1) The document discusses taking a contextual approach to news literacy that focuses on teaching students about media systems and institutions, not just analyzing the content of news stories. 2) Knowing how the news media system works helps people better interpret news messages and be more accurate interpreters rather than partisan. 3) Teaching about topics like campaign finance, the history of media regulations, and comparative international media systems can help students understand the broader context around news production.

1. The contextual approach to news literacy
Facilitating engagement by learning about media systems and institutions
Seth Ashley and Stephanie Craft NAMLE 2017

2. “It's amazing that the amount of
news that happens in the world
every day always just exactly fits the
newspaper.”
–Jerry Seinfeld

3. News Literacy So Far
• Fact-checking
• Spotting hoaxes
• Identifying bias
• Fighting fake news
• Authoritative sources

6. A Spectrum of “Fake News”
• Satire/Hoax
– Aims to entertain and provide commentary
• Misinformation
– Aims to inform but mistakes were made
• Conspiracy Theory
– Aims to explain real events with false information
• Propaganda
– Aims to persuade with selective facts
• Disinformation
– Aims to deceive, confuse and mislead

7. Fake news?

8. Fake news?

9. Fake news?

10. Fake news?

11. Fake news?

12. Fake news?

13. Fake news?

14. Fake news?

15. Fake news?

16. Fake news?

17. “Fake News”
+
Decline of Journalism
+
Internet Economics
+
Human Psychology
+
Uncritical Public
_____________________________
Disaster for Democracy

18. Media Literacy
• All media messages are constructed
representations
• Media use different codes and conventions
• People interpret messages differently
• Messages have economic and political power
• Messages influence attitudes and behaviors
• Media affect the democratic process

19. News Media Literacy Defined
“Audiences can be better equipped to access,
evaluate, analyze, and create news media
products if they have a more complete
understanding of the conditions in which news
is produced.”
--Ashley, Maksl & Craft, 2013

20. What is NEWS media literacy?
News
literate
Knowledge
about news
media system
In control of
news media
influence
Mindful
thought-
processing

21. News Media Literacy
• News media system knowledge
– Do journalists need licenses?
– Does news over- or under-represent minorities?
– Do people think news has a greater effect on others?
• Media locus of control
– I am in control of the information I get from the news
media.
– When I am misinformed by the news media, I am to blame.
• Need for cognition
– I don’t like to have to do a lot of thinking.
– I prefer complex to simple problems.

22. Our Findings: Knowledge Matters
• Lower likelihood of endorsing conspiracy theories
• Greater likelihood of political participation
• Greater knowledge of current events
• Greater internal political efficacy

23. What it Means
• Knowing how the news media system works
makes you a better interpreter of its messages
• Knowledge can help overcome partisan or
directional interpretations
• We need to be thinking about how to orient
news consumers to accuracy, not directional,
goals (see Kunda, 1990)

24. Ideas for teaching about systems and
institutions
• Horse race coverage of elections and “free media”
• Filter bubbles
• The net neutrality debate
• Verizon legal memo
• Internet economics
• Comparative cross-national study
• Campaign finance and free speech
• Sponsored content and regulation of advertising
• History of broadcasting
• Iraq war case study

26. Decline of Journalism
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn
good for CBS.”
--CBS Chairman Les Moonves

33. How did we get here?

34. Path dependence

35. “We are indeed today upon the threshold of a new
means of widespread communication of intelligence
that has the most profound importance from the
point of view of public education and public
welfare.”
–Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, 1922

36. What we got

37. Critical Apathy
• Even when we are armed with critical
consumption habits, we are still
fundamentally consumers, powerless to affect
change.
• The “savvy viewer is not duped but instead
analyses and understands – often endlessly so
– but sees no way in which things could be
different” (Teurlings 2010, p368).

38. The struggle over media literacy
“Media literacy should be about helping people
to become sophisticated citizens rather than
sophisticated consumers…. Media education
should certainly teach students to engage media
texts, but it should also, in our view, teach them
to engage and challenge media institutions.”
--Lewis and Jhally 1998, p109

39. The struggle over media literacy
“We are advocating a view that recognizes that
the world is always made by someone, and a
decision to tolerate the status quo is as political
as a more overtly radical act.”
--Lewis and Jhally 1998, p119

40. Recommendations and Questions
• Teach analysis of content AND context
• Focus on knowledge about systems and
institutions
• Examine how media constructs the social world
• What works in your classrooms?
• How do you define news literacy?
• Is NL any different from media literacy?

41. For Further Reading
• Ashley, S. (2016). The struggle over news literacy: Can we
include political economic contexts in the emerging field of
news literacy? Journalism Education 5(1), 24-34.
• Ashley, S., Maksl, A., & Craft, S. (In press). News media
literacy and political engagement: What’s the connection?
Journal of Media Literacy Education.
• Craft, S., Ashley, S., & Maksl, A. (Accepted). News media
literacy and conspiracy theory endorsement.
Communication and the Public.
• Maksl, A., Ashley, S. & Craft, S. (2015). Measuring news
media literacy. Journal of Media Literacy Education 6(3), 29-
45.

42. Questions?
• Seth Ashley
– Boise State University
– sethashley@boisestate.edu
– @sethdashley
• Stephanie Craft
– University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
– scraft@illinois.edu

43. The contextual approach to news literacy
Facilitating engagement by learning about media systems and institutions
Seth Ashley and Stephanie Craft NAMLE 2017