Comments on: Skepticism Must Define Modern Media Literacy

By: Mais cepticismo - urgente « Atrium - Media e Cidadania

Mais cepticismo - urgente « Atrium - Media e Cidadania — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:01:20 +0000

[...] Se Warhol nos abriu as portas a um mundo em que todos teriamos acesso a 15 minutos de fama há quem nos diga agora (o controverso artista britânico Bansky) que no futuro próximo todos vamos poder ser anónimos por 15 minutos. A auto-publicação é, a cada ano que passa e a cada nova onda de ferramentas e utensílios que surge, cada vez mais parte da existência de um número maior de pessoas mas isso não é necessariamente mau (como parece sugerir o mais recente famoso/marginal do mundo da arte contemporânea). Por isso me parece mais honesta a variação da conhecida frase proposta por David Weinberger: todos vamos ser famosos para 15 pessoas. Assim sendo, importará saber viver num novo mundo mediático de múltiplas vozes sabendo distingui-las por algo mais do que os decibéis do volume. A chave – diz-nos Dan Gillmor – está no cepticismo; deve ser grande e permanente. I hope people will learn not to immediately believe anything they read, hear, or see in whatever medium – positive or negative – unless it’s from a source they have come to trust. A dollop of skepticism will go far. This means something more: Trust will be harder than ever to earn. But once it is, it’ll probably also have more staying power. [...]

By: Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:08:36 +0000

Seth, this is one of my goals over time — to push hard for this level of skepticism among nonprofessional communicators. (If my only audience is the pros, then I’m going to fail.)

Some PR folks will undoubtedly see this medium as a way to fool people, and I hope that there will be enough brains and eyeballs out here to call them on such things.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:45:57 +0000

Noble sentiments. But what if your audience – which, after all, is professional manipulators – draws the exact opposite conclusion than you intend? While people *should* “learn not to immediately believe anything they read”, suppose the PR flacks work from the premise that they *will* believe it anyway? And so there’s a whole new set of opportunites now for faking sincerity and gaining false trust. In a nutshell, “Truthiness”.

By the way, though David Weinberger may have independently invented the quote, no harm in that, it does pre-date him, usually to a 1991 essay by “Momus”.

http://imomus.com/index499.html

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:21:01 +0000

It’s wonderful that Dan’s talking about media literacy, but quite humorous that he refers to “old-fashioned media literacy” when educators and advocates have been struggling for a few decades here in the U.S. to get general public recognition and understanding of the mere phrase “media literacy” anywhere above the 20-30% threshold (I’m guessing at this figure but it’s nowhere near even 50%).

The most comprehensive conference for teaching and learning about media literacy (the bi-annual National Media Education Conference) will be the last weekend in June of 2007 in St. Louis, Missouri. I’m doing volunteer publicity work for it. If interested visit http://www.amlainfo.org. There’s minimal conference info on there right now but you can check out the sponsoring group of good folks, the Alliance for a Media Literate America.

Use the Contact form (link on bottom nav bar) to request that you be added to an email list they will develop for conference updates. (And I’ll ask them to install an easy sign-up form for getting conference email notices.)
Susan Rogers

By: steven

steven — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:40:24 +0000

And, according to hip British artist Banksy:

“in the future everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes.”

http://supertouchblog.com/?p=317#more-317
(scroll 22 photos down to the PINK TELEVISION)