Information and journalism in times of TikTok – 06/22/2023 – Education

More than 20 years have gone by since the American researcher Marc Prensky coined the expression “digital natives” to refer to the generation of children born after the gigantic revolution brought about by the internet. “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our education system was designed for,” he wrote in the famous 2001 article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”.

For him, the interaction with new digital technologies already led children and young people to process information in a fundamentally different way from their predecessors. “Games on computers, e-mail, internet, cell phones and instant messaging are an integral part of their lives”, noted Prensky, citing a set of innovations that, since then, has only been expanding.

These children grew up and, as young adults, also developed new habits towards journalism — adding new items to the list of challenges facing the press. Younger generations, who grew up with social networks, “usually pay more attention to influencers or celebrities than to journalists, even when it comes to news”, shows the 2023 edition of the Digital News Report, a broad survey carried out annually by Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford.

“Perhaps the most striking finding from this year’s report relates to the changing nature of social media, characterized in part by the decline in engagement on traditional networks like Facebook and the rise of TikTok and other video-based networks,” the research highlights. “Despite this growing channel fragmentation, and despite evidence that public disinformation and algorithmic unease is at near-record levels, reliance on these intermediaries continues to grow.”

Only 22% of the population interviewed declared a preference for seeking news on journalistic websites or applications, which represents a drop of 10 percentage points since 2018. Younger groups, in particular, prefer to access information through intermediaries such as social networking platforms, websites search engines and aggregators.

This withdrawal of professional press vehicles is nothing new, but it is always worrying. Another important data from the report shows a reduction of two percentage points in confidence in journalism – which in many countries canceled out the gains in this indicator recorded in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. On average, four out of ten people surveyed say they trust the news most of the time.

Finland remains the country with the highest trust index (69%). It is no coincidence that it is also a world highlight when we talk about media education. When education for information is understood as a priority and practiced in schools from the earliest years, the result is a better understanding that journalists, although they are also subject to errors, need to follow a series of precautions before publishing something.

The journalistic method foresees a careful work of investigation, search for evidence and verification; in addition, the authorship of a text, audio or video produced by the professional press is identifiable and, in the case of abuse, subject to legal action. The situation is very different with posts or messages that are often shared on social networks or applications without identifying sources or without transparency about the process of obtaining the information presented there as a fact.

These are reflections that fit very well in the classroom. The National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) provides, throughout basic education, the development of a series of skills that will allow knowledge and appreciation of journalism as one of the pillars of democracy.

Daniela Machado is the coordinator of EducaMídia, a media education program at Instituto Palavra Aberta