May 7 marks the first-ever Misinfo Day California. The event provides over ninety students from six Monterey County high schools — Marina High School, Monterey High School, Alisal High School, Everett Alvarez High School, Rancho San Juan High School and York School — with a crash course in how to avoid misinformation online.
A group of local journalists and educators organized the event, inspired in part by the University of Washington’s annual Misinfo Day for high schoolers and a new state law authored by Assemblymember Marc Berman (CA-23) of Menlo Park requiring schools to incorporate media literacy into their curricula.
“We need to do a better job of educating our society to be more critical thinkers when it comes to all of the information that they're bombarded with on a minute-by-minute basis, on social media or on the Internet,” Berman said.
Monterey-area journalist Susan Meister is behind organizing of Misinfo Day California, and said it’s the product of close work with UW’s Center for an Informed Public.
“Definitely look for public events during National Media Literacy Week, Oct. 21-25,” she shared via email.
Meister and Berman are both part of a coalition that intends to continue spreading the word about the importance of media literacy for all age groups. KAZU’s Janelle Salanga spoke with Berman about why these events are so crucial in an election year.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Janelle Salanga: Misinfo Day is an event that comes in the wake of the passage of legislation you authored last year, Assembly Bill 873. And so tell me a little bit about why it was important for you to kind of shepherd that through the legislative halls.
Marc Berman: I chaired the Elections Committee for my first five years in the assembly. And I saw a lot of instances, too many instances, where misinformation online was leading to real world kind of impacts that were really negatively impacting our communities and our country, I believe.
And, you know, some examples of that would be the the January 6 … attack on our nation's capital or an attack on our democracy that really was started by a lot of the “Stop the Steal” sort of misinformation, and conspiracy theories, and just lies that were being spread by people and that other people were really believing.
Another example would be misinformation around the COVID vaccine, and … vaccine misinformation and disinformation that would stop people from getting vaccines, and that would directly lead to negative impacts on their health or even death.
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That was what led to AB 873, which integrates media literacy into the four core subject areas in school in California: English, math, science and social history, social studies.
JS: With the general election around the corner … what role does informing students, especially those who are set to turn 18 before the election, about media literacy — how does that, you know, tie into civic participation?
MB: Yeah, we know that bad actors are going to try to use misinformation campaigns to influence our elections. We saw that in 2016. We've seen that in every election since then.
… Especially with the increasing use of artificial intelligence, you know, it can be a lot easier to create content that makes it look like candidates or elected officials said or did something that they did not say or do. And so, it's really important for us to educate young people to be more critical, when they see this type of content and think, ‘Wait a second, you know, why is somebody posting that? What are they trying to accomplish?’ Do their own research to determine, you know, whether or not the claims that are being said are accurate or not.
JS: What does it mean to have an event like this, you know, for K-12 students, and how are you feeling seeing that this legislation is sort of leading to this broader conversation, broader action around K-12 education for media literacy?
MB: I love it. I love it. … Having organizations sort of take it on themselves to train students around misinformation is so helpful. It's, it's so important, and I think it'll create a lot of chatter. People will talk about it. People will, you know, students will talk about it with their, their parents.
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Hopefully, this gets more people to sort of realize, wait a second, there's a lot of, there's a lot of misinformation out there. And maybe we all need to do a little bit better job of, being more aware of that, being more skeptical of all of the stuff that we're, we're inundated with online and on social media platforms. So I think Misinfo Day is fantastic.
JS: To close … what future areas of media literacy are you hoping … subsequent Misinfo Days will expand upon?
MB: My hope is that you know, Misinfo Day is going to be such a huge success that more and more people kind of hear about it and learn about it and want to replicate it. And so I think that's, you know, a huge benefit of doing this.
… And so this is something that will just spread in a positive way, as opposed to all the misinfo that spreads in a negative way. And then I think we really do, you know, need to need to look into the impact of AI.
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Technology can be used in so many good ways, but it can also be abused in so many bad ways. And we really need to try to stay ahead, both in terms of the regulations that government passes, but then also in terms of the education of our, of our constituents, the education of our communities.
And so that's why Misinfo Day is so important is because it really tackles that education component, that sometimes government can be a little slower to do.
JS: Thanks so much, Mark. I really appreciate you making time to speak with me on this.
MB: Definitely. Thank you, Janelle.