How do notable individuals use social media?
Social media platforms provide a convenient way for notable individuals to promote their projects, books, speaking engagements, or events. They can reach a wide audience and generate interest and attendance for their initiatives.
What are the benefits of being in the public eye and having a PLN?
A personal learning network allows for collaboration and sharing of resources among individuals with similar interests or professional goals. It provides a supportive environment where notable individuals can seek advice, share experiences, and find mentors or mentees.
Building a community with online tools provided by the employer can be limiting, what are the perceived restrictions and benefits?
An employer-provided online tool may focus primarily on work-related topics, which can limit the scope of discussions and interactions. It may not provide a platform for broader personal interests or diverse professional areas. However, because of narrow focus, employees are able to concentrate on tasks which relate to work.
Delivering information in a connected society requires verifiable resources, how to build a PLN to rely on?
Whenever people come across new information, particularly if it seems controversial or too good to be true, take the time to fact-check it using trusted sources or fact-checking organizations.
How do those, who are veteran storytellers, minimize the risk of sharing misinformation?
They conduct extensive research and fact-checking before presenting information. This involves verifying sources, cross-referencing information, and seeking multiple perspectives to ensure accuracy.
What is media literacy?
Media literacy refers to the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and critically interpret media content in all its forms, including traditional and digital media (Butler, 2020). It involves understanding how media is produced, constructed, and distributed, as well as recognizing its influence and effects on individuals and society.
Why is it important?
Media literacy develops critical thinking skills, enabling individuals to question, analyze, and evaluate the information they encounter. It helps them distinguish between fact and opinion, identify bias or manipulation, and make informed judgments.
Why is it potentially dismissed as valuable (fake news)?
Fake news typically originates from unreliable or dubious sources. It may lack proper verification, evidence, or journalistic integrity. When people perceive news as lacking credibility, they are more likely to dismiss it as being valuable.
Why should you aim for varied views but a real consensus in your PLN?
Exposing yourself to varied views within your PLN broadens your perspective and helps you consider different angles of a topic. It promotes critical thinking, challenges biases, and fosters a more inclusive and well-rounded understanding of issues.
Reference
Butler, A. (2020). Educating media literacy : the need for critical media literacy in teacher education. Brill Sense.
June 17, 2023 at 5:57 pm
Hi, Rick. I agree with you about the limitations and benefits that people would have in their employer’s PLN. The comments we post on employer’s PLN are based on relevant topics posted by employers. For example, under the related topic ‘what color do you like’, most of our discussions are about colors. At this time, we cannot discuss topics related to such us mobile phone brands. However, it’s social networking sites with professional topics that have made some well-known PLNs, and we can swim in countless PLNs. We can explore the topics we are interested in from the topics provided by different PLNs, and clicking on these topics will automatically bring us into these interesting PLNs.
June 17, 2023 at 8:39 pm
Hi Xinrong, thanks for your taking time to read my blog. I can’t agree your point anymore. Just like you mentioned, PLNs help users focus on field which they are interested in.
June 19, 2023 at 7:22 pm
Hi Rick!
I agree with your point about the employer-provided online tool, and how it can limit interactions and limit to only be work-related. I wonder if the solution would be for employers to have two platforms say. One for work-related online tools and another that is recommended for employees to connect outside the work content and that wouldn’t be affiliated with the workplace.
June 19, 2023 at 11:15 pm
Hello Rick, this is an amazing blog about media literacy. I totally agree with you that a public figure or person in a position of trust can popularize their opinions or proposals that are conforming to the public and widen their audience and followers. However, I also believe that on the other side, as media increase the transparency of information, negative news about them are easier to be spread, and this may reduce their reliability and trust to the public and then cause lost of supporters. I also agree that media literacy is really important because there are lots of fake news or misleading information on social media and this requires public audience to filter out unreliable information and sort out the full aspects of the events. This also has benefits for developing critical thinking skills and reduce personal bias.