Throughout my schooling as a student, I have learned the value of media literacy and knowing how to spend your trust. In today’s environment, it’s simple to become disoriented by the abundance of information at our disposal. Additionally, it is more crucial than ever to be able to assess the reliability of sources due to the development of fake news and misinformation. One issue I’ve observed is that people frequently believe that persons with quite diverse degrees of credibility are equally unreliable. Due to the fact that both Natural News and the Mayo Clinic profit from their work, for instance, some people may view them as equally questionable sources. This is what the article’s author refers to as “trust compression”.
It’s crucial to assess sources according to criteria including their funding, political biases, and publication history in order to counteract this. It’s also vital to demonstrate critical thinking and to be open about our own biases. We should leave our own biases out of certain research because it can flaw the way we look at sources. Librarians and scholars at universities continue to strive to improve media literacy in their students. I think it’s very important to understand where we are getting information, and why the sites are providing it. Is it for their own economic gain to put out false information? Ultimately, the goal of media literacy is to equip us with the knowledge necessary to decide where to invest our trust. It’s not about being pessimistic or suspicious, but rather about being informed customers.