Module 5: Digital Consumption

This marks the final module of the Digital Literacy Lab for Educators course and arguably the most important given the challenging online information landscape now regularly highlighted by world events. Here, Dr Emma Pauncefort digs deep into what it means to consume critically online. Unlike other surveys and practical guides (often offered under the umbrella of ‘media’ or ‘news literacy’), she hones in on the role each of us play in meaning making across all manner of online content. In other words, this module is as much about developing awareness of how others behave online as it is about deep self-reflection and self-searching to unearth our individual cultural conditioning and baggage, or simply put, our bias.

Watch the DLLE Module 5 Videos

This video establishes awareness of our perceptions as the essential basis for the critical consumption model (a method to help us consume content online critically) and a digital heuristics tool (that is, quick-fire ways to discover meaningful ideas for ourselves).

No discussion of online content would be complete without reference to filter bubbles and echo chambers. But what do they mean and why should we care? Here, Dr Emma Pauncefort draws on the work of Eli Pariser and Dr Richard Fletcher to pinpoint the difference (think automated vs human-driven) and to bring to the fore how ‘self-selected personalisation’ and ‘pre-selected personalisation’ can each play an extensive role in dictating what we consume.

 

Additional Videos in Module 5

• A Critical Consumption Model and Digital Heuristics (Pt. 1) foregrounds Dr Emma Pauncefort’s suggested method by insisting that 1) we think more expansively about what online/digital content comprises and 2) we see critical consumption of it as deriving from a mindset, that is, a process heavily reliant on our approach and steps, rather than governed by others.
• A Critical Consumption Model and Digital Heuristics (Pt. 2) exhorts us to stay strong in the face of continual encouragement to consume content quickly and urges us to make peace with the idea that we will never be able to consume everything we want to.
• Content Moderation examines the challenges of content moderation and labels, both by man and machine.
• A Critical Consumption Model and Digital Heuristics (Pt. 3) discusses how the very human ability to empathize should drive every single interaction we have online (and indeed offline!), or, in other words, be our final stop in our critical consumption process.

Further Study Content

• The Filter Bubble – What the Internet is Hiding From You, Farnham Street, 2020.
• France passes new law to protect child influencers, BBC, 2020.
• The Slow Media Manifesto, 2010.
• The End of the American Internet, Benedict Evans, 2020.
• Mapping Makoko: A Community Stating its Right to Exist, Jacopo Ottaviani, 2020.
• Political Ads on Social Media: Selling the Truth, 2020.
• The Battle against Misinformation, Wakelet Collection.
• Becoming Responsible Digital Consumers, Wakelet Collection.