How to Improve Your Own Digital Literacy
This article is based on the YouTube Crash Course series Navigating Digital Information by author and educator John Green.
The Internet’s presence can be felt in just about every aspect of our lives. From social media to email, from Google to Wikipedia, from corporate websites to online newspapers, it’s obvious that we spend a great deal of our time interacting with our digital devices — especially our phones, tablets, and laptops.
In this article, we’ll walk you through some of the most important skills and tools you need in order to be an informed, “digitally literate” citizen of the world.
So what is digital literacy?
The American Library Association defines digital literacy as “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.”
That means a digitally literate person is someone who can root out misinformation, evaluate the credibility of a website or online source of information, and use the internet productively.
In a world plagued by misinformation but also rich with online potential, such people are indispensable.
Don’t be fooled by website aesthetics…
One of the greatest accomplishments of the Internet was the democratization of information.
Previously, only newspapers, magazines, and TV programs could push information out to large audiences. Now, anyone with an internet connection can post on social media or create a website.
But this also means that anyone can spread misinformation — deliberately false or inaccurate information. Unfortunately, too many people don’t know how to discern truth from fiction online.
Studies have shown that when judging the credibility of a website, Internet users tend to weigh its aesthetics over the actual quality of the content.
For instance, they look for a well-designed logo, references and citations, professional-looking pictures, the absence of grammatical errors or typos, and some graphs, statistics, or infographics.
The problem is, these things can be faked! In fact, pretending to be someone else online is such a common phenomenon that there’s even a word for it: catfishing.
So what, then, should an Internet user do?
Read laterally before reading vertically…
When looking for information, we tend to go to a website and start scrolling down the page. This is called “reading vertically.” However, this only shows us what the website’s creator wants us to see, making us easy targets for misinformation.
The best strategy to employ is “reading laterally,” or opening up a new tab and looking up the source for the information.
For example, if you find an article on the coronavirus written by a certain writer for a certain website, open up a new tab and look up the writer and website. See what other sources say about that source. Is it trustworthy?
In particular, you should evaluate the source’s authority and perspective. “Authority” refers to the writer’s recognized knowledge or expertise on a subject, including their professional background, experience, the process they used to gather the information, and the robustness of the systems they have in place to catch mistakes.
“Perspective” refers to an author’s point of view — the interests and biases they hold. For instance, a researcher funded by an oil company might be expert on oil policy, but could be biased in favor of policies that benefit the company.
All sources have varying degrees of authority and varying perspectives, but that isn’t to say they can’t be trusted!
An informed Internet user simply takes authority and perspective into account, while also checking multiple sources with different perspectives, to ensure that they’re getting the full picture.
Watch out for confirmation bias…
Human beings are predisposed to confirmation bias, or the interpretation of new information as confirmation of one’s previously held beliefs.
This psychological phenomenon explains why people often fall for fake news when it aligns with what they already believe or want to believe.
To combat confirmation bias, and misinformation in general, you should always ask yourself the following three fact-checking questions when you encounter new information online:
Who is behind this information? (What are their motives?)
What is the evidence given to support the information? (And is it a fact or an opinion?)
What do other sources say about the source in question? (Lateral reading!)
Good fact-checkers keep an eye out for common tricks like “spurious correlation.” This is when someone implies a causal relationship between things that are only coincidentally linked, like ice cream sales and shark attacks.
Both ice cream sales and shark attacks rise in the summer, but it’s ridiculous to say that shark attacks cause ice cream sales, or vice-versa. Instead, both rise as the temperature increases in the summer months.
Sometimes even digitally literate individuals need help fact-checking. At such times, one can turn to fact-checking websites used by researchers, such as https://www.snopes.com/ and https://www.politifact.com/.
The truth about Wikipedia…
You’ve probably been told many times since childhood that you should never trust Wikipedia. And when the site was founded, there was good reason to be skeptical. Anyone could edit a Wikipedia page to support their own point of view or hurt someone else’s.
But things have improved a lot since then. Now Wikipedia is the world’s largest online reference work, with over 40 million articles in 301 languages.
There are rigorous content policies: articles must meet a standard of notability and can only be created by registered users. The content itself must have a neutral point of view and cite its sources.
In the English Wikipedia, there are about 1200 administrators tasked with ensuring these rules are followed.
Moreover, poorly written articles get flagged by Wikipedia’s algorithms so that a banner at the top of the page informs readers if no sources were cited or if the text is written like an advertisement.
An icon of a lock indicates that editing privileges are restricted for an article; the color of the lock shows how strict the restriction is.
Ultimately, Wikipedia has its own biases, shouldn’t be the only source you read, and shouldn’t be cited in academic works, but it’s still a great starting place for research.
Even professional researchers will examine Wikipedia articles for the references and citations listed at the bottom of the page. These citations point the researchers to the books and publications they should read to gather more information.
How to navigate social media…
The advent of free social networking sites like Facebook heralded the beginning of a new era in human communication, but also brought with it new challenges.
The most important thing to understand about social media is that it is run by algorithms that were created by human beings.
Algorithms are simply a set of rules or operations a computer follows to complete a task. In the case of social media, the algorithms at play are not neutral: they prioritize user engagement over content quality.
This is because the people who run the sites want to increase the amount of time people spend on social media in order to maximize targeted ad revenue.
Studies have shown that social media sites tend to push shocking, outrageous, and provocative content because that is what gets people to stay engaged with the site.
Moreover, they show you more of what you’ve indicated you “like,” which creates echo chambers: you mostly see the viewpoints you agree with, and rarely the ones you disagree with.
One way to counteract this is to deliberately follow people and pages with different viewpoints and perspectives than you, which will help make your newsfeed more reflective of reality.
Finally, social media users must be aware of targeting advertising. In essence, social media companies sell your data (information about what you like, where you go, etc.) to advertisers.
These advertisers then show you ads that are crafted specifically for you. Some people consider this a breach of privacy, while others accept it as the price for a “free” social network. Either way, all users should be able to discern which posts in their newsfeed are sponsored content and which are not.
Conclusion
The skills and knowledge in this article will provide the foundation you need to become a digitally literate citizen of the world. Now it’s up to you to build on that foundation!
We encourage you to learn advanced skills like reverse-searching for images on Google to ascertain their origin, recognizing visual manipulation in infographics, and using punctuation marks to fine-tune search engine results.
Want to support global digital literacy? Ira Jaan empowers children living in impoverished areas by teaching them the skills they need to improve their lives.