Media Literacy Archive
02 Mar 2022
Improve Your Arguments: Russo-Ukrainian War Edition
TLDRUpFront: As we approach the first full week the InfoMullet provides a special "improve your arguments" Russu-Ukranian War edition.
19 Jan 2021
The Paradox of Popper’s Paradox
TLDRUpFront: In this "Improve Your Argument" post we cover everything everyone gets wrong by quoting Popper's Paradox of Tolerance.
21 May 2020
MediaLiteracy: Marking-Up a Misleading Meme on School Guidance from the CDC
TLDRUpFront: Red lines are located under any statement in this meme that is false, misleading, or missing key context such as "if feasible" or "where possible." A link to the actual CDC Guidance page this meme was created from is included below.
02 Mar 2020
InfoMullet: Adjusting our Mental-Model of COVID-19
TLDRUpFront: A growing fear in the United States is that COVID-19 may kill millions. This fear is based on an incomplete mental-model of how viruses work fed by COVID-19 reporting that highlights facts in isolation from context and triggering our cognitive biases in how we evaluate risk. This InfoMullet provides a mental model for understanding
24 Aug 2017
Media Literacy: Spotting Suspect Surveys
Media Literacy: It's not enough to be able to spot click-bait websites or suspect headlines. Understanding what makes an opinion poll suspect is just as important. But that doesn't mean to ignore all statistics out-of-hand. FiveThirtyEight has put together a guide for spotting shoddy work that doesn't require an advanced degree in math. It requires
29 Jan 2017
Media Literacy: Play Niche With Others
Media Literacy: A guide to niche-source news sites and how to evaluate them. For absolutely no reason whatsoever...the focus of this post is on niche sites covering government and government-related news.
20 Oct 2014
Media Literacy: Osama bin Laden not pictured
TLDRUpFront: A commonly circulated photo purports to show a young Osama bin Laden vacationing in Sweden. By digging into the provenance and biographical details disputing this claim we learn more about him, about media literacy, and crayons.
02 Mar 2014
HistoricalMullet: Tracking Ukrainian Crisis in Live Time with Wikipedia
TLDRUpFront: Media literacy in tracking the Russian-Ukranian War in live time.