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Tips on Mitigating Misinformation & News Avoidance

October 6, 2022October 7, 2022 by admin

This project aims at offering tips about tackling one aspect of misinformation by using an infographic and Instagram posts. Specifically, this project will show how news avoidance feeds off of misinformation.

Infographic:

Instagram Posts:

Who did I target?

I choose to target people who tend to avoid the news.

I found myself struggling in this category, and wanted to help others to feel more confident in their digital literacy skills. After understanding misinformation better, I don’t feel as timid when I watch or read the news. In my research, “news avoidance” is the correct term used to describe people’s actions when they avoid the news. It refers to resisting the news. A journal written by Morten Skovsgaard explains that there are actually two different types of news avoidance: “intentional and unintentional—depending on the underlying causes leading people to tune out.” However, some people avoid it more intentionally than others. With the different types of avoidance, there comes different solutions to address each problem.

“To engage intentional news avoiders, the news selection and news presentation must be changed. To engage unintentional news avoiders, the opportunity structures provided in the media system must be more favorable towards inadvertent news exposure.”
MORTEN SKOVSGAARD

Why this form of media?

I chose an infographic because it was the best option to get out the information in a short, yet concise way. It also gave me multiple opportunities for it to be shared to social media in order to reach a broader audience.

Additionally, I used the same information from the infographic to compose an Instagram post in order to create even more awareness. This way, I can post it on my feed, which then allows others to repost it to their story. This was done in hopes of spreading awareness on the topic of misinformation in our society. I used Canva to create both the infographic and images.

Correlation between News Avoidance and Misinformation

Misinformation has been around for a long time, but lately, it has been on the rise.

“Misinformation is not like a plumbing problem you fix. It is a social condition, like crime, that you must constantly monitor and adjust to.”
TOM ROSENSTIEL

News avoidance has been around for awhile, but within the last five years, the rate for news avoidance has gone from 29% to 38%. There are endless reasons as to why this is the case, but some are at the forefront of the issue. One of the top reasons is that news has a negative effect on the consumer’s mood. Additionally, many state that the news focuses too much on politics and Covid-19. According to this graphic (image below), the second reason people avoid the news is because they feel like they can’t rely on it to be true.

Correlation?

So you may ask yourself, what is the correlation between the two? News avoidance only happens because misinformation is circulating in our media and the consumers don’t know how to mitigate it. The more misinformation that spreads, the more lies people believe. The less people trust the media and the less people watch the news. The pros of being informed far outweigh the cons of not knowing what is going on around you.

Conclusion

Avoiding the news will not help misinformation, and misinformation will not stop news avoidance. We as people in the society need to take action and begin to fight back against misinformation. We cannot let it scare us. We must come together to share our knowledge and learn how to read and decipher misinformation. Once you realize you can get better at detecting misinformation, bias, and disinformation, you understand that it isn’t as scary as it seems. News becomes less anxiety inducing and you become empowered to understand. News becomes less overwhelming, and you become more informed.

Let us not let the vast flow of information scare us, but take the tools we have and use them to create a better information ecosystem.