- Identify the risks and benefits of engaging with a public audience in a media space Consider what the risks for a public figure or person in a position of trust (educator, lawyer, government official) may be?
- Include in your blog, how to best address negative replies and critiques reflective of your personal values and employer’s social media policy?
- Consider in your writing how open dialogues about media literacy and factual information can create conflict, why does this happen?
- And please include thoughts on the benefits of having a PLN that values media literacy?
I think the primary benefit for someone in a position of trust to meet the public audience is that their voices and ideas will be more accessible. Not only do the netizens want to join the online world simply because of the technological advances nowadays, but they may also want to reach out to reliable sources. The ones in positions of trust will be more likely chosen if one is looking for what they see as trustworthy, the sources of “fact-finding”.
In addition, I think the broader audiences could, at the same time, be the primary risk for them. As far as I know, not everyone cares about how they may present themselves online. That means critiques may either be cogent and reasonable or simply negative words floating around the online environment. I think the first thing to do addressing negative replies is to measure their content and (to a degree) selectively respond with respect and stay honest. Wider audiences will come with numerous ideas, and interacting with them could be time-consuming – another reason for responding to the negative ones selectively.
I would say that there are many ways of creating the conflict between media literacy and factual information, among which the “structure and economics of social platforms” (Hirst, 2018, p. 84) is a major one. The commodified “clicks, views, likes and shares” push the mass production and attention gained of low-quality content over high-quality ones, blocking people’s fact-finding journies online (Hirst, 2018, p. 82-84). Factual information, as a result, is undervalued for its neglect of profits. I have followed a zoologist whose series of short videos (as he fits in the realm of social media) are all about widespread false/fake knowledge about animals. I doubt if the correcting videos gained more views than the original ones that earned a lot yet delivered nonsense to their mass audience. As he gained more viewers, a lot of his audiences began to be the ones correcting false/fake information since they learned and remembered from watching his videos. I think that is a way to enhance and facilitate the existence of factual sources online while building a community.
Having a PLN that values media literacy is benefiting both the individual and the audience since valuable content will be delivered more effectively, as a result, the interactions within the community will be more efficient – and it will be more accessible to a potential broader range of audiences.
References
Hirst, M. (2018). Navigating Social Journalism: A Handbook for Media Literacy and Citizen Journalism (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315401263
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