms of government and separation of powers, etc. These concepts don’t change.

Comment: Trying to overcome tremendous cynicism is a challenge. People say, “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Response: Maybe the answer is to give youth a reason to want to know. If you give people a sense that they can make a difference, then they may want to know more.

IDEAS:

• Get together groups with a common interest (education, child care, etc.) and see if someone can take on being responsible for creating a mashup site or setting up particular RSS feeds based on interest area. 

• Partner with public broadcasting, employment centers, houses of worship and/or arts and recreation centers. 

• Teach for America model: Bring young people with tech skills to areas that are underserved with technology in order to teach skills and show why broadband can be so useful. 

• Use games that give youth a chance to solve problems. 

• Kids aren’t really using Facebook and Twitter. There is an opportunity for us to teach them about it. Our youth do care; they just need the tools to act sometimes. 

• Work with arts and/or theater organizations to create interesting messages. 

• Educate youth about standards:

  • Help youth understand that their posts and photos on Facebook, etc., can be viewed by college admissions folks, potential employers and others. 

  • Teach that there is no such thing as a “free” site – your info is being used for marketing. 

  • Encouraging parents to learn about social media in order to understand their children’s activities. This is also part of media literacy. 

“Every generation creates its own journalism.” From Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Covich – The Elements of Journalism (highly recommended book)