Today’s social media environment has changed. Social media becomes a part
of the daily life for a large portion of people. Online social networking, shopping,
posting and sharing becomes more and more popular. Like me, as an example,
when I wake up everyday, I check my emails. I log in QQ which is a popular
online networking tool in China. I read news online and share my opinions.
I like to post pictures I took online and see others’ feedback. Recently, I created
a prezi project for my information literacy course. Social media is a part of my
daily life and I enjoy it.
Moreover, today’s social media technologies allows storytelling to have more
formats which expresses people’s ideas more clearly. For me, the based format
of storytelling is dictation. It requires people to have face-to-face conversations, but today, people can use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
to tell stories without face-to-face connections and it is called digital storytelling.
Also people use pictures, videos and short sentences which may not be a
complete story in traditional senses. In the information literacy course, the
professor required us to create blogs which allow us to tell our stories about
metaliteracy through blogs. This is also a form of storytelling.
However, the problems come in. There is too much information in today’s
social media environment and the information was spread too quickly.
Truth mixes with fakes; facts mix with opinions. For instance, the professor
showed DMV.org which is a website that provide driver related information
and services. This website is run by private company but it is very similar to
DMV.gov website which is run by motor vehicle department. I also found
a website that is about an organization called Ova Prima Foundation. It looks
very academic but in fact, this is a fake website. There are many websites like
these two on the internet. People need to have abilities to distinguish true
information from wrong information which is the media and news literacy.
Media and news literacy helps people to distinguish information on the internet
and become critical thinkers. It encourages citizen journalism which everyone
can be a journalist to report what he or she discover daily through online tools.
Media and news literacy helps people to be informal and participated citizens.
Finally, Sue Thomas discovers the ‘innate attraction to life and lifelike processes
as they appear in technology’which defined by biologist E.O. Wilson. Social media
becomes a portion of our daily life, but we cannot only have online life but not
real life. Technobiophilia is a way to combine machines with the nature which find
a way to balance and integral our relationship with the machines and with the
nature (Sue Thomas).Also, information literacy is a lifelong learning and research
method which technobiophilia can help balance and keep track of the digital
well-being–doing our own good.
#metaliteracy
