Butler Interviewed on All Things Considered

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Allison Butler, communication, Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program, and Co-Director of the non-profit Mass Media Literacy, recently discussed the importance of media literacy education as a way to stop the pervasive spread of misinformation on NPR's All Things Considered. Recent developments in the dissemination of viral fake news via social media and the use of artificial intelligence to create fake and deepfake content have raised questions on how the average person can parse out what information is accurate and what is problematic. 

"I think one of the things that our current media environment does, and particularly social media, is it inundates us with so much material presented in such a declarative format, and it has everything coming at us so quickly," says Butler. "I would say our job might be to slow down, to take a step away from it, to ask the questions of the technology, to look at the evidence that they might be providing. Maybe if we can take a step away from that, we can have a better understanding of what's coming at us."