In wide reading on the rise of misinformation and disinformation in the digital landscape, I came to realise that in this enormity of information, including mis/disinformation in various forms, a main focus for educators and TLs should be the learning/seeking behaviours, habits, and attitudes of students in the digital landscape.
While teaching students to recognise some of the tell-tale signs of mis/disinformation and fake news is helpful, it does not account for the constant adaptations and growing sophistication and refinement in mis/dis messaging. It is a tool in evaluating information, but it does not account for the required information or media literacy.
The behavioural trends in how Australians, old and young, access information are what TLs should first consider in our roles. This means both formal and informal, planned and incidental, interactions students have with digital information. For example, given the vast majority of people are now accessing news via social media, often incidentally, and from a limited few sources, it is incredibly helpful to make students explicitly aware of this behaviour and help them distinguish and create a more sophisticated information seeking self (Park et al.).
This focus on the behaviour of information seeking is seen in civil media literacy, metaliteracy, and contemporary ideas of digital literacy which have a self-reflective component and a community or citizenry focus. Media literacy, the critical engagement with media in areas of life, recognises just how much media contemporary humans, children included, are interacting with (Australian Media Literacy Alliance, 2021).
ACMA and other government agencies have been collecting data on how Australians use the internet and how they engage with media. This must be something TLs and other educators consider as they nurture and guide students in being learners and citizens.
Australian Media Literacy Alliance (2021). Media Literacy Framework. https://medialiteracy.org.au/index.php/framework/
Park, S., Fisher, C., McGuinness, K., Lee, J. Y. and McCallum, K. (2021). Digital News Report: Australia 2021. Canberra: News & Media Research Centre, University of
Canberra.
https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2021-06/apo-nid312650_0.pdf
