Media Literacy – The Pursuit of the Question, "Are You Sure?"

Author: Ferhat Çakır (English Teacher and Novelist at Kartepe Anatolian Imam Hatip High School)

Title: Seeking Truth in the Media Vortex: A Critical Lesson from Warsaw

1. The Invisible Face of Media and the Critical Question

Today, we are exposed to a vast number of photos, videos, and news items on social media and news sources. Sometimes we laugh at them, we like them, but we cannot be sure whether these contents are real or fake. The media literacy activity we conducted at Zespół nr:18 School in Warsaw, Poland, titled "Are You Sure?" aimed to reveal the "Invisible Face" of the media and to pose a critical question when faced with media that has the potential to deceive us : "Can we believe everything we see in the media?".

2. Eye Color and Spider-Man: Manipulation Through Two Striking Examples

During our activity, the manipulative methods of the media were examined through two striking examples at the heart of media information.

A. The Eye Color Deception:

The first claim, taken from a Turkish news site, suggested that people with brown eyes actually have blue eyes, and it is possible to achieve blue eyes by removing the upper brown layer with a laser. The information that this news was true initially caused surprise. However, we delved into the details:

·         The melanin pigment in the stroma (the colored part of the eye) determines the darkness of the eye color. People with blue eyes have little or no melanin pigment.

·         During laser surgery, melanin pigments can be destroyed, and the eye color turns blue within a few weeks.

·         Yet, the media does not always show the full picture. An ophthalmologist stated that although the procedure sounds good, it is not worth trying, considering the risk of the pigments damaging the eyes and blocking the eye canals. The media attracts our attention by presenting only the sensational part of the truth.

B. The Pope and the Superhero:

In the second example, a dramatic scenario was posed about a person in a Spider-Man costume approaching the Pope and causing a harmful incident. The truth, however, was the opposite—a deeply human story:

·         The person inside the costume was 28-year-old Mattia Villardita, who visits sick children in hospitals.

·         Villardita had a congenital malformation and was a patient in a pediatric hospital for 19 years as a child. This experience motivated him to help other patients and their families.

·         The reason the Pope met with him was quite simple: Villardita came to visit the sick children at the Vatican that day.

·         This example strikingly demonstrated how the media can distort or overlook a genuine story of heroism and charity for the sake of a dramatic headline.

3. Conclusion: Conscious Consumption and Critical Defense

The media can manipulate and mislead people as it wishes. Therefore, we should not immediately believe things we are not sure are true.

Media literacy provides us with the following paths:

·         Questioning news sources.

·         Benefiting from expert opinions about the media content we are interested in.

·         Always remembering that the media is intent on showing us things the way they want.

This activity has been an important step for our colleagues and students in Warsaw in developing critical thinking skills, one of the most fundamental competencies of the 21st century.

 


Ferhat ÇAKIR

Kartepe Anadolu İmam Hatip Lisesi

Kartepe / Kocaeli/ Türkiye

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GUESS THE NEXT STEP

Image
    "One of the activities developed during the Mobility to Romania within the scope of the Erasmus+ Project KA210 “Invisible Face of Media” was “Guess the Next Step”. The activity was presented by the teacher from Turkey, Serife Seyran and the teacher from Portugal, Benjamim Sampaio and began with some warm-up suggestions among the participants. The activity aimed to analyze two media situations in Turkey and Portugal and to involve students and teachers from the partner schools in international working groups, with each group consisting of students from different countries and a tutor teacher. The situation in Turkey was related to a famous reality show that analyses real cases. This case presentation was divided into 3 parts. We read each part and asked the international teams to 'Guess the next step'. At the end of the whole case, we asked the different teams to draw conclusions about what they learned from this case. The main conclusions were related to being more sec...
Read more

Critical thinking – a mental compass

Image
          Let ' s break the ice with a question: Which is the capital of Australia – Sydney    or   Melbourne? In a room plenty of students, no one answered correctly: Canberra. What did the students learn from this? Once, which is the capital of Australia and then how the manipulation is constructed. We give them two false options and their mind assumes that they have to choose between them. That's exactly how manipulation works: it gives you a fake frame and lets you believe you're choosing freely. Critical thinking is the power to ask: Is there a third option? How do we develop critical thinking in the age of AI? The question is often heard nowadays – because it's about us and the world we live in, about the era in which Artificial Intelligence does almost anything: it writes texts, makes illustrations, composes music, generates codes, corrects mistakes, answers history questions... What is left for people? The answer w...
Read more
Image
  The Invisible Effect of the Invisible Face of Media:  Erasmus+ Lifelong Friendship Education often seems to be limited to the classroom, but in reality, it deepens when students open themselves to the world, meet different cultures, and explore their own boundaries. Our Erasmus+ project provided exactly such a journey. The mobility to Portugal with our students was not just a trip; it became a learning process that enhanced cultural awareness, developed life skills, fostered friendship, and built lifelong bonds, while also helping us recognize the invisible effects of media and the digital world. Both as a teacher and through my students, significant personal and social gains were achieved. From the very first moment in Portugal, we realized that learning is not confined to textbooks; it is reshaped through every street, every conversation, every observation, and every human interaction. Visiting historical churches and cultural sites was an opportunity not only to see the c...
Read more