This OER (Open educational resource) includes an article (that you can read here on the EPALE platform or download as a pdf, if you are a registered user), an infographic (that you can download here, if you are a registered user) and a quiz that you can download here (if you are a registered user) and use to assess learners’ competences.

Table of Contents

• What is news literacy for adults?
• Why is this important right now?
• News literacy and democracy go hand in hand
• Media literacy for adults is often neglected
• How to do it: an example course in news literacy training
• News media literacy course for adults: “Responsible reader”
• Sources used in the article
• About the authors
• Attachments

The ability to access and critically evaluate information is essential for democracy and active citizenship, and news literacy plays a big role in this. As the media sphere is constantly changing, there is an urgent need for up-to-date news literacy training – particularly for adults, who are still a somewhat neglected target group in the field of media literacy education.

What is news literacy for adults?

Media literacy is an umbrella term for various skills. According to the definition elaborated by the EU Media Literacy Expert Group (MLEG) it includes all technical, cognitive, social, civic and creative capacities that allow a citizen to access, have a critical understanding of the media and interact with it.
In concrete terms, crucial media literacy skills can mean learning how to use a digital banking app as well as navigating social media etiquette or being aware of the influencing tactics used in advertising or marketing.

In this article, however, we want to focus particularly on critical media literacy and news literacy for adults. We are both journalists with a strong interest in the changing the media landscape, and also design and coordinate various media literacy education projects aimed for adults as part of our work for the Finnish Lifelong Learning Foundation, Kvs. For Elm Magazine we have compiled a theme issue on Media literacy in 2018.

In this article we draw from our own experiences, best practices from other organisations and research on media literacy. We also conducted short background interviews with four experts representing a diverse cross-section of work within media and news literacy: Jonathan Anzalone, the Assistant Director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University in the US; journalist Hanna Visala who also works on media literacy education projects for Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle; Markéta Supa, media and digital technologies researcher at Charles University in the Czech Republic; and Auli Harju, journalism and citizen participation researcher at University of Tampere, Finland.
News literacy skills encompass the ability to determine the credibility of news and other content and to identify different types of information. See the News Literacy Project website to have an in-depth glance at these skills. 
“News literacy is, in part, about news awareness. When we follow the news regularly, and exercise our critical thinking skills, we develop healthier news diets and reward the news outlets that best serve the public good,” explains Jonathan Anzalone, the Assistant Director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University in the US.
In essence, news literacy contains various critical thinking skills, such as recognising the difference between journalism and other kinds of information, or, within the context of journalism, understanding the difference between news and opinion. These skills help to evaluate evidence presented, as well as the ability to distinguish biases both in the media and its audiences. Underlying these skills, the wider aims of news literacy are to understand why news matters and appreciate the importance of reliable and free-flowing information in the society (see also the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University).

There are a few reasons for us to concentrate especially on this angle of media literacy.

Firstly, news literacy is a particularly topical theme. As the global media landscape is in a constant state of flux, there is an urgent need for up-to-date information about ethical journalism, credibility of different news sources and basic principles of freedom of expression.

Secondly, news literacy is imperative for a functioning democracy – one cannot participate in the society unless they understand it, and being able to access and critically evaluate information plays a huge role in this.

Thirdly, we feel that adults are still a somewhat neglected target group in the field of media literacy education. This is certainly the case in our home country, Finland, and based on the journalistic background interviews we conducted for this article, experts share this view in different parts of the world.

Have a look at this video infographic summarising the main concepts of the OER!

Why is this important right now?

"Education moves slowly. Technology doesn’t. If we don’t act with urgency, our students’ ability to engage in civic life will be the casualty.” (Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait, Stanford History Education Group (2019)

The media environment is changing due to digitalisation and social media platforms, where the news is increasingly being consumed. People’s ability for critical literacy in online environments has become an urgent question. As the Report of the independent High level Expert Group (HLEG) on Fake News and Online Disinformation from 2018 concludes, the new ways disinformation is being produced, circulated and amplified on digital platforms is still poorly mapped and understood. In the UK, for example, the national communications regulator Ofcom’s survey on Adults’ Media Use & Attitudes from 2020 shows that 10% of internet users do not consider the truthfulness of factual information they find online. According to the same survey, internet users were less likely to make checks on the factual information they find online in 2020 than two years earlier. In 2020, 29% didn’t make any checks on the information they found, up from 23% in 2018.

Digitalisation and the rise of social media cannot alone be held responsible for the shifting media landscape, but they are strongly linked to many of its changes. More and more people in the world have access to an internet connection – according to Statista, in January 2021 there were already 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide, accounting to 59.5 percent of the global population. Any one of these people can become a publisher simply by retweeting, sharing a meme or writing a quick blog post. Simultaneously, the amount of information and content being distributed and consumed online has exploded.

“Today it is easier to voice one's own opinion in different channels, so one could say democracy and freedom of speech are living in a golden age. But freedom also brings side effects,” points out Finnish journalist Hanna Visala, who also works on media literacy education projects for Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle. On one hand, one could argue that digitalisation has already increased dialogue, interaction and pluralism of viewpoints in the media. On the other hand, with modern technology allowing more sophisticated forms of distortion of what is published, mis- and disinformation can also spread faster and wider than ever before.
News organisations, long recognised for their credibility, need to compete with a wide variety of free sources of information that might not adhere to traditional standards of quality journalism. Today, many bloggers, YouTubers or other active content producers are already reaching audiences that are much bigger and globally wider spread than most traditional news channels.

Globally, traditional news media has seen their profits disappear, and decreases in revenues have led to cutbacks in the workforce. The remaining reporters are often pushed to produce multichannel news coverage with smaller resources. This creates a cycle which can perpetuate the weakening role of traditional news journalism.
“One of the tragedies of our current media environment is the loss of local news outlets, which have shed staff and shuttered their doors, depriving communities all over the world of an important resource they need in holding their leaders accountable,” says Jonathan Anzalone. Digital platforms and social media can also accelerate polarisation in views and the so-called “echo chamber” phenomenon. Echo chamber means an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own. “Anyone can publish any information as "news", and it is easy for false information to spread. In addition, due to algorithms, uproar, exaggeration or confrontation gain significantly more visibility on social media than the so-called plain duller news,”  says journalist Hanna Visala.

Studies suggest that even when people claim to access an increasingly eclectic range of news sources from across the world, via a mix of social media, apps, websites, podcasts, TV and radio, their view of the trustworthiness of a news source or story was very much influenced by the degree to which it reflected their own attitudes.
Huge digital media corporations such as Google and Facebook play a big role as the gatekeepers of information and can perpetuate the echo chamber phenomenon. These corporations control what the audience are exposed to by manipulating the order of the search results and algorithmic picking of content to deed. For example, the more you consume a certain type of content online, the less likely you are to be exposed to material with contrasting views.
As the Report of the independent High level Expert Group (HLEG) on Fake News and Online Disinformation suggests, promoting and preserving the diversity of the news media ecosystems is crucial to fight the echo chamber phenomenon and, consequently, also the spread of disinformation. Amongst other things, this would require investments in research and innovation actions to improve technologies for online media services producing and sharing pluralistic journalism.
Global media sphere is also very much connected to and affected by the political atmosphere. During the past decade, the world has seen many political leaders eroding media freedom and hampering the work of journalists. Donald Trump famously spent a good deal of his presidency openly attacking and mocking the press, the effects of which will continue to be seen for years to come. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has taken leaps in converting the country into a totalitarian state with no media freedom. In Hungary, the government has systematically undermined independent and professional journalism and most of the media is now controlled by the government and the class of oligarchs close to it.

Just this past year, Belarus has repressed the country’s press freedom in a particularly aggressive way: in the spring 2021, the opposition journalist Roman Protasevich was detained by the Belarusian government after his commercial flight was intercepted in Belarusian airspace and directed to land in Minsk.
According to the 2020 Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, the COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted and amplified the crises threatening freedom of information. It seems that the public health crisis has provided authoritarian governments an opportunity to implement measures that would be impossible in normal times and further suppress media freedom. For example, both China and Iran censored their major coronavirus outbreaks extensively.

News literacy and democracy go hand in hand

The ability to access and critically evaluate information is essential for democracy and active citizenship, and news literacy plays a big role in this. To be connected to the community and wider society, one must be informed about and understand the things going on around them. On the other hand, only media freedom and pluralism can ensure the flow of information.
The European Union's commitment to respect media freedom and pluralism and to uphold freedom of expression – which includes the right to receive and impart information without interference by public authority – are enshrined in Article 11 of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. If people can easily be led to believe misinformation or lose their faith in the credibility of traditional news sources, the consequences for democracy can be dangerous. Disinformation erodes trust in institutions and in the media, but also harms democracies by hampering the ability of citizens to make informed decisions. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, disinformation can also have a direct impact on citizens’ health.

“The news is the oxygen of democracy, giving it life. We vote for political candidates, donate money to politicians and causes, and petition and protest the government based on what we learn from the news,” Jonathan Anzalone says. “And investigative journalism, when done well, serves as an additional check on the abuses of government. We dismiss such reporting as ‘fake news’ at our own peril,”  he continues.
According to the last Eurobarometers, In 2020, 71% of Europeans estimated they encountered fake news online several times a month. Active citizenship supports democracy by involving its members more strongly into the community and enabling monitoring and participation in the processes. Following and taking part in social discussion demands the ability to distinguish content produced by different actors with different motives.“Of course, it is not always the case that experiential knowledge is wrong and expert knowledge is correct, but understanding what the differences are and how they are constructed is essential for the formation of social opinion,” says Auli Harju, Finnish researcher in Communications Sciences specialising in journalism and citizen participation. She points out that disinformation or fake news are not necessarily always easy to recognise. Scams, such as fake videos are quite competent and easy to make and continue to evolve with technological advancement.

Protecting democracy also requires national and cross-national actions to combat disinformation. The Code of Practice on disinformation, first established by the European Commission in 2018, is the first worldwide self-regulatory initiative on disinformation subscribed by major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok), tech companies (Google, Microsoft and Mozilla), advertising industry associations and advertisers. The code sets a wide range of commitments, ranging from improving transparency of how advertising is used, to demonetising disinformation spreaders, enhancing the transparency of political and issue-based advertising and limiting manipulative techniques used to artificially spread disinformation.

Media literacy for adults is often neglected

Although not all EU Member States have yet adopted a media education curriculum for primary and secondary education (see report Teaching media literacy in Europe: evidence of effective school practices in primary and secondary education), the children and youth seem to be more targeted and easier to reach audience in the media literacy trainings than adults.
This can be partly explained by the fact that adults are often viewed as a challenging and very heterogeneous target group for media literacy education – the adults’ media use and needs vary greatly depending on age, life situation and skill-levels. However, separating rumors, sensationalism and misinformation from facts is an important skill for all ages. More education should be aimed at adults. Although we all benefit when decisions are based on reliable information rather than propaganda, disinformation, and self-interested promotion, adults are often the ones making decisions as workers, as consumers of goods and services, and as active citizens, Jonathan Anzalone points out.

Studies show that adults, especially the elderly, are more likely to spread fake news on social media.
“Grandparents and parents, teachers and community leaders, who are news literate, will be better informed, will make better decisions, and they can set positive examples for younger generations,” Jonathan Anzalone says. With the older persons, the low level of news literacy might be exacerbated by their lower digital skills and poor access to the internet (see this press release by project MobileAge). Upskilling senior citizens’ digital skills and knowledge is definitely an important starting point for many media literacy education for the older people (see Erasmus+ Digital Security for Senior Citizens (DiSC) project).

Adults might also become blind to the need to upgrade our own news literacy. “We, adults, are prone to become comfortable in our filter bubbles, considering as true what concurs with our attitudes and beliefs. We might even criticize, patronize,or publish hateful comments about those who do not think and feel about the world the same way we do,” says Markéta Supa, Czech media and digital technologies researcher.
News literacy is thus not important just for our own understanding and behaviour, but also to secure the plurality of worldviews and voices in democratic society.

Improving news literacy for adults: How to get started?

How to get started with news literacy education for adults? Journalists and the media are one important actor and adult education could be another one.

Media outlets and journalists could help advance news literacy by openly presenting their practises and being more involved in the journalistic debate, researcher Auli Harju says.

Journalist Hanna Visala also believes in the role of the media in the cultivation of adults. “The audience must be able to understand what they have read and heard. Journalists can’t stay out of the debate and just “produce” news.” For adult educators, there is a wide variety of existing education and training materials available by various organisations working with media literacy for adults.  News media literacy can be taught as a separate course or as a part of any subject.
“Based on my experience, I'd say that news literacy education for adults should be convenient, simple, engaging, and presented in such a way that its relevance is clear to them,” Jonathan Anzalone says.
With any audience, the dangers include talking down to them and making it seem as if we're in a hopeless situation. Being news literate should be empowering, as we gain the confidence to make sense of a confusing media environment and act on the reliable information we are able to find.  
There is a lack of systematised comparative evidence about the best methods in media literacy education practices at classroom level (see report Teaching media literacy in Europe: evidence of effective school practices in primary and secondary education), but researcher Auli Harju shares positive experiences on education through reflecting and discussing together.  “What has worked in workshop-type training has been, for example, first introducing the basics of fact-checking and introducing concrete online sources that can be used for fact-checking. After that the group will practise using these with real or practice-created news and discuss. The conversational exercises develop a critical and analytical eye and reflection together helps to widen one’s perspective.”

How to do it: an example course in news literacy training

This is one example on how to integrate critical reading of media into any adult education. KVS created this course as a part of a media literacy project in 2019. Our pilot course was conducted in a pop-up course format, but feel free to adapt it to your needs. 

News media literacy course for adults: “Responsible reader”

Course description & objectives

The aim of the course is to link news media literacy and media education to everyday discussion culture and to promote the development of active citizenship through constructive dialogue.
The course can cover any topic familiar from the media from the perspective of media literacy. When choosing a topic, it is worth emphasising current issues. Even if the topic is local or national, it is good to look for a broader perspective on it. A good topic is one that has been covered from slightly different perspectives and can evoke conflicting feelings. The topic could be, for example, current local news coverage and a bursting debate on social media on an issue that can be broadened on a larger scale. A vaccination discussion for example, can be a gateway to health issues.

For the final selection of topics, joint planning is recommended. By including desired target groups already at the planning stage, it is possible to map out which themes are most relevant to them or choose the most suitable themes together. It is worthwhile to expand the target group beyond the traditional participants of the organising body and to look for people from different backgrounds from different backgrounds. It is important for the discussion to have people from different perspectives, so group heterogeneity is an advantage. It is particularly useful to involve target groups who are critical of the so-called mainstream media and feel that it reports selectively and purposefully.
The goal of this media literacy course is an active, critical-thinking citizen who can enjoy the use of media and who is able to communicate ethically in a variety of media environments. The course allows for a low threshold of participation.
This course is developed for educational institutions for free educational work, but can also be widely used in non-governmental organisations.

Course structure

The course consists of three themes:

• News media literacy – Understanding the world through news
• The voices in the media – Whose stories do we read? 
• Active citizenship and democracy – Where is the voice of the citizen?

Each course session begins with an expert lecture on a current and interesting topic, during which the participant receives basic information about the theme of the day. An alternative is to implement the course as a series of one expert lecture and three workshops.
Lecture will be followed by a workshop elaborating the theme via an inclusive, facilitated dialogue method, for example Timeout. What is essential is that the discussion has a facilitator and a goal, and participants are not left to discuss alone. This is how a safe atmosphere is built.
Workshops can be organised in a traditional way as full courses for the same group or as individual sessions where one can attend only one session if they prefer. In both cases, registration is beneficial for the commitment of the participants and the success of the course.
It is a good idea to package the lectures and workshops as an entity, even if the expert lecture is also marketed separately to a wider audience.

PART 1: News media literacy - Understanding the world through news

Teaching method: Expert lecture and public discussion (60 min) and workshop (1 h 30 min)
Learning aim: The participant understands media processes and how the image of the world can be created by the media. A familiar phenomenon from daily life can be looked at on a local, national or global scale.
The lecture can answer the following questions:

• How does media work?
• How are news created?
• How are the news backgrounds checked?
• How does the news coverage of the world's hotspots end up in the domestic or local media?

Workshop: The conversation seeks fresh perspectives on the media as a social actor and power, and broadens the participants' understanding on familiar phenomena on a local or global scale.

The workshop can focus for example on the following questions:

• How do global phenomena end up in the domestic media?
• What are the current global issues, and how does the media address them?
• What is the power the media has by covering or not covering some issues?

Examples could include immigration-related news coverage, climate change and health issues.

PART 2: The voices in the media - Whose stories do we read? 

Teaching method: Expert lecture and public discussion (60 min) and workshop (1h 30min)
Learning aim: The participant understands why polyphony is important and what challenges it brings to the work of a journalist.
The lecture can answer for example the following questions:

• How does the media strive for polyphony?
• On which topics is it particularly important to get different points of view?
• How does the journalist ensure that the different voices are heard?
• What problems are there regarding polyphony?

Workshop: The conversation seeks answers to whose voice is heard in the media.

• Does everyone have a chance to be heard?
• Is any view overshadowed, and if so, why?

The participant understands their own responsibility in polyphony and finds ways to strengthen it. The discussion will address the responsibility of the journalist as well as freedom and responsibility of speech from the perspectives of both the media and the citizen.

PART 3: Active citizenship - Where is the voice of the citizen?

Teaching method: Expert lecture and public discussion (60 min) and workshop (1 h 30 min)

Learning aim: The participant understands what civic debate is today and what is the role of the media in it.

The lecture can answer for example the following questions:

• Where is the public debate taking place?
• What rules does it follow and why?
• Where did my bubble come from?
• Why and how to have a dialogue with people with different views?

Workshop: The debate focuses on the essence and rules of civic debate. The participant understands their own power and responsibility, especially on social media.

 

Sources used in the article

• https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/reporting-media-literacy-europe
• https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/final-report-high-level-expert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation
• https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/media-freedom
• https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/disinformation-threat-democracy-brochure)
• https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_20_383
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide
• https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/code-practice-disinformation
• https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/adults
• https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0031/196375/adults-media-use-and-attitudes-2020-report.pdf
• https://mediaguide.fi/mediaguide/home/
• News Literacy Project
• What Is News Literacy? – Center for News Literacy
• https://www.statista.com
• Digital Media Literacy: What is an Echo Chamber?
• 2020 World Press Freedom Index: “Entering a decisive decade for journalism, exacerbated by coronavirus”
• GIVE FACTS A FIGHTING CHANCE
• https://nesetweb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/AR2_Full_Report_With_identifiers_Teaching-Media-Literacy.pd
• NBC Age, not politics, is biggest predictor of who shares fake news on Facebook, study finds
   

About the authors

Heini Huhtinen (MA) is the editor-in-chief and Anne Tastula (MA) the editor of Elm Magazine (link: elmmagazine.eu/). In addition to their work as journalists, they run media literacy projects at The Finnish Lifelong Learning Foundation, Kvs.