Digital Survival Skills Module 1: My Media Environment

Task 6: My Media Environment - Revisited

Students go back to their My Media Environment assignment to reflect on their media environments through the lens of their new knowledge and suggestions from John Green.

Materials: My Media Environment – Revisited

1. Review: In this module we learned about how humans naturally create “filter bubbles” or information environments full of people and ideas they like and agree with. We also learned how social media platforms can push us toward more extreme and outrageous content, since people often engage with that kind of content because it causes an emotional response.

2. Students look at their My Media Environment one-pager through the lens of what they’ve learned about filter bubbles, confirmation bias, and social media algorithms. They follow the My Media Environment – Revisited directions to add another page/slide to their original assignment that addresses the following questions (They can address all questions or choose the four that are most relevant to them):

Engagement:

  • What percentage of posts on your feed (roughly) elicit strong positive or negative emotions?
  • Would you classify anything in your feed as extreme, hard core, radical, or incendiary?

Filter Bubbles / Confirmation Bias:

  • Are you following people and pages that have different viewpoints and perspectives than you do, or do most share your point of view on controversial issues?
  • Choose a few posts on your feed that present ideas that you strongly agree or disagree with. Think about why you agree/disagree with them. Is your agreement/disagreement based on evidence from both sides, or the fact that the idea does or doesn’t align with your worldview (though you don’t actually know much about it)?

Going forward:

  • Does your preferred social media platform allow you to turn off the “best” or “top” posts feature so they display information to you in a more neutral way? Have you used this feature already or will you use it in the future? Why or why not?
  • If you wanted to get more diverse viewpoints, what credible sources could you go to or follow? Do you know of any?
  • How has what you’ve learned in this module changed the way you think about social media?