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Information literacy? Media Literacy? News Literacy? What's the difference?  

alexandrawaldie
Posts: 4
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(@alexandrawaldie)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hi! I'm a librarian and planning to role out workshops to the staff this fall. They will be focused on identifying bias, evaluating evidence, lateral reading, and an introduction to misinformation. Would these be classified as more of information literacy? Digital literacy? Media literacy? News Literacy? What's the difference? 

I feel like I should distinguish to teachers when the majority of the content of the lesson will be about social media. Thanks for any feedback!

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Jordan Maze, NLP
Posts: 19
(@jmaze)
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Joined: 3 years ago

Hello, Alex! In our FAQ, NLP delineates these fields in the following manner:

"There are several fields of practice focused on teaching students to be critical consumers of media. Media literacy generally refers to a broad discipline that seeks to teach students how to access, analyze, evaluate, create and take action using all forms of communication (including entertainment media). News literacy is focused on helping students understand the role that credible information and a free press play in their lives and in a robust democracy, and seeks to help them determine the credibility of news and other information. Information literacy is aligned with library sciences and seeks to help students find, evaluate, and use information effectively. Digital literacy aims to teach students how to use information and communications technologies in effective, responsible and ethical ways." 

In my opinion, the subjects you outlined above fall under news literacy because they "help [students] determine the credibility of news and other information" on social media. But I can certainly see how the skills you mention relate to information literacy and digital literacy, depending on you and your colleagues' end goals. 

I'm curious to hear what you and others in the forum think about this issue, given the definitions above. 

 

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