Journal Article

HEURISTICS: An Approach to Evaluating News Obtained through Social Media

Ewbank, Ann Dutton, Johnson, Spencer T

2018

Overview

The increasing ubiquity of social media is fundamentally changing the way we access and interpret current events and news. The era of the print newspaper, evening news on only three television channels, and the radio as a popular go-to source for breaking news is in decline. In this new era of information abundancy, we have added unlimited news sources--cable news channels, blogs, and news found on social media. According to Elisa Shearer and Jeffrey Gottfried, two-thirds of Americans now read some portion of the news on their social media feeds such as Facebook and Twitter (2017). The context in which teens come across news every day has changed. One can reasonably infer that teens are obtaining much of their information about current events on their smartphones. Little evidence has been found to suggest that students are being explicitly taught how to evaluate news obtained through social media.

• Publisher: American Library Association,American Association of School Librarians
• Subject: Adolescents / Blogs / Credibility / Cues / Current events / Decision Making / Educational aspects / Evaluation Methods / Evaluators / Evidence / Government (Administrative Body) / Heuristic / Heuristics / Information Sources / Librarians / Library Instruction / Library Personnel / Mass media / Motivation / News Media / Practice / Prior Learning / Radio / Reputation / School librarians / School Libraries / Secondary School Students / Smartphones / Social Media / Social networks / Student Evaluation / Teaching / Teaching Methods / Teenagers / Television