Episode 606: Media Literacy at the Carter Center - podcast episode cover

Episode 606: Media Literacy at the Carter Center

Jun 21, 2024•59 min
--:--
--:--
Listen in podcast apps:

Episode description

Part 4 of MAJOR AND MINOR THREATS series

Guest: Sarah Morris, Media Literacy Program Consultant at the Carter Center.

First broadcast June 21 2024.

Transcript at: https://hdl.handle.net/1853/75406; Playlist  here

"Media literacy is plenty dramatic."

Transcript

Jordan Peele as Obama [clip]: This is a dangerous time. Moving forward, we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet. That's the time when we need to rely on trusted news sources. May sound basic, but how we move forward in the age of information is going to be the difference between whether we survive or whether we become some kind of [BLEEP] up dystopia. [MUSIC PLAYING]

CHARLIE BENNETT

You are listening to WREK, Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library, rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with Marlee Givens, Fred Rascoe, a box of chocolates, and a guest to be named later. Each week on Lost in the stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it.

MARLEE GIVENS

Our show today is called "Media Literacy at the Carter Center," and that is a non-governmental human rights organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

FRED RASCOE

We'll be talking to a librarian who is currently working on a media literacy education project with the Carter Center, as part of their digital threats to Democracy Project.

MARLEE GIVENS

And I was going to add, this is part of the Lost in the Stacks threat series, but that doesn't actually exist.

FRED RASCOE

Well, we did have three shows on threats to libraries in 2023, and as Ian Fleming said, three shows make a series. Let's double check those titles.

MARLEE GIVENS

All right. Those were Episode 550, "Classroom Libraries Under Siege;" Episode 559, "The Toolkit for Confronting White Nationalism in Libraries;" and Episode 576, "Banned Books Week in Georgia."

CHARLIE BENNETT

OK, siege, confronting, banned. Marlee, I don't think the title for today's show is dramatic enough to be part of our newly minted major and minor threat series.

FRED RASCOE

I think it is, personally. Media literacy is plenty dramatic. It's a requirement for citizens to take part in public discourse, and they have to be able to do that to make rational decisions when electing their representatives, governors, or presidents.

CHARLIE BENNETT

You have convinced me.

MARLEE GIVENS

Media literacy is our music theme today, with songs about assessing the world around you, learning what the truth is, and using what you know to make a better future.

CHARLIE BENNETT

And as an added bonus, all the songs are from the 1970s, performed by some of Jimmy Carter's favorite musical artists.

MARLEE GIVENS

Media literacy is, in part, about navigating the systems that produce media messages, assess them for accuracy and usefulness, and make sound decisions based on what you learn. So let's start with a song that seems to sum all that up while expressing the chaos of media messaging. This is, "Lo and Behold," by Bob Dylan and the Band, from the Basement Tapes right here on Lost in the Stacks.

[BOB DYLAN, "LO AND BEHOLD!"]

MARLEE GIVENS

(SINGING) I pulled out for San-- "Lo and Behold!" by Bob Dylan and the Band from the Basement Tapes, and our show today is media literacy at the Carter Center. We are pleased to welcome Sarah Morris, media literacy program consultant at the Carter Center here in Atlanta.

SARAH MORRIS

Hi. Thanks for having me.

MARLEE GIVENS

Thank you. I guess I can just start off by saying that before we rejoined, we learned that it's the 50th anniversary of the term information literacy.

SARAH MORRIS

It is. They're having-- I guess this a celebratory year for it. But American Library Association, ALA, is doing some programming celebrating the anniversary. So I'm glad you picked '70s music. We can really immerse ourselves. in the decade.

MARLEE GIVENS

It's sort of come full circle.

CHARLIE BENNETT

I'm very happy we picked '70s music also.

MARLEE GIVENS

I mean, I love '70s music anyway, so it's the best decade. But your initiative is dealing with media literacy. So maybe we could start off by talking about what makes media literacy different from information literacy.

SARAH MORRIS

I think we could be here all day to discuss that. Absolutely. I think there's so many different literacies we all talk about. And as a librarian, for me, I see a lot of deep connections with media and information literacy and digital literacy as well.

But I think essentially, what we're all talking about is being able to think critically about different communication tools and platforms we all encounter every day, as well as use these platforms effectively to share ideas and communicate with other people. So the focus on media literacy and now, increasingly, digital literacy at the Carter Center, to me, has a lot of overlap with information literacy and the ideas we all work with in libraries all the time.

CHARLIE BENNETT: One of the things I found when I was sort of looking up all of the definitions of media literacy, one component is being able to participate in the creation of media or particular mediums, and I hadn't thought of that before. But there is so much that people make now because we have devices in our pockets that allow you to cut a film or record a podcast. And so knowing what you're doing and what you're getting into seems to be part of it also.

Absolutely. Yeah, I find that a really intriguing part. So aside from just being a consumer of different kinds of media and in previous eras, certainly, the bar was higher to actually produce something. You couldn't just go out and say, produce a television show.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Yeah, the infrastructure was a lot bigger.

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah. So nowadays, anyone with an iPhone can make a movie or you can be participating in social media and have this massive following just from sharing things out from your living room. And so I think we're in an interesting landscape in understanding your space in that ecosystem where you're both producer and consumer of content and how that works.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Is there a straight line from being a good producer of media to being a good participant in civil society?

SARAH MORRIS

I definitely think so. I think just having that knowledge of the tools and resources out there and awareness of what you're both putting out into the world and what you're consuming and how that's informing, maybe your decision making or how you go about your life on a daily basis, I think those things are definitely really connected.

MARLEE GIVENS

And the Carter Center puts this within the realm of democracy.

SARAH MORRIS

Yes.

MARLEE GIVENS

So how do you see media literacy and democracy?

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah, it was an interesting framing when I first came on board and started collaborating with them. But for me, I think we talk about the role of a citizen in a democracy, and there's a lot of emphasis on being informed and just keeping up with trends and making informed decisions. But on the one hand, we have so much information available nowadays, it's great you have access to all this stuff. But in libraries, we talk about information overload or information overwhelm.

And on the flip side of that, it can be really exhausting and stressful to keep up with all these things. So I think for them, thinking about democracy and what it means to be a citizen, increasingly, there's a component of that. That's how do you navigate different media landscapes, or how do you make sense of everything that's coming at you all the time? We have 24/7 access to content and information and devices.

FRED RASCOE

The task seems huge, because--

CHARLIE BENNETT

I was going to say.

FRED RASCOE

--50 years ago, when the term was first coined, as we mentioned before, that's in the '70s. And if something was newsworthy and assumed to be true by everyone, it was told by Walter Cronkite on television and read either in The Washington Post or The New York Times, and now, there's the great democratization of creating content. You don't necessarily have to go to certain specific outlets, but then there's also the democratization of misinformation as well. So how do we fix it? Fix it now.

SARAH MORRIS

I ask myself that every day, like, what are we doing? No. I think part of what I've certainly tried to do in my work and we emphasize at the Carter Center, even just the first step is acknowledging that, yes, this is overwhelming and really, really stressful. And we're definitely not in the Cronkite era anymore with that kind of delivery or sort of like the three stations you had to pick from for where you get your news.

But I think, for me, we really try to focus a lot on empowering people with skills to better understand how these sort of systems work or why you might be seeing what you're seeing online. How does something like an algorithm work at its most basic level and how that's affecting your experience.

And I've really been taken, there's something called the slow news movement, which actually encourages people to step away sometimes, because it can just be so easy to be on constantly and just on your phone, doomscrolling and freaking out. So oddly enough, sometimes media literacy maybe means getting off of your devices and media and taking a breather and stepping back and taking a moment to reflect before you just share something or fire off a response really quickly.

CHARLIE BENNETT

So do you have an easy-to-say list of priorities? Because it sounds like we're talking about helping people figure out how they're engaging with media, how they're creating it, but also, we could go into talking to media producers. What's the elevator pitch for media literacy at the Carter Center?

SARAH MORRIS

Absolutely. I would say the brief elevator pitch is, one, just sort of, again, acknowledging and understanding that this is quite overwhelming nowadays and that you're seeing a lot of things, say, in online spaces, of varying degrees of quality. And so once you have that sort of lens on, I think we just sort of encourage people to just take a moment. Don't react really strongly or fly off the handle or share something immediately.

Just take a pause, take a beat, see if you can find out a little more information. Sometimes even just that awareness and slowing down a bit can make the difference between you inadvertently, maybe sharing a rumor or something bogus or getting really upset and having a really stressful time with it. So at the base level, that's what we really just encourage people to try to do, yeah.

CHARLIE BENNETT

It sounds like you're almost at media mindfulness.

SARAH MORRIS

It is a lot of that. We definitely pull in a lot of mindfulness content and that sort of awareness. I think if you want to be a citizen and a democracy, if you're stressed out and freaked out all the time and having a lot of anxiety and different emotions, that is often counterproductive in bringing that mindfulness in. CHARLIE BENNETT: There's no if to that. We'll just say flat out. Absolutely. Yep. So we talk a lot about that.

FRED RASCOE

This is Lost in the Stacks, and we will be back with more on media literacy and trying not to freak out at the Carter Center after a music set.

MARLEE GIVENS

And you can file this set under Dewey decimal classification number 973.926. CHARLIE BENNETT: What is happening?

FRED RASCOE

Dewey decimal in there.

[THE STAPLE SINGERS, "CITY IN THE SKY"]

MARLEE GIVENS

"City in the Sky" by the Staple Singers, a song about trying to make a better future by sorting out the signal from the noise.

[THEME MUSIC]

MARLEE GIVENS

This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called Media Literacy at the Carter Center. So it was clear from the first part of our conversation that you were passionate about media literacy, but that can't be the only reason that you got involved. So why did the Carter Center, did they want a librarian, or tell us how you got involved?

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah, it's kind of an interesting story. So I do think they wanted a librarian for this, so I was contacted when they were starting to look into developing more content and do more work in this area. But I'd actually been really interested in media and digital literacy dating back to about 2015. And I did a grant with the Mozilla Foundation at the time and just reached out to some people I knew there. And I always saw so many connections with information literacy and the work librarians did.

So I'd been doing some things myself in that area, and I think they apparently they found some of it on LinkedIn and then profiled-- checked on my profile and found me. CHARLIE BENNETT: You were at Emory? Is that right. Yeah, I was head of instruction at the Emory Libraries for four years. CHARLIE BENNETT: And Carter Center has some relationship with Emory. They do. They have a close connection, so I think they're like, ooh, Emory libraries. This person seems enthused about this.

CHARLIE BENNETT: This is the one. Let's go. Yes. Yeah. So the initial idea, it was a grant-funded project was to develop different modules on different aspects and elements of media and digital literacy. So we have one about the psychology of belief and how that ties in with conspiracy theory narratives and disinformation.

We have another, another one about visual literacy and how you can better detect things like deepfakes or fake content online, which is getting more and more crazy as time goes on. We finished that in, I think, '21 and then of course, ChatGPT. And I'm like, I need to redo this entire thing. This is no longer right.

FRED RASCOE

Yeah, you're going to have to need like a serious PhD in like digital forensics to catch deepfakes now.

SARAH MORRIS

It's a whole thing. It's like, ridiculous.

CHARLIE BENNETT

So some folks might not be familiar with what we mean when we say modules.

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so they're kind of lessons in a way. So each module has introductory content, just kind of explaining what the goals are and what this one is about, whether it's talking about, say, algorithms or media messaging and narratives, for example. And then we included case studies throughout. So there's examples of everything we're talking about.

And then it closes out with some ways somebody could learn more and maybe practice a skill, whether that's reverse image searching, for example, or keeping a log for 24 hours about your media consumption habits and reflecting on those. So it was intended for a general adult audience. But since I've come from an education and library background, we also did a facilitator guide.

So if librarians or educators want to take any of this content and put it into your classroom space, we developed that alongside the modules.

CHARLIE BENNETT

And would the folks, "taking," quote, marks around taking, "taking" these modules, do they find them on the website because they're seeking it out, or are you doing a program in a box for people?

SARAH MORRIS

Kind of a combo, actually. So there's a website that's going to be coming out. I don't have the exact date right now, but it should be coming out this summer that will have all the content on that. And then we've also done programs for universities, for example, or maybe civics organizations that the Carter Center has a relationship with, just to do almost a highlight reel of the content, introduce some ideas, and give people ways to learn more.

CHARLIE BENNETT: Where are the subjects or the particular focuses, foci, excuse me, of these modules coming from? Do you have a list and you're going down it, or how do you figure out what you're going to do? Yeah, we had some back and forth on what to include, because it's such a big topic. I think we ended up with nine modules, but I mean, we could have had 90 like the world is going, there's so much out there.

So I chunk them into units as a way, so kind of almost a little thematic sections, as it were. So one sort of-- all right, all right, let's get some baseline understanding of media landscapes and things like that. And then let's turn to looking more at maybe misleading narratives and how those work, and what could trigger somebody to maybe get sucked into a conspiracy theory or something like that.

And then we close out with a lot of more skill building, like how do you fact check something, especially if you're not a professional or maybe you don't have access to a lot of tools and things like that? How can you continue building up these habits in your daily life? How can you share these things with others and have conversations that can often be really tricky and difficult around media topics? So that's the flow we went with.

MARLEE GIVENS

And is this something that you built from the ground up?

CHARLIE BENNETT

Yeah. In consultation with folks at the Carter Center, they had some ideas for the types of models they wanted to see, and then we just sort of worked it from there. And then, yeah, I drafted the initial models, and we were sort of going off that way, and hopefully, going to look at things like AI now and the going forward and other topics that we didn't get to initially.

MARLEE GIVENS

And what's the what's the format? If someone is taking this content, is it all classroom? Is it online modules?

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah. So it's online. So we made some short videos as well. So somebody could just watch the videos, which run about 3 to 4 minutes in length, and it's very high-level information about some topics, and you can certainly watch those and just go about your business. If you want to delve in more, there's written accompanying content that you could go through, and then, as I mentioned, have those case studies or activities you could explore.

Someone could do that on their own, or it could be delivered in a classroom or a group learning setting, thinking of maybe adults who aren't in school anymore, but maybe they have an organization they want to get together with and go through the content together.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Were there pieces of this project that surprised you? Did you end up learning some stuff that you had--

SARAH MORRIS

Yes.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Because it was your interest beforehand, but then you were coming in and actually doing full-on classes?

SARAH MORRIS

Absolutely. I think one thing that really struck me was, I mean, I thought I would have to almost upsell it more, but I think people were quite interested in the topic and wanting to have conversations. But there's some definite generational splits sometimes as to what people focused in on. A lot of the older adult audiences really wanted to talk more about how do I have conversations with other people in my life or coworkers, how do I navigate that.

And a lot of the students were showing a real interest in things like AI and deepfakes and the technology behind this, or thinking of their own future careers and getting interested. And how could I pursue this if I want to be a lawyer or if I want to be a journalist, what do I need to be aware of in terms of fact checking and media landscapes and things like that.

CHARLIE BENNETT

So Thanksgiving dinner versus the job market?

SARAH MORRIS

Exactly. In a nutshell, yeah. The students, I think, had this Thanksgiving interest, too. But I was interested in the different types of questions.

CHARLIE BENNETT

So we're almost out of time in this segment, but I want to know, do you have a favorite module, one that you enjoyed building the most or your particular favorite value?

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah, it surprised me, but I think the one about the psychological factors and the kind of belief drivers as to how these services maybe misleading narratives and things work. And this could apply for scams or rumors online or all sorts of things and how those can play on people's emotions or get people into those spaces. I actually was joking that I need to go back to school and get a PhD in psychology at this point, because-- I don't need more degrees, but anyway,

CHARLIE BENNETT

Nobody needs any more degrees.

SARAH MORRIS

No one needs any more. But I found that really fascinating, and it was an interesting through line to consider, because there's a really strong emotional component to all of this. It's not just yes or no or black or white. There's a lot of community and people's sense of identity and different things that can get tied up, so it was interesting to explore that.

FRED RASCOE

You are listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll talk more about media literacy initiatives at the Carter Center on the left side of the hour.

[THEME MUSIC]

FRED RASCOE

TATIANA RICHARDSON

Hello. I'm Tatiana Richardson, author of The Buildup and host of the Romance in Colour Podcast. And you're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK, Atlanta.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Our show today is called "Media Literacy at the Carter Center," which is quite dramatic. Earlier this year, the Georgia Tech Library invited our guest, Sarah Morris, and her colleagues, Dan Richardson and Olivia Liu, to introduce the Carter Center's Digital Threats to Democracy Project and talk about the role of media literacy in fighting mis and disinformation online. A lot of their work also involves monitoring the spread of mis and disinformation-- I love that phrase now-- around the world.

Here in the US, our minds probably automatically go to social media when we think about that. But I wanted to play a clip of that presentation where Dan talks about their work in something very important to us here at Lost in the Stacks.

DAN RICHARDSON

My whirlwind sprint through the Carter Center's programming, number 4 is our legacy media monitoring. It's something that we are keenly aware of when we work internationally. In some countries, they hide an internet penetration rate and social media usage, but globally, that's not always the case. Radio, terrestrial radio is still incredibly important in disseminating political and electoral information, but it's also ripe for abuse and disinformation.

So finding an engineering solution to be able to capture that, to analyze it, and to scrutinize it are some of the next steps, and we hope to even be partnering with Georgia Tech on that.

CHARLIE BENNETT

You hear that, radio, someone still loves you. File this set under PN 1991.3.U6L68.

[LYNYRD SKYNYRD, "WHISKEY ROCK-A-ROLLER"]

[WILLIE NELSON, "ME AND PAUL"]

FRED RASCOE

That was "Me and Paul" by Willie Nelson, who made a famous trip to the White House roof in the '70s. Before that--

CHARLIE BENNETT

Allegedly.

FRED RASCOE

"Whiskey Rock-a-Roller," by Lynyrd Skynyrd, songs about paying attention to what the world is telling you and what you tell yourself.

MARLEE GIVENS

This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is called "Media Literacy at the Carter Center." We've been chatting with Sarah Morris about the Carter Center's media literacy curriculum, which Georgia Tech students will be able to experience this fall through online sessions that we're hosting at the library. So what is that going to be like for them? What's the typical online course like?

SARAH MORRIS

Absolutely. Yeah, I think we definitely try to tailor the content we have to different audiences and really think about what's going to be most impactful, what's going to be exciting for different groups to hear since we work with such a wide range of ages.

But for someone of the other sessions we've done with college students in the past, we definitely try to emphasize, again, our current moment that we're in and the sort of landscape of social media and media, and then really, just start unpacking some different trends they might be encountering in terms of media content more generally, but also, mis and disinformation narratives and how those things work. And then we always close out with different skills you can use and how you can learn more.

So I think our goal for Georgia Tech students would be just to, hopefully, help them feel a little more informed, a little more empowered, and then excited to just keep learning and exploring on their own going forward. CHARLIE BENNETT: So I want to ask you a question that involves maybe a little bit of mind reading. OK, I enjoy that. That's good.

CHARLIE BENNETT

OK, excellent. I feel like sometimes you say in social media and talking about giving it to college students, these modules, I feel like everybody kind of knows or feels that it's just crazy. Are you hoping to provide actual articulated thoughts to go with that, or do you expect to surprise people or just to help them refocus how they're thinking about it?

SARAH MORRIS

I think it's more the refocus. I definitely don't want to have a gotcha moment. I mean, this can be fun, but actually, I taught a class with some colleagues when I was still at Emory on media literacy. And I think something we really tried to emphasize was, it can feel so overwhelming, but trying to get a handle of either patterns or structures or how things work just so you start getting a better handle on it.

So it just feels less like you're in a sea just churning around with things and a little more like, a-ha, I see how this is working or I better understand this now. So now, I feel a little more maybe in control of the situation. CHARLIE BENNETT: So do these modules come as a pill or a drink? That's actually in our five-year plan. We're looking forward for that.

FRED RASCOE

So I've got a question about AI, of course CHARLIE BENNETT: I will allow this. Fred. Thank you, Charlie.

MARLEE GIVENS

That was generous of you.

FRED RASCOE

Yeah, kind of a bummer question, of course, since it has to do with AI. So we're talking about the future and how these are going to develop. Do you see, as AI is developing so quickly, do you see the technology developing so quickly that the tools that you are giving the general public cease to be useful or relevant? Like, I guess, ways around like these information literacy assessments, AI kind of sneaks around them and clouds folks' judgment.

SARAH MORRIS

100%. No, actually, I mean, it's sort of a bummer, but I do agree with that. I could see the almost like a race with this technology. You're constantly going to be having things develop that are great at faking things, and you'll have the better detection tools develop, and they'll just keep churning off each other.

But weirdly enough, I feel like, for me, I'm always like, I guess I'm a little bit of an optimist, but a glimmer of hope there is something that we do in libraries, which is just flat out critical thinking skills. So even if you have something like, say, a deep fake, a lot of times we talk with students about don't try to get your magnifying glass out metaphorically and unpack this picture, but think about what is the context in which I'm seeing this.

Is this a topic that's a really hot button issue that, there can be churn around this or whatever. Can I like look this up and see what others are saying about this and almost going kind of old school with it and maybe not always relying on certain detection tools or whatever, but your own kind of critical thought process to at least be aware. And you're like, you know what.

I'm not certain if this image is real or not, but I know enough to be a little bit wary, and I'm not going to share this or take this at face value until I learn a little bit more.

CHARLIE BENNETT

That's such a sort of diffuse, like all-over useful life skill. How are you assessing the outcomes of these modules? Do you follow anybody around to see if they're doing better.

SARAH MORRIS

I love to do more long-term assessment. And this has been pilot programs and software rollouts, but we definitely have different assessment tools we use after different sessions. And I always enjoy including a mix of questions. So we have some that are maybe more like a pre and post-test about maybe different terms, how would you describe fact checking, for example, and do it before they go through the modules and then, again, at the end.

But also, some questions about do you feel more confident in your ability to detect misinformation online, or how do you maybe plan to use a skill you learn going forward, so those mix of questions, as well as just how the session landed, did you enjoy it, was it informative, those kinds of things. So I think they're doing a mixture of those different kinds of questions. And the colleagues at the Carter Center did a lot of work, too, about just testing out media literacy as a term.

Because unfortunately, so many things get polarized nowadays, they're like, is this landing well with you? What do you think this term means. And so there's shifting into maybe more digital literacy or other ways of talking about that for different audiences as well. So kind of a mixture of different sorts of assessment mechanisms. But certainly, I'd personally love to do more long term and see what the impact might be over time.

MARLEE GIVENS

I was just going to ask what any future topics that you might want to tackle?

SARAH MORRIS

Absolutely. One is, I'm really interested in doing more on data literacy, because unfortunately, data can get taken and manipulated and shared in certain ways that can be really misleading and just helping people maybe have some tricks up their sleeve or just sort of awareness to maybe not get caught up in those kinds of narratives. AI, again, we're all grown, but it's sort of the elephant in the room at this point to talk about.

And then other examples of maybe mis or disinformation, such as sort of election misinformation and the kinds of forms and narratives that commonly takes, I think those would be really interesting to explore going forward.

MARLEE GIVENS

This is Lost in the Stacks, and you've been listening to our interview with Sarah Morris, media literacy program consultant at the Carter Center. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us.

SARAH MORRIS

Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun.

CHARLIE BENNETT

File this set under P96.M4M454. So many fours.

[ARETHA FRANKLIN, "HEY NOW HEY (THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY)"]

CHARLIE BENNETT

That was. "Hey Now Hey, The Other Side of the Sky," by Aretha Franklin. That was a song about wanting to find out what's behind the messages you've been receiving.

[MUSIC]

CHARLIE BENNETT

MARLEE GIVENS

Today's show is called "Media Literacy at the Carter Center." And before we roll the credits, I was wondering, how are y'all gearing up for this year's election?

CHARLIE BENNETT

Aside from sweating and crying?

MARLEE GIVENS

I know. Well, I'm just wondering, is there a media literacy skill that you've been building up in preparation. Fred?

FRED RASCOE

Yeah, I appreciated what Sarah said earlier in the interview, that media literacy sometimes means stepping away. And so I think that my information literacy strategy will be a personal news blackout in November, like early November. I think I'll just turn everything off. That's what I think.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Yeah. Sarah, we're going to have to fact check Fred. Is that media literacy, or is that just good mental health?

SARAH MORRIS

I think both things can be true. Good media literacy can be, perhaps, good mental health, we'll say.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Do you have a personal one? I mean, you've been steeped in it all summer. What have you been working on.

SARAH MORRIS

Probably a combo. Definitely avoiding doomscrolling is a goal of mine. Actually, I don't use that much social media, but I put a timer on the apps on my phone, where it shuts them down after I think I give myself an hour, and then it's just blacked out for the rest of the day, which is nice. But I think one of the skills I'm trying to beef up and focus on is, oddly enough, with clickbait headline. Don't fall for clickbaits.

Don't have a knee-jerk reaction or just even remind myself, take a beat and don't freak out whenever you see.

FRED RASCOE

But it's always seven cool tips. I gotta know.

MARLEE GIVENS

I know. I just have to know. What about the secret thing?

CHARLIE BENNETT

There's a particular kind of clickbait that I fall for, but I've been working on my reactions to it. So whenever there's something that's like, this study proves something that you know is not true, that's not the words they use. And I go in and I check and I see, well, yeah, that study is the exact opposite of what you're saying and all that. I don't tell anybody what I've discovered. I don't get on the internet to tell someone that they're wrong. Marlee, do you have one?

MARLEE GIVENS

Well, I really admire Fred wanting to shut everything off. I think it'll be very hard for me to do that. I do, in theory, appreciate the recommendation of getting a little bit of every side, and trying to diversify my sources. But I gotta tell you, I think I'm going to end up just muting some specific people.

FRED RASCOE

So now, we're back to the Thanksgiving dinner.

SARAH MORRIS

Yeah, exactly. Exactly,

CHARLIE BENNETT

Fred, just to continue the whole everybody chill out, take some time, do you have a relaxing credit spread for us to start?

FRED RASCOE

I think this will relax us, so we'll roll the credits with this.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Yes, please.

[MUSIC]

FRED RASCOE

How's that?

CHARLIE BENNETT

It's perfect. MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK, Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McKee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. Legal counsel and a White House turntable with Lynyrd Skynyrd still on it were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia, and I have no idea how he got it.

FRED RASCOE

Special thanks to Sarah for being on the show, to the Carter Center for fighting the good fight, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.

CHARLIE BENNETT

Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us.

MARLEE GIVENS

On next week's show, we're heading back into the Georgia Tech archives for another primary source adventure.

FRED RASCOE

It's time for our last song today. One way to improve your media literacy is to pay attention, not just to the message, but to the messenger and the messengers motives and your own reactions to the message. CHARLIE BENNETT: That's a lot, Fred. If someone is trying to mislead you and then you want to make sure their effort is wasted, this is "Wasted Words," by the Allman Brothers Band.

CHARLIE BENNETT

I knew we couldn't get away without any Allman Brothers.

FRED RASCOE

Have a great weekend, everyone.

[ALLMAN BROTHERS, "WASTED WORDS"]

FRED RASCOE

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file