Danah Boyd’s article ‘Did Media Literacy Backfire?‘ discusses how basic media literacy requires understanding the credibility of your sources. Brian emphasises this statement in the week 9 lectorial by explaining that ‘academic research’ needs to take place. This is where annotated bibliographies come in to hand so that one is able to create credible and quality content.
Boyd discusses an experience of her own when chatting to a teen girl and discovering that this girl was completely misinformed about sex, pregnancy and diseases. She and her friend had googled about all of this, clearly due to it not being explained to them in school or by their parents. The websites in which they gained information had been ‘backed up’, and they believed all of it.
By not understanding the reliability and credibility of the sites they were looking at, these girls were completely misinformed. This is reinforced by Brian’s statement that ‘talking to people is good but needs to be complemented by reading/research’ – credible reading and research, that is. These mishaps are evident in may other cases, especially when looking at news sites and ‘FAKE NEWS!’ (refer to Trump meme). There are renowned sites for being credible, such as: The Age, The Sun, The New York Times, etc. While many others need checking in legitimacy before using them as a source of factual information.
This is where evaluating your sources comes into place. Annotated bibliographies are great for assessing the content and credibility of your source. It involves discussing the implicit and explicit meaning of the source, while doing research on the website/article/author to understand how valuable and credible it is to your argument.
I have found that when writing essays or creating informative content, annotated bibliographies really assist to structure my work and make sure that it is quality. They work to back up my arguments, as I understand what sites, authors and articles are able to be cited. Even when debating with my brothers or friends, I find it important to know where I got my information from so that I’m not misinforming other people and am able to completely obliterate anything they argue back with (because I always need to be correct).
Overall, understanding the credibility of your sources is a basic and valuable tool in media literacy. Writing annotated bibliographies on my sources will help to provide quality and plausibility to my work in Project Brief 4. Getting into the habit of understanding the credibility of the sources I read and use will assist in creating content throughout my media career. It will also assure that the information in which I consume and produce is factual and realistic.