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Home , Alternative facts, Truthiness

SHARON A. MURCHIE AND JANET A. NEYER

4. WHAT IS THE STORY?

Reading the Web as Narrative

INTRODUCTION

Jayson was fired up. It was October, a few weeks before the presidential election, and he was much more interested in stirring up conflict than he was in writing about it. “She defended a child rapist! And then she laughed about it!” he claimed. “No, that is not even a thing!” Alisha jumped in. “She was a public defender! She HAD to defend him. That was her job! That’s called defending the public! You don’t get to just choose the good people to defend!” “She laughed that he got off,” Jayson insisted, “and then she laughed that he passed a detector test!” “No, that is not even how that went down!” Alisha was hot, now. “You are so ignorant!” This was my1 teacher cue to jump in, reminding them that the writing prompt on the board was about conflict they experienced in their lives, and this would be a good time to write about it. They clearly had a moment they could describe. And also, I had to add, we could argue ideas in the classroom, but not insult each other. “Fine,” Alisha snapped. ”Your are so ignorant!”

WHAT IS THE STORY? SEARCHING FOR

Heated discussions about “facts” like this one are becoming all too prevalent in our classrooms and in our lives. In a 2016 study by Stanford’s History Education Group, researchers collected 8,000 responses from middle school, high school, and college students, asking them to evaluate online information presented in various platforms. The results were stunning: “Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: bleak” (p. 4). Students who have the world at their fingertips seemingly don’t have the skills to decode that world and determine “facts” from “ignorant facts.” As noted in the introduction to this book, we currently live in a post-truth, world. Our students are steeped in “” and “.” Satirist coined the word “truthiness” in 2005 on and it later became one of Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year in 2006. Defined as “truth coming from the gut, not books; preferring to believe what you wish to believe, rather than what is known to be true” (Wikipedia Contributors, 2017), truthiness

© KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004365360_004 S. A. MURCHIE & J. A. NEYER WHAT IS THE STORY? is grounded in feelings, not evidence. , during a 2017 Meet the or worse, they take ’s results for granted while also dismissing high- Press interview defending the White House’s dubious claims of inauguration crowd quality content from other sites that they have been taught to distrust. (p. 186) size, coined the term “alternative facts” to explain the discrepancy between the Further, boyd stresses that “educators have an important role to play in helping White House’s claims and the actual aerial footage and rapid transit ridership data youth navigate networked publics and the information-rich environments that the from the event. Our students desperately need to develop the critical thinking skills internet supports” (p. 180). Students “must become media literate,” she states. to discern not only evidence-based facts from and feelings-based “When they engage with media…they need to have the skills to ask questions about fiction, but also the many shades of grey that exist in between. Comprehensive the construction and dissemination” of the information they are presented (p. 181). media literacy instruction, that which includes “helping students learn to pick They must be able to “recognize , interpret rhetorical devices, verify and evaluate the best resources for their personal learning networks from print, sources and distinguish legitimate websites from bogus, hate or websites” subscriptions, and free sources” (Hamilton, 2009, p. 5), has to be integrated into (Share et al., 2007, p. 68). regular classroom instruction. Unfortunately, the common approach is often one Many students do not have the media literacy skills needed to “identify the most that sets our students up against the scary enemy that is the media, especially the credible information” (Purcell et al., 2012, p. 3). Responding to a National Writing media online. The Internet is a “vast ocean,” according to the European Association Project survey, “A major challenge teachers cited in teaching effective research for Viewers Interests (2013), and we need a “golden lasso” in our superhero toolkit skills is getting their students to look beyond the first link in the search result list (Quijada, 2013) to “distinguish from fiction, argument from documentation, and to ‘dig’ for high-quality, reliable, and accurate resources” (Purcell et al., 2012, real from fake, and from enlightenment” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 98). This “us p. 3). Part of the issue at hand is that students treat the sources listed by Google as versus the Internet” approach puts us as educators, and our students as consumers, answers to their query; they don’t have a clear understanding of what Google is and on defense from day one. And a defensive mindset is never a foundation for critical how it works. As boyd explains, the same lack of clarity of understanding can be thinking. applied to Wikipedia (2014, p. 186), or to any other online source of information. Hyperbolic metaphors aside, “discerning the validity of data or information can “Instead of looking at information and data as components of knowledge, and then become very complicated when sources go to great lengths to prove that their take understanding, [students] instead treat information in more binary terms: black or on an issue is the best, the most valid or corners the market on truth” (Laue, 2015, white, right or wrong, credible or not credible, good or bad” (Heick, 2014, para. 15). p. 1). The transition from print news to web-based news has created a media petri To make matters more complicated, our natural instinct is to treat the Internet like a dish. As stories ricochet, they propagate; as they propagate, they mutate. As they “deliverer of answers”; we do a quick Google search to quickly answer the questions mutate, we get Pizzagate. we have without considering the validity of the sources we consult or our own filter The Center for Media Literacy explains, the “Internet [is] an international platform bubbles in accepting the answers we want to hear. Likewise, students don’t apply the through which groups and organizations—even individuals—have ready access close reading and analytical skills they have learned in the classroom to their online to powerful tools that can persuade others to a particular point of view, whether reading. Students race through the pages, clicking without fully reading; they don’t positive or negative” (Share, Jolls, & Thoman, 2007, p. 68). Because anyone with truly “see” what the images and iconography are presenting; they skim for answers basic keyboarding skills can publish online, as illustrated by our recent explosion and then quickly move on to the next hyperlink. of fake news stories originating from Macedonia (Subramanian, 2017), evaluating In order for students to be savvy consumers of online content, they need to the veracity of the news is paramount. Teaching students how to read the media and slow down. They need to develop “the skills to question and rationally identify how to determine if their sources are quality is complicated, nuanced, and dynamic; both overt and latent values”; only then will they be “more astute in…decision- students need to develop a skillset of discourse analysis that helps them discern making to accept or reject the overall message” (Share et al., 2007, p. 56). Part of not only the messages present in the written words but also the connotations and the set of analytical skills that students must develop is that of multimodal critical implications present in the iconography on the page. discourse analysis; that is, looking closely at how “images, photographs, diagrams In her 2014 book It’s complicated: the social lives of networked teens, danah and graphics also work to create meaning” and understanding that “texts will use boyd states: linguistics and visual strategies that appear normal or neutral on the surface, but Given the lack of formal gatekeepers and the diversity of content and authors, which may in fact be ideological and seek to shape the representation of events and it’s often hard to determine credibility online. Because youth do not learn to persons for particular ends” (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 9). Salisbury et al. (2012) critically assess the quality of information they access, they simply look for argue that these skills “associated with research that lead to information seeking new intermediaries who can help them determine what’s valuable. For better behaviour characterised by a high degree of discernment and scholarship…can be

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