Screenshot image from Google search
If you’re looking for somewhere online to learn about digital literacy in the 21st century, you have come to the right place.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have identified five basic skills for media and information literacy. They are:
2) Critical thinking
4) Cultural awareness
True Lies aims to guide you through the ropes of each of these basic skills – one blog post, one Facebook update, one video, one image and one Tweet at a time.
So why are the True Lies kicking up all this fuss about the necessity of developing critical thought online? I’ll start by telling a story I’m sure many of you are familiar with. A man one day discovers that since birth, his whole life has been staged as part of a reality television show – including his wife, kids, neighbours, workplace, home and city. He has been watched for his entire life and his every movement is manipulated by a small group of unknown people. He feels panicked, betrayed, lost and frightened.
Yes, I just recounted the plot of (spoiler alert!) The Truman Show. More interesting than this film though – and it’s a very interesting film – is that after The Truman Show was released, it actually inspired psychiatrists to label a new disorder in the real world as the ‘Truman complex’. This is a paranoid perception that everything you think, see, hear, feel or smell is actually staged by the media.
Image from Bright Wall Dark Room
Following on from this paranoid perception, The team at True Lies and I will be using the prevalence of conspiracy theories and their mass followings as an example of the lack of digital literacy online. Enjoy!