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When Expectations Shape What We Think We See

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EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Jane T D. via Pexels · Pexels License Two people can encounter the same evidence and construct different explanations. Understanding that difference requires attention to what they saw, what they expected and what the material actually established. I magine watching a short interview after being told that the speaker is highly experienced. A hesitant answer might seem thoughtful. Now imagine encountering the same footage after being told that the person is poorly prepared. The hesitation might appear to confirm a lack of competence. Neither interpretation necessarily follows from the pause alone. Yet the information supplied before a recording can influence which details seem important afterwards. This raises a question central to media and communication: when we believe a recording confirms an explanation, how much of that explanation did we bring to the recording ourselve...
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Beyond the Headline: How We Decide What to Believe

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EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Lisa Fotios via Pexels · Pexels License Seeing, sharing and believing are different activities. Understanding their relationship helps explain why information can circulate widely without becoming reliable knowledge. S omeone shares a sensational headline on social media. It receives hundreds of reactions, travels through several group chats and eventually appears in a discussion about public policy. What does this tell us? We know the message circulated. We cannot conclude that everyone who shared it believed it, understood its evidence or intended to persuade others. A person may forward an article to question it, express concern, entertain friends or signal membership of a group. Communication behaviour does not have a single meaning. This is where epistemic communication becomes useful as an analytical perspective: it asks how claims move between people, what gives them...
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Location: Australia
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Understanding Literacy in a Connected Information World

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EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Beyzanur K. via Pexels · Pexels License Media literacy, information literacy and digital literacy illuminate different aspects of the same activity. Their boundaries overlap, especially when information becomes communication between people, within relationships and across institutions. A news article appears in a group chat. Someone questions its headline, another searches for the original data, and a third explains how to adjust the privacy settings before sharing a screenshot. Are they practising media literacy, information literacy or digital literacy? All three, probably. The distinction is useful, provided we treat the terms as perspectives rather than competing territories. Their origins and frameworks differ, but modern communication rarely arrives neatly divided into separate categories. An article is a message, evidence is something to examine, and a platform is an environment in which people interact. Three...
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Location: Australia
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Media Literacy Is Not a Fact-Checking Trick

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EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Plann via Pexels · Pexels License Media literacy helps us judge questionable information, but it does not begin or end with detecting falsehoods. It also concerns how we gain access, evaluate what we encounter, use it responsibly, create our own content and communicate with others. A suspicious headline appears in a social feed. Checking the source, opening the article and looking for evidence are useful media-literacy moves. But what happened before that moment? Could the person access better information? What will they do with what they learn? What happens if they repost, remix or explain it to someone else? Those questions widen the frame. UNESCO describes media and information literacy (MIL) as a set of knowledge, skills and attitudes that includes access, evaluation or assessment, use, production and communication . The Australian ...
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Location: Australia
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A Message Is Only One Part of Communication

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EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Artem Podrez via Pexels · Pexels License Communication is not only information moving from sender to receiver. Meaning also develops through interaction, relationships and the contexts in which people meet. “ Can we talk?” is only three words, but the message surely is not finished when the sentence is spoken. Said by a friend, a manager or a stranger online, it arrives with different expectations. Tone, history, relationship and setting matter. That is why communication is more than sending messages. Human communication involves people interpreting one another within relationships, roles, norms and environments that shape what can be said, heard and done. Communication as a layered interaction The message matters, but it is only one part of the communication event. ...
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Location: Australia
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From Individuals to Media Systems: How Communication Really Works

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EXPLAINER @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia Photo: Caleb Oquendo via Pexels · Pexels License A communication outcome can begin in a person, travel through a group, be shaped by an institution and be amplified by a media system. M essages rarely move from sender to audience in a straight line. A short video may be noticed because one person finds it striking, shared because friends are discussing it, packaged according to an organisation's priorities, and amplified by a platform whose recommendation system makes it more visible. Looking only at the person, group, institution or system would capture something real. None would capture the whole process. That is the value of levels of analysis . A 2026 review identified 287 articles using multilevel modelling in communication journals between 1990 and 2024, with studies spanning increasingly diverse subfields. There is no single...
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Location: Australia
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