Introduction
Critical thinking is the ability to question incoming information and beliefs. The skill helps to think clearly and rationally, seek logical connections between facts, and formulate strong arguments. Critical thinking is based on the ability to reason. To become a critical thinker, it is necessary to be an active researcher, not a passive recipient of information. This skill is especially relevant in modern realities, where the flow of information is growing daily, as is the number of channels people consume. Considering the proportionally growing fake news in the media, this ability allows maintaining a stable attitude toward various social phenomena without succumbing to provocations. Critical thinking involves six essential skills: problem-solving, analysis, creative thinking, interpretation, judgment, and reasoning. It helps to analyze information, avoid falling for fake news and make better decisions.
In 2018, journalists from the Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star checked 1.3 million statements by Donald Trump during his presidency. Newspaper staff found 1,972 false statements and 68,928 untrue words (Dale, 2018). In 2017, Donald Trump issued nearly three false statements a day. Such claims help Trump gain votes, but their choice will be unconscious and unfounded. If something does not suit the voters, they will have to deal with the consequences of the choice themselves. This case shows the close relationship of the social and even political context with the media. False media reports can negatively impact one’s finances, profession, or personal life. For example, an anonymous news source reports that a particular company’s stock will rise soon. If the news turns out to be unreliable and people buy shares, they will lose money. Learning to recognize lies, separate facts, and opinions is needed.
Theories and Models
According to the theory of information deficit, a large flow of information increases the gap between different strata of society. Educated people know where to look for the information they need, learn faster, and know how to filter fakes and propaganda. Less educated people get lost in the information flow. They cannot find and identify useful information, and their opinion can be manipulated. This fact complicates the process of socialization and development of the entire community. According to the theory of social imagination, society receives a particular deep dimension of relationships, which is formed due to imagination, reflecting the samples, attitudes, patterns of behavior, and attitudes of a person (Mooney, 2018). As a result, conflict arises at a deeper dimension of relationships within the community, leading to deeper and deeper conflict and instability.
It turns out that only a tiny part of society owns the correct important information. For example, people move away from scientific discoveries because they are difficult to understand. Because of this, they can get confused about automation or global warming, not prepare for change and lose their jobs. The opinions of such people can be shaped by journalists, corporations, or the state. To avoid the possibility of manipulation by the media, it is necessary to use various fact-checking methods and verify the reliability of sources. Now many special online services can automatically check the news for reliability, although the results of their work are not undoubtedly correct.
Consequently, the situation leads to one that is described by the theory of social conflict. Any society relies on the coercion of some of its members by others, which leads to inequality of social positions concerning the distribution of power, which often controls the main media channels (Zeitzoff, 2017). The difference in the social status of various social groups and individuals causes mutual friction, contradictions, and, as a result, a change in the social structure of society itself. If the majority of the community does not have the skill to think critically about the consumption of information from the media, manipulation and restriction of the freedom of society without its consent is possible. As a result, the Overton window will significantly approach the indicators of less freedom, and what seemed once unthinkable may become one of the extremes of the moving norm. National Review magazine ran an article accusing Trump of shifting the Overton window on national security and immigration issues (French, 2018). The publication believes that the president changed public consciousness, calling for the erection of a wall on the border with Mexico and banning Muslims from entering the country, which is considered unacceptable in the context of globalization processes concerning the current prevailing norms.
According to the theory of structural functionalism, the elements of the community in the context of the media are stable patterns of the activities of people who, to one degree or another, depend on information. Even those capable of critical thinking, many of them study news in order to analyze the political, social, and economic situation in society. Nevertheless, this concept is descriptive of the entities and mechanisms of interaction within society, while various determinants can cause the reasons for the existing organization of the structure. Almost each of them has their point of view, which describes, for example, the dynamics of the economic or social situation in the community.
The use of such theories and models helps assess media performance for several reasons. Overton’s window allows at a long-term distance to notice the dynamics of changes in social norms and their reflection on the freedoms available to society, which speaks not only of the activities of the media but also of the political situation in the region as a whole. The propaganda model reflects systematic statistical outliers in media content for economic reasons (Fuchs, 2018). With the transition of most news channels to online and the availability of Internet technologies to everyone, the share of information consumed has increased. The contextualization of ad posts has increased the importance of ads in this stream. Each person has greater freedom of choice among various channels.
However, the main feature of population stratification is still carried out in the capacity of critical thinking: the media can manipulate overly gullible populations, forming differentiation at a deep level. These facts are reflected by the theory of social conflict, the concept of social imagination, and the theory of information deficit. As a result, applying these concepts makes it possible to prevent unwanted differentiation of the community layers for these reasons. No wonder, according to the study results, between 2001 and 2020, the number of British schools with courses in critical thinking increased from 130 to 1300, while student performance increased (Research from The Center for Critical Thinking, n.d.). This study also suggests that critical thinking increases the intensity and effectiveness of learning.
Mass Media: Images and Stereotypes
The media image of the modern world is built on the archetypal values of the subject of information activity and the consumer of information. At the center of this process is the dialogue between the creator and consumer of information archetypes. Similar processes are observed in the processes of interaction between the images of individuals in the media and their listeners. The visual image is one of the determinants of modern culture; however, with the transition of many channels to the online environment, the content behind the image becomes equally important. However, it plays a decisive role only after a closer acquaintance with the person, while the visual image helps to attract attention at first.
Modern trends force us to pay attention to the source of information, especially when presented as an individual. Behind this person’s words to the open public, there is a considerable background of personal history, various events, an active citizen, life, and political position, which together form a complete picture of a person. Through this picture, the context of the presented information is perceived, which can manipulate public opinion, strengthening stereotypes or destroying them. It should be borne in mind that an image can be considered objective only from the position of the source of its reflection – its carrier (Aiello & Parry, 2019). The media are the creators of images due to the specifics of their activities and the characteristics of work tools.
Racism and Discrimination
Operating in a specific language, the media indirectly participate in forming images of the perceiving audience. In the future, concrete mental constructions, taking root, become social norms, patterns or ideas. These images subsequently shape public consciousness (Aiello & Parry, 2019). In the same way, perhaps more indirectly and implicitly, oppressive ideals, power inequalities, and stereotypes are taking root through media presentations. The influence of archetypal attitudes on creating a particular picture of the world passes through media images, which can be in a wide range, on different channels of influence.
In this context, the concept of racism in question is currently receiving much more attention than before. Due to the global trend of equality of rights, regardless of gender, race, and other personality characteristics. Critical thinking, in this case, allows one to reasonable reason about these complex categories, differentiating the context, source, narrator’s image, non-verbal gestures, and other determinants that form the appropriate worldview, at least within the framework of the question raised. In other words, the fundamental values that lie in opposition to discrimination and racism involve applying critical thinking to the information received. In fact, this explains the extreme need for this ability at all stages, from the formation of information to its delivery to each person.
One of the reasons why people trust stereotypes, while they could hold more objective views, is that stereotypes can serve as the core of any tradition, a way to protect their position in society. At the same time, stereotypes present a consistent picture of the world. As a result, the power of habit combined with fundamental enduring traditions forms an attachment to stereotypes, which media publications will strongly support as more reliable sources. Globalization and the migration crisis in Europe have led to a surge of xenophobia and racism around the world. The press, primarily owned by large international corporations, adds fuel to the fire. It turns out a vicious circle – the media plays on the basest feelings of people, provoking further manifestations of racism and xenophobia in society.
However, in the United States, non-white employees make up about 21-26 percent of television workers. However, in other instances, this figure is much lower at 11-14 percent (Titley, 2019). There is an opinion that television, by the way, is still trying to preserve racial and ethnic diversity, especially when it is noticeable to viewers. At the same time, the producers who remain behind the scenes, but determine the channel’s policy, are mostly all white (Titley, 2019). On the one hand, this opinion demonstrates the facts, but the submission, on the other hand, is aimed at inciting conflict. As a result, according to the theory of social conflict, members of society will not only rely on reliable facts but also form a correspondingly negative opinion about inequality. This example does a great job of highlighting an important issue while setting an example that is obvious and accessible to everyone.
The media often reinforce their position at the expense of celebrities in advertising. While the critical ability of most people is much more active concerning advertising than other media content, media literacy rates are still significantly lower (Jones-Jang et al., 2021). In this regard, critical analysis is essential not only for the analysis of information itself but also for analyzing the environment, the context of this information. It is not only the source and fact-checking within the content that matters but also the images that accompany that content. According to the theory of information deficit, differentiation in society increases due to the large flow of information based on people’s education. However, media literacy is a category that transcends information literacy and is used to validate news stories (Jones-Jang et al., 2021). As a result, media literacy, regardless of the size of the data stream, can help narrow the gap in society and stabilize the social situation.
The social environment can be prone to internal conflicts not only due to differentiation in global economic and political processes but also due to the shift in current values. For example, the somewhat biased coverage by some media of the murder of a police officer believed to have involved Troy Davis has sparked unrest far beyond the United States border (Brown-Dean & Jones, 2017). The widespread publicity of this case shifted the Overton window towards greater freedom for people of a different races, and more independent media began to promote corresponding values of equality, which led to many actions around the world. Similar processes are observed concerning gender discrimination, sexualization, and many other acute social problems: each of them has its resonant cases that stir up public opinion, which contributes to the legitimization of new emerging values.
Conclusion
As a result, through media literacy, each person can improve the social situation in society through a critical analysis of both information and the environment in which it is presented. At the same time, the process of socialization remains more complex since the strength of the majority is still relevant. If the majority of the population succumbs to manipulation, transferring, and spreading of the imposed opinion, which may be accurate, but far from always, then critically thinking people will have to make disproportionate efforts to form new values and orders.
References
Aiello, G., & Parry, K. (2019). Visual communication: Understanding images in media culture. Sage.
Brown-Dean, K., & Jones, B. (2017). Building authentic power: a study of the campaign to repeal Connecticut’s death penalty. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 5(2), 321-342. Web.
Dale, D. (2018). Trump has said 1,340,330 words as president. They’re getting more dishonest, a Star study shows. Toronto Star. Web.
French, D. (2017). For Good and Ill, Donald Trump Has Brought Discussion of Political Impossibilities into the Open. National Review. Web.
Fuchs, C. (2018). Propaganda 2.0: Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model in the age of the internet, big data and social media. Propaganda Model Today: Filtering Perception and Awareness, 71. Web.
Jones-Jang, S. M., Mortensen, T., & Liu, J. (2021). Does media literacy help identification of fake news? Information literacy helps, but other literacies don’t. American Behavioral Scientist, 65(2), 371-388. Web.
Mooney, H. (2018). ” Fake News” and the Sociological Imagination: Theory Informs Practice. LOEX Quarterly, 44(4), 3. Web.
Research from The Center for Critical Thinking. (n.d.) Web.
Titley, G. (2019). Racism and media. Sage.
Zeitzoff, T. (2017). How social media is changing conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(9), 1970-1991. Web.