Media-savvy kids are vital to democracy
We all need to be news wise during an election campaign.
Democracy depends on informed voters, and to be fully informed, voters depend largely on the media for news and information.
Within the increasingly complex media ecosystem, it is the journalist’s job to provide citizens with fair and accurate information they need to make educated decisions at the ballot box. And it is the citizen’s job to analyze, evaluate and understand the news and commentary presented throughout election campaigns.
Given this imperative, I am pleased to tell you about a vital new program launched in Ontario schools this month to help students — our voters of our future — understand the critical connection between journalism and democracy.
NewsWise, a national news literacy program for students in Grades 5 to 12, was created through a partnership between the Canadian Journalism Foundation (full disclosure: I am a CJF board member) and CIVIX, a national non-profit that works with elementary and high school teachers to promote civic education among students. CIVIX also runs Student Vote, a program that provides opportunities for students to participate in mock elections during provincial and federal election campaigns.
NewWise, funded by a $500,000 grant from Google Canada, has distributed lesson plans to 2,500 Ontario teachers in recent weeks. Still in its pilot phase, the full program will be rolled out in advance of the 2019 federal election.
“NewsWise lessons explore the relationship between journalism and democracy, help students to recognize the standards of fact-based journalism, discern fact from opinion, identify the different types of wrong information that circulate online, and provide tools and strategies for evaluating the credibility of information on the internet,” states a CJF-CIVIX brief about the new program.
We should not make the mistake of believing that the ease with which our children manipulate their iPhones and explore new apps means they understand media or they can discern trustworthy information amid the noise and nonsense of the digital environment.
“There is a perception that ‘digital natives’ already know how to use the internet and everything on it. But there is a significant difference between the ability to use technology intuitively, and the critical skills required to understand how online platforms work, and how to determine what information is worth trusting,” the program brief states.
Clearly, our young people need this information. As the NewWise team points out, a recent Stanford University study of 8,000 middle, high school and college students indicated a consistent failure in such tasks as distinguishing news from advertising, identifying the source of a tweeted fact, or recognizing that a website was created for PR purposes.
Can this new program ultimately make a difference in what’s been called the “democratic deficit” — low levels of voter engagement and turnout at the polls?
Certainly more knowledge about the electoral process and the civic function of journalism is necessary.
As Martin Regg Cohn, the Star’s Ontario columnist, wrote in a recent column about the worsening voter turnout in Ontario and why young people vote less than older citizens: “The democratic deficit flows from a knowledge deficit.”
Cohn cited a Campaign Research poll conducted in March that indicated roughly half of young people aged 18 to 24 feel they don’t have enough information to “make an informed decision when it’s time to vote in a provincial election” — 47 per cent, compared to 41 per cent who do.
Developed in consultation with news leaders throughout Canada and beyond, NewWise aims to help students cultivate — from an early age — news consumption habits that support informed citizenship.
Through videos delivered through a NewWise YouTube channel and hands-on exercises, including learning how to fact-check information and images, NewWise will help students understand how quality journalism is produced and determine which sources of information are reliable
“One of the most pressing issues facing democracies today is the spread of mis- and disinformation,” says Natalie Turvey, CJF’s executive director. “Being able to determine what is fact or fiction online is an essential skill of the digital age.
“NewWise starts in the classroom to equip the next generation of news consumers with the tools and skills they need to be good citizens and to think critically about what they see online.”
This new program makes good sense in a time when the need for media literacy has never been greater. We can all benefit from the knowledge and wisdom it offers.