Reflection Blog Post #1
In the discussion by Jesse Miller, a recognized Canadian figure with authority on the topics surrounding media literacy, social media education, and digital trends. His focus in his works on media literacy and how people should engage on platforms especially stood out to me as he addressed both the good and the bad of social media, where many proactive concerns to making the internet safer for individuals kickstarted the general belief that the internet is only a space bad people use to target and message children and connecting only in nefarious ways. This belief, however, didn’t take into account the important and well-meaning people on the internet and the valuable connections made by many on social media. Along with the ways the internet has become an essential to everyday life, from school assignments. Finding important information online, and even immortalizing old relics and texts that would have never been known on such a global scale without the use of the internet.
In my own experience with the internet, I remember from a young age in school being taught the dangers of the internet and the ways to stay safe by leaving our names and private information out of what we post and say in online spaces because anyone could find it, along with reinforcing that anything we post online stays online. Meanwhile, some of the best friends I’ve made to this day have been from online spaces.
Furthermore, another concept Miller discussed was misinformation posted online, exacerbated by algorithms employed on social media platforms that target an individual with content chosen based on prior digital interactions, working to reinforce existing belief systems. Having the potential to both cause and reinforce harmful information. This system on social media has caused people to become more skeptical of new things and ideas presented to them, and they are mistrusting of new information if it is from outside of their own belief system, causing further harm and reinforcing misinformation in a place where people neglect to search further than their algorithmically decided content and fact-check their information. As Miller mentions, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us many things in regards to digital identity from the goods of technology, providing better learning opportunities, more health awareness, and better social interaction with these tools. However, misinformation was also prevalent in the digital space at this time, bringing us back to the fact that adults of today who believe what they see online and don’t research further than their own confirmation bias as a larger divide is created, and there is less of a middle ground for us to converge.
A great example for this is brought up by Miller, is how people are terrified of the government doing something bad, but believe the dirt-cheap tickets being sold on Facebook marketplace are real because it’s something they want to believe. This is especially relevant today in a time where you can watch a video and have to question weather the video is real or made by a generative artificial intelligence a prime example of this is a video of bunnies on a backyard trampoline that has been viewed more than 230 million times created to stir debate of wether the video was real or not however as Saliba a chief investigative officer of an AI detection company GetReal warns that these AI generated videos of silly animal videos could be a prelude to waves of AI fakes impersonating real people.
In addition to the reach social media has, from the large role it plays in digital economies and societies, as explained by Davos in a 2019 press conference, citing that more than 50% of the worlds population is using the internet according to the World Bank. This global nature of social media plays a monumental role in peddling misinformation to the masses, this concern is studied and reiterated in more depth by Emily Denniss and Rebecca Lindberg in their (2025) work “Social media and the spread of misinformation: infectious and a threat to public health” which emphasizes the major threat social media poses to society and the impact that misinformation posted on social media has in regards to public health.
Overall, Millers discussion on media literacy opens the gates to further research on the peddling of misinformation on social media that is fortified by algorithms distributing similar content to what an individual has interacted with it, regardless of fact and wether it is harmful information, additionally this discussion asks questions regarding false information becoming slowly intertwined with generative AI highlighting the current need to fact check information you learn on the internet with non biased trustable sources and not blindly trust what you read without some research being required.