The other day I was browsing through my Google Reader and found a link that brought me to this site. JD Lasica published a short (6 minutes) interview with Howard Rheingold at King’s College at Cambridge University.
At the beginning Rheingold states:
On the Internet there are billions of different sites providing all sorts of content with varying degrees of credibility since a lot of content is user generated . That causes a problem because readers must be media literate, critical readers to be able to place the information they gained inside the context. A lot of people believe what they read and problems arise when these people are expected to make informed decisions like voting, participating in referendums, etc. He also mentions key terms, related to media literacy: Attention, Participation, Collaboration and Critical consumption part of the latter being “crap detection,” as he called it. Additionally he also emphasizes the role of multitasking - since we do live in so called information society, and Castells network society, we are saturated with information and contacts of all kind and a person must be have the skills to sift the useful information from the rest.
21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo.
In this short interview on the importance of media literacy in the current day and age, he makes many interesting points.At the beginning Rheingold states:
“Increasingly I think the digital divide is less about access to technology and more about the difference between those who know how and those who don’t know how.”He emphasized the role of knowledge and information and knowing what to do with information, as opposed to access to technologies, which means very little, if a person does not know what to do with the content (s)he accessed.
On the Internet there are billions of different sites providing all sorts of content with varying degrees of credibility since a lot of content is user generated . That causes a problem because readers must be media literate, critical readers to be able to place the information they gained inside the context. A lot of people believe what they read and problems arise when these people are expected to make informed decisions like voting, participating in referendums, etc. He also mentions key terms, related to media literacy: Attention, Participation, Collaboration and Critical consumption part of the latter being “crap detection,” as he called it. Additionally he also emphasizes the role of multitasking - since we do live in so called information society, and Castells network society, we are saturated with information and contacts of all kind and a person must be have the skills to sift the useful information from the rest.
“The ability to know has suddenly become the ability to search and the ability to sift and discern."Perhaps he sounds a bit radical, but he has a point. While many believe that they (as individuals) are powerless and that the media are all-powerful, trending towards media literacy and taking the matter into one's own hands could result in a significant change in the society.
Well I totally agree with Rheingold and I think that it is good that he raised that question of media literacy. There should be greater emphasis on problem of media literacy especially on critical consumption. In teaching institutions there should be more time reserved for media literacy and for proper use of internet. I believe that children are too much exposed to non-quality and poor contents and they are also too young to critical evaluate it and choose what is relevant or credible. But this is not just children problem but is also world wide. Like Rheingold is saying, digital divide is no more between north and south, but has become between those who are computer literate and those who are not. For example look at Facebook and their privacy settings. I think that every user of Facebook should be so literate that he should know how to adjust it and every users should also be so computer literate that (s)he should realize what problems can emerge with exposed private data. So I think that Rheingold as usual is before our time and is again raising some interesting topics.
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