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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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The Wizard of Mar-a-Lago: The Social Psychology of Performed Political Strength

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@jorgebscomm for @empowermedia   The Wizard of Oz (1939)                                                        [Image:  Flickr ] W hat makes a political leader look powerful? Is strength something a leader possesses, or something a society collectively agrees to see? In a recent interview with journalist Nicolle Wallace , historian and Professor Timothy Snyder offered a striking interpretation of Donald Trump's political persona: "He lives entirely by the strength that is conferred upon him by people who believe the story", Dr. Snyder told Wallace. "It's like the end of the Wizard of Oz . In a moment you realise — wait a minute, there actually isn't anything there". Taken psychologically, this argument is less about Trump's private personality than about a fundamental feature of social power: power is partly relational . A leader may ...
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Location: Australia
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When Democracy Breaks: A Critical Media Psychology Analysis of January 6 and January 8

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@jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia T wo acts of political violence. Two of the world's largest democracies. Two years and two days apart . On January 6, 2021 , supporters of Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol. On January 8, 2023 , supporters of Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Presidential Palace, the National Congress, and the Supreme Federal Court in Brasília — simultaneously, and live on social media. These were not coincidences of the calendar. A new paper from EMPOWERVERSE  titled Democratic Rupture and Media Psychology: A Critical Comparative Analysis of the January 6, 2021 US Capitol Insurrection and the January 8, 2023 Brazilian Federal Buildings Attack , argues that they were locally embedded expressions of the same structural moment: one in which social media affordances , political disinformation, and authoritarian populist leadership converge to make anti-democratic collective violence not just possible, but psychologically foreseeable. "Democrac...
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Location: Australia
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