Procrastinated Re-posts

Global Digital Citizen Foundation

Yesterday, I said I was going to find some people that are doing real valuable work...and I did start that post, but in the process of searching, I realized I needed to slow down and evaluate what I was looking at, because I was going too fast and risked following folks who were peddling misinformation that fed into my existing beliefs and biases. 

One thing that I'm guilty of, and that I know others are too, is seeing an inflammatory or scary or interesting post on X-itter (formerly Twitter, pronounced "shitter," by the way), Bluesky, Mastodon, TikTok, Instagram, etc., and re-posting it without thinking. I'm going to start doing a simple checklist. I've had a printed copy of this graphic tucked in one of my backpacks for so long that it's started to fall apart along the fold lines, but I've gotten out of the habit of using it on the regular. 

Media literacy is maybe the most important thing that we need to be teaching in schools, but it won't amount to much if we let public education erode any more than it already has. A lot of that can be controlled in local elections with school boards. So, local matters and that's important to cling to when most of our news is about big national drama. 

Anyway, Crash Course has a pair of YouTube series about navigating digital information and media literacy that are worth watching in their entirety. The videos are about 15 minutes long so it's pretty easy to get through. I'm going to watch them both again, because there's going to be a lot of misinformation coming at us in the next few years and we need to be prepared to evaluate everything, including things we agree with or think are probably true. 

All of this said, I'm going to be quiet over the weekend, and absorb some books and continue to gather people to follow. I'll do my best to follow my own guidelines about it. 

Take care of your family, found or otherwise, and be kind to your neighbor, always.