Approaching information with a critical eye

Critical Thinking: A Core Concept in Media Education

In the context of media education, the concept of critical thinking means carefully examining available information by researching it and subjecting it to demonstration. It is a critical perspective that rejects simplifications, hasty generalizations, preconceived ideas, prejudices, and unproven statements. Generally, it is the ability to reason in an independent, rational, and conscious way. It also involves analyzing and understanding media content while considering the intentions of its authors.

Critical thinking relies on three principles:

• The principle of autonomy: being able to think for oneself, independently of the people around us and our environment.
• The introspective principle: being aware of our limits in understanding phenomena, the influence of our cognitive biases, emotions, and others on our judgment and beliefs.
• The learning principle: critical thinking can be learned and acquired through knowledge and questioning that encourage intellectual awakening. It can take concrete forms such as comparing hypotheses or verifying information sources.

Practically, applying critical thinking in media approaches means adhering to the following practices:

• Stay informed: take time to research, compare information, and understand before judging, commenting, or sharing.
• Evaluate information: identify and verify sources before validating information.
• Distinguish facts from interpretations: separate actual facts from interpretations of events.
• Compare interpretations: consider the different interpretations an information piece may generate and accept this plurality.
• Prioritize interpretations: distinguish, in order of legitimacy, between interpretations validated by experience and research, hypotheses, and opinions linked to beliefs.

The Journalistic Approach to Verifying Information

Critical thinking is at the heart of the journalistic approach, which requires rigorously processing information before publishing it. The journalist therefore conducts investigation, inquiry, and source comparison. This involves analysis and putting facts and possible explanations into perspective.

The journalistic approach is especially essential today, in the digital society, marked by the proliferation of fake news, doctored images, and videos online.

In media education, the journalistic verification approach is simplified and adapted to young people’s practices in the form of a list of best practices:

• Check the nature of the site where information is found. Tabs like “legal notice” or “about” usually indicate the type of site (blog, satirical, institutional, etc.).
• Trace back to the origin of the information. Often, information online is shared, reshaped, or even decontextualized. It is therefore important to identify its original source.
• Check the publication date of the information. Today, information quickly becomes outdated and is often already verified or debunked.
• Verify the identity and reliability of the author. Is this person a journalist? Are they an expert in the topic?
• Identify the purpose and intent. Is the goal to inform? To manipulate? To sell something?
• Ask the right questions. Stay curious and able to question the author, without falling into mistrust or paranoia.

The Importance of Source Validation

A source is the origin of information, its starting point. This is why we talk about “tracing back” to the source.

Double verification of information is one of the most important basic rules of journalism. Unfortunately, the growing speed of news circulation, partly due to social media and economic pressures for audience, challenges this principle.

A reliable source is usually a person or institution qualified (expert or knowledgeable) on a subject, providing information about it.

For credibility, information must be found and confirmed by other sources and/or available in other media. In journalism, this is called cross-checking information.

There are four main types of sources:

• Institutional sources: public authorities, states.
• Intermediate sources: associations, professional organizations, political parties, trade unions.
• Personal sources: discreet or even secret sources available to journalists within circles of power or professional networks.
• Occasional sources: spontaneous sources, testimonies proposed or requested by chance circumstances, witnesses of an event.