The Role of News on Atlas for Improving Users' Global News Literacy

THE ROLE OF NEWS ON ATLAS FOR IMPROVING USERS’ GLOBAL NEWS LITERACY

This is a Mode B dissertation submitted to The University of Manchester for the MA degree of Digital Technologies, Communication and Education in the Faculty of Humanities

URL: http://www.newsonatlas.com

2014

WILLIAM FASTIGGI

SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENT, EDUCATION & DEVELOPMENT

DECLARATION

I declare that this dissertation is my own work and all sources have been quoted and acknowledged by complete references.

William Fastiggi

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Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….....…2

Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3

1. Why Global News Literacy Should Be Taught………………………………………………………………………3

2. Barriers to the Inclusion of Global News Literacy in School Curricula……………………………...9

3. Case-studies of News Literacy in the Classroom……………………………………………………………….13

Overview of News on Atlas………………………………………………………………………………………………………..16

Limitations of News on Atlas…………………………………………………………………………………………………….24

Evaluation Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….25

Data & Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….26

Teacher Survey…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…26

Focus group interview with students - Before exposure to News on Atlas…………………………..29

Analytics………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30

Focus group interview with students - After exposure to News on Atlas………………………………32

Reflection……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...….33

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….36

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…….37

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….42

Word Count: 12,626

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Introduction

The global news landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. News readership has

increasingly shifted to the Internet because of inexpensive technology, ubiquitous access and

free content. This has led to a trend of information democratisation in which information

control has shifted from a few powerful entities toward smaller outlets and individual

citizens. User-generated news sources like blogs, wiki pages and YouTube videos are now

commonplace. As a result, according to the Pew Research Center (2012), the audience for

news on the Internet has grown from nothing in 1993 to second behind only television.

Although the Internet brings users more news, there is consequently more uncertainty about

whether news sources - both traditional and otherwise - are providing relevant or even

credible information. Powers (2010, pp. 5), for example, states that young people in

particular, report being overwhelmed by the amount of news sources and content available

online. This makes it more important for news consumers to develop literacy skills that allow

them to weigh the value of what they read, see, and hear.

News literacy, which helps students to foster a more intellectually rigorous relationship with

news media, is defined by Schwarz (2012, pp. 1) as ‘the reader’s ability to critically evaluate,

interpret and process as well as participate in news media’. As we live in an increasingly

interconnected and globalised world, I argue that the word “global” should also be used when

discussing news literacy; much of the news content viewed online is from international

journalism networks, which create what Reese (2008) refers to as a “global news arena”.

Reese explains that bringing a global perspective to news literacy requires a basic awareness

of how national contexts differ; it means taking concrete local circumstances into account

while being aware of how they differ from other areas and how global forces bring “influence

from a distance”.

Global news is a highly complex, albeit important subject. In my context of working as

teacher in a bi-lingual British school in El Salvador, I have seen the importance of this subject

manifest in the overall objectives of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and

International Baccalaureate (IB). These programmes correctly consider themselves to be

leading proponents of international education and are designed to promote international

mindedness (Stagg, 2013). Students on the IB for example, are required to keep up-to-date

with current national and international news events relevant to their areas of study.

Moreover, one of the traits and values of the school is “international mindedness”,

encouraging students to develop a cosmopolitan attitude and willingness to learn about life in

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other parts of the world. All of this forms part of the Council of International Schools (CIS)

accreditation process, which asks schools to ‘demonstrate a commitment to internationalism

in education’ (CIS, 2013).

Unfortunately, despite the buzz words in the curriculum and rhetoric of the school, little is

actually done to facilitate learning about the world in which we live. Specifically, the most

relevant sources for informing students (and their teachers) about social, economic and

political events happening around the world - global news media - are widely absent from the

classroom. This is not only true for my context but seems to be the case in educational

institutions around the world (Stagg, 2013; Schwarz, 2012; Buckingham, 2003).

In July, 2013 I therefore began putting together designs for the user interface of what would

become News on Atlas1, a web application with the purpose of addressing this issue. During

the subsequent year, I have been working closely with a programmer, Daniel Rivas2, to

develop the functionality of this application, while ensuring that it is easy to use and runs

smoothly. Since its inception, the objective driving this application’s development has

remained unchanged - to improve users’ global news literacy. This paper discusses why

global news literacy is important, how the application is intended to help, and analyses data

to determine its usefulness.

Literature Review

In this literature review, I discuss papers that (1) make the case for the inclusion of global

news literacy curricula in compulsory education, (2) explore the barriers to doing so, and (3)

look at efforts that integrate such lessons in the classroom. This will set the backdrop for an

overview of News on Atlas, highlighting its potential usefulness as an application to improve

users' global news literacy.

1. Why Global News Literacy Should Be Taught

The media has three main functions: to inform, guide, and entertain. It is generally agreed,

however, that media’s most important role is to tell the public what is going on in the world

1 URL: http://www.newsonatlas.com 2 I hired Daniel Rivas in August, 2013 to work on the backend coding for News on Atlas. Daniel is a programmer who runs a small web development company, Aktiva Media based in El Salvador. More information about Daniel’s company can be found on his website, http://www.aktivamedia.com.

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and why. Therein the definition for news itself can be found, which according to Smith

(2007, pp. 13) is to ‘tell its audience something it doesn’t already know’. There may be

nothing they can do about it, says Smith, but they need this information to make the choices

necessary in a democratic society. The argument for news literacy education therefore, rests

on the premise that news media is fundamental to democracy. Altschull (1990) refers to this

belief as the democratic assumption:

‘The decisions made by people in the voting booths are based on information made available to them. The information is provided mainly by the news media. Hence, the news media are indispensable to the survival of democracy’.

This gives the news a very distinct and important role, setting it well apart from other media

content. It is important, according to Ashley et al. (2013, pp. 7), to distinguish news literacy

from the broader and more widely used term media literacy; unlike other media content, the

news plays a crucial role in safeguarding democratic societies and democratic citizenship.

This is because the news media provides the primary source of information about political,

economic and societal affairs, helping citizens to form opinions that cover a wide range of

issues affecting choices about governments and policies. It is the job of reporters then to

gather the news, check its accuracy, and present it in a way that can interest and be

understood by the public.

Although relevant as a framework to understanding rights, freedoms, and claims for better

quality information in a pluralistic society, the conception of news and democracy, according

to Mihailidis (2011), is overly idealised, and this is why news literacy education matters so

much. Certainly on a global scale, national biases exist, in which significant stories about

countries elsewhere in the world may be ignored, as they are not perceived to be ‘relevant’

in the parochial eyes of the mainstream news media. Writing apropos of television and daily

newspapers for example, Hamelink (1976, pp. 120) interprets the news as a functional

element of hegemony, pushing the views of the dominant interests of society.

‘…“information about the world” is presented in incoherent fragments (especially in “newscasts”) or in pre-digested explanations which can only be passively filed away. In this way “information” functions as an oppressive tool since, by its manner of presentation, it keeps people from shaping their own world. The incoherent fragments preclude the wholistic perspective which enables insight into the interdependence between happenings, into the involvement of one’s own context, and into the possibility of acting upon the challenge thus posed’.

Hamelink suggests that the only way people can have a chance to intervene in their reality is

for information channels to be created that permit the coherent organisation of information.

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News literacy, thus, would be promoted by giving readers a clearer insight into why news

providers are ‘pushing’ particular stories over others. From the perspective of the global

news arena, this means national biases could be overcome if only the information channels

themselves change. To this end, one might expect that the free flow of information

facilitated by the Internet has led to a well-informed citizenry able to pressure governments

and journalists for more transparency. The highly acclaimed media scholar, Marshall

McLuhan (1964, pp. 5), even predicted as much:

‘Increased speed of communication and the ability of people to read about, spread, and react to global news quickly, forces us to become more involved with one another from various social groups and countries around the world and to be more aware of our global responsibilities’.

Despite the seemingly endless possibilities for knowledge transfer presented by the Internet,

the reality is something quite different from what McLuhan had envisaged. This is because

the sheer quantity of information available and its ease of access has led to what Whitworth

(2009, pp. 4) has referred to as information obesity, in which ‘Information is not being turned

into knowledge and then fed back into the environment to be drawn on later’. For example,

more information with no objective value whatsoever has been made available by the

Internet. Thomspon (2008) refers to such information as ‘counterknowledge’, which he

defines as “misinformation packaged to look like fact”. In the context of news online, this

issue is particularly pertinent since anyone can become a citizen journalist and post “news”

online. Although this gives news consumers substantial choice and control over their news

diet, it becomes problematic if news consumers take everything they read, see or hear at

face value. In an online world circulating great quantities of information, it becomes more

difficult to find international news that is reliable, high-quality and relevant to the pressing

issues facing the world.

A related problem is what Pariser (2011) calls the ‘filter bubble’, in which website algorithms

selectively present information to users based on location, click behaviour, search history,

etc., and, as a result, distance users from information that disagrees with their viewpoints,

effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. In December 2009, for

example, Google began using 57 different signals – everything from a user login location to

their browser to their search history – to make guesses about who the user is and what kinds

of sites the user would like to see. Likewise, social networking sites such a Facebook and

Twitter are built on the premise that users interact with other users that they have chosen to

interact with, which limits the coverage of news they receive. Although filter bubbles almost

certainly provide users with information of subjective value, based on their needs, desires

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and preferences, they also lead users to a state of cognitive bias. This means users may

dismiss otherwise potentially useful information, because it does not conform to their

cognitive schema. As more users discover news through algorithm-determined feeds,

important news content relevant to the public sphere falls out of view. According Pariser

(2011, pp. 4): ‘Democracy requires citizens to see things from one another’s point of view,

but instead we’re more and more enclosed in our own bubbles’. In order to be news literate

on a global scale, it is surely necessary to break out of these filter bubbles by reading from a

wider variety of sources from around the world.

Another type of filter bubble can be seen in terms of the coverage of global news itself.

Reese (2011, pp. 5) states that against the expectation that media report and reach the

entire globe, the global media system, particularly international broadcasting, does not live

up to that hope. For example, Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, presented a

cartogram during a TED Conference3 to show how the US media covers international news.

Fig 1.

This map shown in Figure 1 represents the number of seconds US network and cable news

organisations dedicated to news stories by country in February 2007. This was a month when

there had been very significant international events: North Korea agreed to dismantle its

nuclear facilities, there was massive flooding in Indonesia, and the Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change (IPCC) released a study confirming man’s impact on global warming.

During this month though, Miller (2007) observes the US accounted for 79% of the total news

coverage; the combined coverage of China, India, and Russia represented just 1% of the

3 http://www.ted.com/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news

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news. Similar distortions in the way news is covered can be seen in elite online newspapers

such as the New York Times and Guardian4.

What the cartogram serves to illustrate is that, contrary to what people might think, news

media does not deliver an equitable distribution of global news coverage. According to

Adams and Ovide (2009), the online availability of news and the demand for larger corporate

profits has driven both audiences and advertisers to cyberspace, triggering a crisis in the

news industry, which is increasingly turning to local coverage. Consequently, foreign news

bureaus have been disappearing, as foreign correspondents are seen at best as unnecessary

“middle men”, at worst as “endangered species”. (Hamilton, 2009, pp. 463).

Fig 2.

As Figure 2 illustrates, the same problem can be seen on the demand side for news. On

average, more than 95% of national news readership is on domestic sites. Citizens in the UK,

for example, are unlikely to read about news happening in Australia on an Australian website.

Instead, they are far more likely to read about events in Australia, filtered through a UK news

outlet, such as the Guardian. Language can be an obvious barrier here, preventing readers

from visiting foreign news sites. With relatively high numbers of immigrants, this may explain

why the US and UK have comparatively more of their citizens viewing foreign web pages than

China, for instance, which has proportionally fewer immigrants. Nonetheless, the fact that

the vast majority of page views are on domestic news sites for all countries is considered by

Zuckerman (2010) to be a serious problem:

4 http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Guardian2011.jpg

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‘The real problems in the world are global in scale and scope; they require conversations to get to global solutions. This is a problem we have to solve’.

Moreover, when foreign news is reported by a domestic outlet, true comparative analysis is

rare. News, according to Reese (2012, pp. 2), is ‘still domesticated through national frames

of references, often taken for granted, and media globalisation skeptics have argued that no

truly transnational news platforms have emerged, permitting the kind of cross-boundary

dialogs associate with a public sphere’. Media sceptics such as Hafez (2007) point to the

continued weaknesses of international reporting: ‘elite-focused, conflict-based, and driven

by scandal and the sensational, leading them to conclude that the “global village” has been

blocked by domestication’.

Information obesity, disinformation, misinformation, or information simply sealed inside filter

bubbles all share the same implication, which George Orwell (1945) would refer to as a

‘reduced state of consciousness’. Such a state of affairs, he suggests, ‘if not indispensable, is

at any rate favorable to political conformity’. Whitworth (2009) uses the term ‘noöpolitics’

to refer to the control of informational resources, and accordingly, its manipulation leads on

to what Whitworth would call ‘a noöpolitical construction of hegemony’. By presenting only

particular news stories or presenting them in such a way that they mislead the reader,

hegemonic power can be maintained. Reese (2009, pp. 2), for example, states that:

‘Even in the U.S., where the press system is advanced and highly professionalized, elite journalists reinforced the discursive echo-chamber supporting the decision to go to war in Iraq by internalizing the War on Terror frame promoted by the Bush administration’.

It is through such hegemonic discourse, Whitworth (2009, pp. 8) states, that ‘the public is

persuaded to accept the diffusion of military and corporate objectives into everyday public

opinion’.

Advances in web technologies show what is possible when news coverage becomes truly

global and is unfiltered by noöpolitical constructions of hegemony. For example, according

to Reese (2012, pp. 1):

'The popular 2011 uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and throughout the Middle East, were facilitated by Internet communication, even when the regimes tried to regulate traffic outside the country. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television news service provided some of the best coverage of the Egyptian revolt, but its availability in the U.S. was limited by cable operators failing to provide it to their subscribers. In spite of being deemed anti-American by some U.S. critics, the value of its coverage in a critical world hot-spot gave it new professional prestige and led to heightened demand for internet streaming of its programming'.

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The upshot of all of this is that as an information processing system, when put to good use,

various websites and web apps on the Internet can and do bring people important global

news, which would otherwise be filtered out by more mainstream media. The problem is

that, more often than not, meaningful global news is not being reported adequately or

sufficiently – as the example of the US “war on terror” highlights. Instead, the global news

that does get reported can be likened to Whitworth’s metaphor of information obesity – in

most cases it is not being turned into knowledge to promote transparency between nations or

to empower citizens. It is increasingly important though, that citizens are empowered by

global news, which when consumed, can easily be turned into global knowledge, since the

biggest problems now facing individual nations are transnational in scale: corruption,

economic instability, environmental damage, immigration, etc. To appropriately address

these problems, globally news literate citizens are required who demand and support high-

quality journalism around the world. In doing so, a stronger movement of what Gramsci

(1929) called “organic intellectuals” can come into being, people who promote the best

interests of the global community and thus bring about progressive change.

However, even putting the ideals behind global news literacy to one side, there is still plenty

of value in using the news to improve literacy standards in schools. Studies consistently show

that newspaper reading contributes to reading and writing skill development (Palmer et al.,

1994, pp. 51). According to Bernadowski (2011, pp. 5), the newspaper is the perfect

textbook for so-called 'adolescent literacy', because it is written at a level that many of them

can read, and it provides adolescents with much needed skills and strategies to function in

the adult world. Moreover, Phelps & Pottorff (1992, pp. 2) state that newspapers provide

special elements that have been well received by secondary students with reading problems.

For example, comprehension can be fostered by introducing the journalistic approach to news

reporting and semantics can be taught by helping students discover the meaning of new

words through context. Given the broader cultural and educational value of using the news

in education, there should be a greater effort made to include it in school curricula.

2. Barriers to the Inclusion of Global News Literacy in School Curricula

Despite some efforts by those championing media and news literacy, Gretchen Schwarz

(2006, pp. 255) writes that its proponents are still dealing with ‘all the problems of a young

field – becoming visible in the academic world, acquiring credibility among educators and

others, developing a strong research basis, and finding funding’.

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The challenges facing media literacy education become even more pronounced when one

looks specifically at its subset, news literacy education.

As media scholar, Fifi Schwarz (2012, pp. 1) points out,

'The most relevant sources for informing citizens about social, economic & political affairs - news media - are often overlooked in media literacy education. This seems rather odd, considering that interest in news media among (young) citizens clearly relates to their civic engagement'.

Similarly, media educator David Buckingham (2003, pp. 3) writes,

'It is quite extraordinary that the majority of young people should go through their school careers with so little opportunity to study and engage with the most significant contemporary forms of culture and communication. Clearly, there is an argument here that still needs to be made'.

There are several possible reasons why news literacy has received little scholarly attention

and has been underrepresented in education curricula. First and foremost, news literacy has

been overshadowed by the more popular subject, media literacy. Schwarz (2012, pp. 2)

suggests this is to do with the fact that news media is generally associated with, or falls into

the category of what he refers to as “old media”, which is not as popular with young people,

especially in the digital age. Buckingham (2000, pp. 9) supports this claim with data,

reporting that young people frequently express indifference, or even considerable dislike,

towards the news. This is a significant point given the underlying philosophy of media

education in general as a form of inoculation. Buckingham (2003, pp. 19) explains that this

idea comes from the belief that students should be partly exposed to the debilitating forms

of media influence in the classroom so as to ultimately enhance their immunity from

manipulation. In terms of news media however, this notion of inoculation can be seen to not

apply – after all, it does not make sense to spend time teaching students news literacy in

order to “inoculate” them if they are not interested in news itself. For this reason, other

areas of media literacy education have held greater importance in the eyes of educators.

As an ephemeral and potentially contentious subject, news by its very nature can also be

seen as a difficult, if not an unnecessary media, to bring into the classroom. Laufenberg

(2010) states that:

‘There is tons of news out there, and you need to interact with it at an analytic level as it happens. You cannot plan ahead for current events, and it makes some teachers

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uncomfortable to plan lessons around things that have not yet happened. They want to control the content’.

Hobbs (2010, pp. 7) adds to this point by suggesting that, ‘where competition and

fragmentation of news audiences reign, no easy assumptions can be made about the nature of

what counts as trustworthy and authoritative when it comes to news and current events’.

The result is that however relevant or useful it might be, most teachers are reluctant to use

the news as part of their daily pedagogy. This situation is not helped of course, by the fact

that there is no training given to teachers on how to teach news literacy. Hobbs (2004, pp.

53) writes that:

‘Based on my experience as a teacher-educator, I have observed that it takes about three years of practice, supported by staff development and peer critique, to enable teachers to develop the new skills and knowledge they need to effectively use media texts in the classroom to promote critical-thinking and analysis skills’.

According to Powers (2010, pp. 37) though, education schools that prepare today’s teachers

do not offer instruction on how to incorporate news literacy instruction into the classroom or

test teachers on this content area. One possible explanation for such barriers to bringing

news literacy into the classroom are arguably systemic, rooted in society’s fundamental

perceptions and attitudes towards the news media.

For example, Altschull (1990, pp. 53) suggests that news literacy has consistently been

viewed as a discipline of practice, ‘not one of deep and reflective thought’. Similarly, Hobbs

(2004, pp. 51) writes,

‘Although the use of popular-culture materials is becoming more and more common, there is little widespread public enthusiasm for the use of popular mass media texts among education and business leaders, and even less among parents and community leaders’.

An obvious reason for this is that news literacy might be seen as a tool by some for

propagandising by the teacher. In other words, there may be concern that news literacy

lessons come with political judgments. As Powers (2010, pp. 43) writes though,

‘While maintaining absolute political objectivity is impossible for teachers introducing any classroom lesson, proponents of news literacy emphasise that the instruction is about teaching skills rather than ideological values’.

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Indeed, news literacy education is not about teaching students what to think when it comes

to news - quite the contrary, it is about teaching students how to think critically about the

news they read. Nonetheless, misconceptions about the pedagogy underlying news literacy

needs to be taken into account as a widespread barrier for its inclusion into curricula.

A final factor to consider is that many classrooms may be ill-equipped with the technological

resources necessary to facilitate lessons on news literacy. According to the report “The

Internet and the Threat It Poses to Local Media: Lessons from News in the Schools”, one-third

of teachers said they are not making as much use of Internet-based news as they would like,

because their classrooms are not equipped for it (Patterson, 2010, pp. 5). The necessity of

computers and Internet access is particularly apparent when one refers to global news

literacy, in which the reading of news from international outlets online would be a

prerequisite. As some schools lack computers, wireless access, or the projection technology

necessary for teachers to effectively draw on digital news as an educational resource, this

problem is an immediate barrier to the inclusion of news literacy lessons. That being said,

there are approaches that teachers can take to respond to such technological obstacles,

which might include rationing students’ access to equipment or applying a “bring your own

device” (BYOD) policy in the classroom. Such approaches to overcoming technological

resource constraints are not necessarily ideal and may present their own problems. As a

result, the inclusion of news literacy curricula needs to be considered on a case-by-case

basis, specifically taking account of the school’s access to relevant technologies.

Given all of the barriers to news literacy education in schools, its advocates face an

important task ahead. Hobbs (2010, pp. 8) suggests greater efforts needs to be made to help

educators see the value of employing news and current events into K-12 and higher

education. Powers (2010, pp. 45) writes recognition is needed ‘that news literacy involves

critical thinking skills, a commonly listed learning objective, and that acquiring the ability to

critically analyse news and public affairs information promotes good citizenship’. In this way,

it is much more likely that news literacy education will be represented in educational

standards, which reflect the policy consensus of what teachers are expected to cover and

what students are expected to learn.

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3. Case-studies of News Literacy in the Classroom

The Powerful Voices for Kids Program – Hobbs (2010)

Powerful Voices for Kids was a university-school partnership involving Temple University

students working with small groups of children (ages 9 to 11) to develop their news literacy

skills during July 2010. The young age of the participants made this program particularly

unique. According to Powers (2010, pp. 2) targeting students still in compulsory education is

wise, because these are the years when many people begin developing reading and viewing

routines. The younger news literacy can be taught the better. Hobbs (2010) observed this

program closely, reporting it to be a perfect example of “what works” in news literacy

education, and she uses this to draw fundamental learning principles that should guide the

pedagogy of news literacy.

Hobbs focuses specifically on one group of children who were involved in a project where

they explored just one news story in depth: the violence associated with flash mobs in

Philadelphia. Using the simple programming tool, Scratch, the children made interactive

media about the news event, which stimulated conversation about how the news is

constructed and why news is important in society. Hobbs (2010) reveals key learning

outcomes of this project for the children, which made them more aware of the role of news

in society, how to assess its reliability and the impact news can have on others.

Commenting on the outcomes of the program, McManus (2009) states that:

‘In my view, these are the kinds of insights that are now essential for people to be full participants in contemporary society. These are habits of mind that will enable young people to flourish in the tsunami of information that surrounds them, where news pretenders offer “fake news” and where cheapening and corner-cutting interfere in cash-strapped news organisations leads to a diminution of quality news and information’.

According to Hobbs (pp. 4), the success of the program was achieved by building critical

thinking and communication skills. In contrast to the transmission model of education, the

program begins from the learner’s interests: ‘Learners, not teachers select the topic to

examine, and they select news that’s personally meaningful to them’. In the teaching

process, students are also encouraged to ask critical questions, using reasoning and evidence

to support their ideas. This method is particularly appropriate for the area that Hobbs refers

to as ‘constructedness’, in which careful attention is paid to how news stories are

constructed.

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News Literacy Program at Stony Brook University – Fleming (2013)

Fleming (2013) provides a case study that focuses on one of the most ambitious and well-

funded curricular news literacy programs. Ideologically, the News Literacy Program at Stony

Brook is similar to the Powerful Voices for Kids Program, but it is an ongoing program that

exclusively involves university students. Fleming describes it as an experiment in modern

journalism education. This is because traditionally, journalism has had a practice-oriented

philosophy, and yet as Fleming (pp. 2) explains, Stony Brook’s program ‘veered off of

journalism education’s skills-development tradition and into unchartered territory called

news literacy’. Howard Schneider, the founding dean of the School of Journalism at Stony

Brook University, designed the program with the objective that young audiences would

sharpen their critical thinking skills and come to support high-quality news. According to

Fleming (2013, pp. 11), Schneider feared that important news literacy principles of the press

were disappearing as the lines of "responsible" journalism and ‘everything else blurred in the

fast-moving digital sea of information and disinformation’.

The approach at Stony Brook is in line with suggestions made by Mihailidis that news literacy

programs should not just focus on critiquing news content but should also focus on

understanding and contextualising it. According to Fleming (2013, pp. 13), this translates

into an instructional strategy that teaches students how to access, evaluate, analyse, and

appreciate journalism. As with the Powerful Voices for Kids Program, the success of news

literacy education is largely derived from creating what Hobbs (1998, pp. 28) calls a

'pedagogy of inquiry', “asking critical questions about what you watch, see, and read”. The

ultimate objective is to promote critical thinking skills which develop intellectual autonomy

on the part of the student. The broader goal of critical thinking, according to Mihailidis

(2011, pp. 4), guards against taking the mediated environment for granted. After all, as

McLuhan (1969, pp. 5) pointed out, humans live in constructed media environments as

unconsciously as fish live in water.

News literacy education must therefore help students understand and analyse the

constructions of reality presented by journalists, which sometimes offer incomplete or

inaccurate portrayals of the world we live in. This would explain the overall objectives of

both the Powerful Voices for Kids Program and the news literacy course at Stony Brook, which

is for students to become more consistent and sceptical news consumers, who are able to

accurately assess the reliability of news. Fleming (2013, pp. 13) presents results that

instructional approaches based on this approach to news literacy, include high levels of

engagement, a greater awareness of current events, and deeper, more nuanced

understandings of journalism.

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Moreover, as alluded to by Mihailidis (2011, pp. 28), the goal of news literacy should not

simply be to generate distrust or cynicism about the news, because otherwise, news literacy

programs might lead to dismissive attitudes about the press and civic responsibilities in

general. In one of his studies for example, Mihailidis (pp. 30) finds that a class focused on

news was successful in developing critical reading and viewing skills, but it also seemed to

encourage cynical views of the press. A balance needs to be struck, therefore, between

teaching critical thinking skills and at the same time fostering appropriate interpretative

habits about the news. It is this approach that seems to be exemplified by both the Powerful

Voices for Kids Program and the Stony Brook news literacy program, which equips students to

demand and appreciate quality journalism that adheres to the norms to which it aspires.

Aside from their effective pedagogies, the success of these two programs can be attributed to

the ready availability of appropriate technologies and access to diverse news sources. These

two factors facilitate the fundamental objectives of news literacy but unfortunately also

represent the key challenges in the programs’ replication. Fleming (2013, pp. 14) for

example, states that ‘the Stony Brook approach is not without fault because of its cost,

dependence on PowerPoint presentations, and last minute updates’. Similarly, the Powerful

Voices for Kids Program relies on the distribution of age-appropriate news articles, coding

software (Scratch), and the support of university students. Discussing information obesity,

Whitworth (2009, pp. 2) states that:

‘At the very least, we will suffer a loss in quality of engagement, and require new tools and strategies to deal with the overload’. This same statement could apply equally well to the challenges facing news consumers. Both

the Powerful Voices for Kids and Stony Brook Program have appropriate strategies in place to

deal with the large quantity of news online, helping students to navigate and analyse this

information. However, the replication of these strategies is limited because the tools

provided on the programs themselves are costly in terms of time to prepare, organise and

use. Consequently, I introduce News on Atlas, which has been designed to reduce these costs

and enable more schools to replicate the pedagogy underlying successful news literacy

programmes.

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Overview of News on Atlas (URL: http://www.newsonatlas.com) It has already been discussed in the first section of the literature review that the Internet can

and does, on occasion, promote global news literacy. More often than not though,

information obesity in all its manifestations, acts as a barrier to a globally news literate

citizenry. I argue that appropriate information processing tools are needed, which can

improve and facilitate global news literacy; I present News on Atlas as one such tool. My

rationale for designing and developing this web application has been to provide a low cost

resource that can be used as a fundamental part of the pedagogy underlying news literacy

programmes. News on Atlas is intended to promote global news literacy through both the

design and functionality of the user interface (see Figure 3), addressing several of the issues

highlighted in the literature review for why global news literacy has received scant attention

in education.

Fig 3. The basic features of News on Atlas as they appear on the homepage5.

5 Some of the visual elements and the layout of menu options have been changed for the smartphone version of the app in order to fit the smaller screen size.

Basic stats gives the user information about the number of custom feeds embedded.

The play button can be pressed at any time to actívate/pause the newsreel.

Preset zoom levels by continent

Tooltips for interface elements

The settings button enabling the user to redesign and edit the RSS

feeds.

Zoom in/out

Social networking buttons Menu buttons, allowing the user to

easily navigate the website.

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News on Atlas is a feed reader application, which gathers news feeds from various news

outlets across the Web6. I chose the atlas as the principle interface (shown in Figure 4)7,

because it provides a familiar and intuitive way of organising the news while staying relevant

to the application’s objective. Research by Townsend & Kahn (2013) provide evidence that

this is the case, as they find a visual preference heuristic such that consumers prefer visual

rather than verbal depiction of stimuli on websites. The more familiar the image, the

stronger the visual heuristic is likely to be. A text-based interface on the other hand, which

is used in most, if not all other feed reader applications, would not have the same appeal for

users, particularly for something as complex and extensive as global news.

The atlas interface accepts RSS news feeds from different news websites from around the

world. Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a popular type of web feed making information

available for other sites such as News on Atlas to share. Every time there is an update in the

news, a new RSS feed is published as a news headline. News on Atlas collates all of these

news headlines, so that users do not have to visit many individual sites in order to obtain up-

to-date news pertaining to different countries. Instead, the updated news from the

subscribed sites is collected and organised by country on the atlas interface. Using RSS

technology in this way, students and teachers can more easily keep abreast of global news.

Fig 4.

6 Currently, the application provides access to feeds from 218 different publishers. 7 The news feed windows that can be seen overlaying the atlas here are part of what I call the ‘newsreel’ animation. The newsreel displays recent news feeds from random countries on each of the six continents. It is set to play as soon as the user enters the website and disappears when the users begins hovering the cursor over the atlas. The newsreel can however, be reactivated at any time by pressing the play button, which is incorporated into the logo. For practical reasons, the newsreel is deactivated on tablet devices.

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Before I hired a programmer to do the backend coding for News on Atlas, I spent considerable

time designing the user interface. After all, as human-computer interface expert, Jef Raskin

(2000) put it, “As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product”. What I

learned in the process was that interface design is not so much about how the product looks

as how it works. After drawing up designs, the challenge was to ensure that the interface

was clear and concise at the same time. To distinguish News on Atlas from other news apps,

as well as help users overcome functional barriers to news literacy, the application needed to

allow users to quickly scan the atlas for news whilst providing easy access to multiple news

feeds. The journey to this stage took almost a year and involved several iterations. This is

not unusual, in fact web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen (1993) recommends that interface

designers build a usability-engineering life cycle around the concept of iteration. It was only

through a steady process of design refinement based on user testing that News on Atlas

evolved into the application it is now.

I present the overview of News on Atlas as a series of hypotheses about how it is expected to

improve users’ news literacy. Each hypothesis has been informed by the issues presented in

the literature review and the main iterations in the application’s design.

Hypothesis 1: By making it easier to check global news, users will read more global news.

The atlas interface works by enabling the user to simply hover8 over or click on a country to

view that country's news headlines. The user can see the most recent headlines in dynamic

news feed windows, which are displayed for as long as the user hovers over a country. If the

user wants to see all the news feeds for a particular country, clicking on the country will

display a static (but moveable) news feed window, allowing the user to scroll through all the

headlines pertaining to that country. Figure 5 illustrates both a dynamic news feed window

(for Guyana) and a static news feed window (for Libya). As shown by the ‘Add favourite’

option in the static window, it is also possible for the user to “favourite” a country so that

every time the user logs on the static news feed window for that country will already open.

In this way, the application provides a one-stop, one-glance access point to world news.

According to Glotzbach et al. (2009, pp. 2), the ability of RSS to provide single-click access to

the most current news increases the productivity of users by reducing search times for

relevant news topics. Moreover, unlike most other feed readers, the user need not decide

which feeds they want to receive and subscribe to them. The tedious job of adding RSS feeds

8 The hover function is currently only available on laptops and desktops. On tablet devices, the user needs to click on a country, which then displays the static news feed window.

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from multiple sources for each country has already been done, and these feeds are what I

call ‘built-in’, enabling the user to view them on the homepage by default (and customise

them, if necessary).

Fig 5.

Tewksbury and Rittenberg (2011, Ch. 6) emphasise that the characteristics of the medium

used to deliver the news are particularly important to helping users learn about current news

events. The use of an atlas itself as the main user interface is arguably not only logical but

also serves to facilitate the creation of what Tewksbury and Rittenberg would call ‘mental

models of concepts and their interrelationships’. Eveland and Dunwoody (2001) would back

this up, as they suggest that the links between concepts in a hyperlinked information

structure might resemble the neural networks of human memory. We can infer that RSS

feeds embedded into an atlas interface can function in the same way helping users to

associate the news with its country of origin.

The ability to hover over or click on any country to obtain news feeds is perhaps the most

significant design feature in terms of encouraging users to read more news. As Graber (1988)

argues, people are generally ‘cognitive misers’ - that is, they opt for an approach to new

information that they believe will involve the least mental effort. In other words, they scan

the information available, an approach that Graber feels is reasonable, given the fact that

most people are unlikely to be more than peripherally involved in politics. Similarly,

Tewksbury and Rittenberg (Ch. 6) state that incidental discovery of online news is becoming

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one of the many ways people get information about public events. For example, headlines

alone may provide just enough information to create some awareness that an issue, person,

or event exists. In such instances, Tewksbury and Rittenberg believe that learning of current

events can occur even in the absence of the selection and careful consumption of a news

story. Tewksbury, Weaver, & Maddex (2001) refer to such unintentional news reading as a

contemporary avenue for the acquisition of current affairs information.

The option for users to redesign the atlas layout according to their preferences is also a core

feature, as it helps give users the feeling that they are taking ownership of the application.

In doing so, there is an added incentive for users to return to the site and read more news in

the process.

By not only making global news easy to access then, but easy to stumble upon as well, there

is a strong argument that users of News on Atlas would read more global news than would

otherwise be the case. In doing so, this would represent the first step towards reducing the

barriers to accessing global news online. Sweller (1988) would describe such barriers in terms

of the ‘cognitive load’ of finding reliable news online. Hampton-Reeves et al. (2009, pp. 3)

for example, point to the fact that 'a lot of students use Google but are bewildered by the

amount of responses and will rarely look beyond the first couple of pages of search terms'.

Brown & Duguid (2001) go so far as to suggest that if people even perceive information to be

difficult to access, they will likely not seek it out. The cognitive load therefore, of finding

reliable news articles for specific countries is lessened by a format like News on Atlas. By

overlaying news feeds on an atlas, it makes it easy to access high quality news according to

country. Kynäslahti (2003) asserts that it is the 'convenience, expediency and immediacy' of

such technologies, which are valuable to teaching and learning’.

Hypothesis 2: News on Atlas facilitates greater critique and scrutinisation of news articles.

The functionality that allows the user to scroll through news headlines from multiple sources

is the key feature here that enables users to more easily critique and scrutinise news articles.

For example, in situations where the same news story is covered by two different publishers,

users can open up both news articles in the browser to compare similarities and differences

side-by-side. This is important because even though I handpicked most of these sources from

elite online news outlets, which are each subject to strict editorial practices, Mihailidis

(2011, pp. 3) makes the valid argument that the main incentive of such publishers is to

maximise profit. Consequently, the diversity of views presented by any individual publisher

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can be limited, and this could make cognitive bias on the part of news consumers more likely

if they are not exposed to other points of view.

Fig 6.

The membership option, which gives news consumers access to ‘My News on Atlas’, serves to

further bolster this benefit. As shown in Figure 6, members are afforded the functionality to

customise9 the RSS feeds embedded into the atlas interface. This means they can take out

feeds by country or by publisher and add their own feeds from other websites. These

websites need not be other news sites, but could be RSS feeds from blogs, wikis, or podcasts.

In this way, the user can easily see how their custom feeds compare to the built-in feeds,

which could further challenge any previously conceived ideas that the user may have had.

Additionally, the user has the option to add notes for any country, which are visible in the

static news feed windows. This may come in useful for research purposes if the user needs to

keep track of news by country.

Perhaps what is most important about the customisation feature is that it can facilitate the

constant review and scrutiny of the cognitive schema underlying News on Atlas. Without this

feature, the fact that I have chosen the feeds that have been embedded into the atlas

interface, could be interpreted as a fixed cognitive schema, a way of thinking that is imposed

on users and cannot be changed. Whitworth (2009, pp. 13) for instance, asserts that the

control of informational resources, what he refers to as 'noöpolitics', becomes manifested in

the design of information processing systems. Similarly, Limberg at al. (2012) explain that

tools are not neutral to the users' activities, they are impregnated with perspectives, which

mediate their understanding of the world. This implies that it is important to reveal and

9 For each country which is customised (e.g. if it is made a favourite, feeds have been added or a note has been written), its colour changes on the map to help the user quickly identify his or her countries of interest.

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make explicit the perspectives, values and beliefs connected to specific tools for information

processing. By allowing users to change the feeds as they see fit, the cognitive schema

underlying News on Atlas can be put under constant review and scrutiny.

The Find News field serves as a useful research instrument. By typing a key word, e.g.

'Poverty', all the RSS feeds with this word in their link address become visible and the

countries that have headlines with this key word become highlighted (see Figure 7).

Fig 7.

The fact that this search window can be moved or minimised enables the user to see very

clearly the countries to which the key word applies. Unlike the filter bubbles that may

distort search results on Google or Facebook because of personalised search algorithms, the

News on Atlas search provides the same results for all users.

Hypothesis 3: News on Atlas promotes international mindedness.

Educating today’s students for international mindedness underlies the Learner Profile of the

International Baccalaureate (IB). Central to the IB understanding of international mindedness

is the notion of intercultural understanding and one of the key concepts relating to the term

is global citizenship (Sing h & Qi, 2013, pp. 10). Harwood & Bailey (2012) provide an

explanation for the importance of international mindedness, stating that the current socio-

political climate and recurring economic crises have created enormous tensions on societies

across the world and for individuals within them. Within this rapidly changing context they

suggest, it is the aspiration of many educators and their institutions to develop students'

international mindedness. International mindedness is an understanding that individuals can

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improve their knowledge of the world through developing a shared understanding of

local/global realities and accepting responsibility to take appropriate corresponding actions.

International mindedness is therefore intrinsically tied to global news literacy; it is only by

reading about and looking at global news events with a critical eye that international

mindedness can be promoted.

As Reese (2011, pp. 1) explains, and this has already been highlighted in the literature

review, the news flow among countries is imbalanced, producing distorted images both within

and across countries. Reese states, for example, that world news coverage is often limited to

the developed world, only covering the "third world" when something bad happens, such as

political upset or natural disasters. In this way, the dominant Western news agencies can be

seen as exerting hegemonic power over the world's news, and it is this wielding of hegemonic

power that is arguably a key barrier to promoting international mindedness. Global news

literacy, and therefore international mindedness can be improved, by being able to

understand the news media with particular awareness of one’s social location within an

international context. Reese (pp. 3) states that:

'We obviously want to approach news literacy with full consideration to the global context, and find appropriate instructional strategies, but how do to this is often a challenge'.

As a global news reader, News on Atlas is a suitably designed tool to address the challenge. It

is a transnational news platform providing users immediate access to both international and

domestic online news outlets. In doing so, News on Atlas can facilitate a basic awareness of

how national media contexts differ, which Reese considers to be a prerequisite to global

news literacy. No matter where users are from, they can understand the "global" through its

connection to a specific local context.

The use of an atlas interface in which to access news feeds pertaining to different countries

is particularly important for helping to promote international mindedness. If users are aware

of a news event taking place in a particular country, for example, but would not be able to

find that country on a world map, the 'Find Country' option enables users to identify exactly

where the country is on the atlas and gives them up-to-date access to the relevant news from

multiple publishers regarding that country. By promoting international mindedness in this

way, News on Atlas is a tool that is contributing to what Volkmer (2002) would refer to as a

new political space with the capacity to pressure national politics and provide communication

not otherwise possible on a national level. For this same reason, it can also be seen as a tool

that Whitworth (2009, pp. 17) calls 'counterhegemonic' insofar as it has been designed as an

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educational application to foster “organic intellectuals”, a term discussed in the literature

review.

Limitations of News on Atlas

At the time of writing, there are several limitations to this application which need to be

acknowledged, because these issues may adversely affect the uptake of this tool.

Firstly, unlike mainstream online news websites or other news applications, there is no

editing or filtering of the news. One news feed is not privileged above any other feed; all of

the feeds remain hidden until the user hovers over or clicks on a country. All of the feeds are

treated with equal value therefore, and in this way the web application implicitly endorses

relativism. As Whitworth (2009, pp. 14) explains, it cannot simply be said that cognitive

schema are damaging, because there may be times when it helps to direct attention. If there

is a major story taking place in Croatia for example, this will be missed unless the user

happens to look at Croatia. There are times then, when a cognitive schema, which places a

value of importance of different stories can be useful. Since News on Atlas currently does

not prioritise one story over another, for example by having a top story section, the

application should not be used in isolation for the purpose of keeping abreast of global news.

The second issue is that there is no built-in translator. For this reason, I have used mainly

English language publishers, with some Spanish outlets for Latin America. Although most

countries have online national newspapers written in English, it would certainly provide a

wider range of perspectives if national newspapers written in the local language were also

included. The fact that this is not the case means that for many countries the news is still

domesticated through the national frames of reference of countries such as the US and UK.

For example, both the New York Times and Guardian publish news feeds for most countries in

the world, but these publishers represent a western perspective. In order to provide a more

global coverage, translated feeds need to be embedded into the atlas interface.

It has already been mentioned in hypothesis 1 that News on Atlas may lead to more incidental

reading of news. The third issue then, it could be argued, is that this could cause news

consumers to become lazy and not actually read the source articles themselves, only the

headlines. If this is the case, this would certainly limit the potential for News on Atlas to

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improve users' news literacy, which requires readers to critique and scrutinise what they

read.

Evaluation Methodology

The ultimate goal of a news literacy course according to Fleming (2013, pp. 5), is for students

to become more regular and more sceptical news readers. The most practical way to

measure the potential effectiveness of News on Atlas for achieving this end is to analyse

usage data of how people use the application and how often. It is also useful to look at

qualitative data to identify specific examples of how the use of News on Atlas by teachers

and students may improve their news literacy. In this way, inferences can be made about the

role of News on Atlas for improving users' news literacy.

Data collection consisted of three main sources: (1) bespoke analytics built into News on

Atlas, (2) a survey completed by teachers and (3) focus group interviews with students.

1. The bespoke analytics collected the following data:

- Type of user: General User, Student or Teacher (collected on registration)

- Number of visits onto the membership site per user

- Average number of countries clicked per visit

- Number of countries “favourited”

- Average number of times an RSS feed is clicked per visit

- Number of custom RSS feeds added

- Number of notes made

- Whether or not the design of My News on Atlas has been changed

The first analytic has been included to get a sense for how the application is used in an

educational context. All of the other analytics can provide a detailed picture of how users

interact with the application. The one limitation to these analytics however, is that in order

to be recorded, they require users to be logged into the membership section of the website,

My News on Atlas. Google Analytics has been used in conjunction with the bespoke analytics

to determine the amount of traffic the website receives, as this does not require users to be

logged into the membership section.

2. The teacher survey (see appendix) was designed to capture an overview of teachers'

perceptions of global news media, their likelihood to refer to media when teaching and their

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opinion about the role of the news for developing international mindedness. In order to

capture as large a pool of respondents as possible and for the practical benefits of data

collection, I disseminated this survey as a Google form to both primary and secondary

teachers within the school. It was semi-structured such that there were specific questions

that had to be answered, but the response format was open-ended. According to Cohen et

al., (2011, Ch. 20), semi-structured questions set the agenda but do not presuppose the

nature of the response. Questions were designed to gauge teachers' news literacy and their

awareness of its relevance.

3. Before and after focus group interviews were held with four IB students to glean

information about how their approach to reading news had changed as a result of using News

on Atlas. In order to minimise bias, I conducted this interview with students with whom I was

unacquainted. The interview method, according to Cohen et al. (2011, pp. 349), can uncover

deeper motivations and perceptions on the part of the respondents, so has been included

here to highlight specific affordances of the application. A focus group was preferred to

individual interviews because of the practical advantages and the fact that a group response

was being sought. Following Silverman's (1993) suggestions, bias was minimised by keeping

the questions structured and sequenced identically for each respondent. Each participant

was given a 'Consent to Participate in Research' form in which 'ground rules' were explained

(e.g. only one person talks at a time) and confidentiality was assured. The same four

students were interviewed again one week after they had been using the application to

determine its effect on their news literacy.

Data & Analysis

Teacher Survey

One week prior to the launch of News on Atlas, I sent the news survey to all teaching staff in

the school, and I discuss here some key patterns that emerge. Although this cannot be used

to evaluate the application directly, it does provide a means to analyse its potential

usefulness for the teaching community.

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Fig 6.

Referring to Figure 6, out of the 83 teachers that completed the survey, 34 (41%) claimed to

read or watch the news most days of the week. Interestingly, 21 teachers (25%) said that

they read the news just once per week or very rarely. When asked if they thought student

learning would be enhanced by reading the news, 66 teachers (80%) said "yes", with the

remaining 13 teachers (20%) stating "no". When the 80% "yes" group were asked to briefly

explain why they thought student learning would be enhanced by reading the news, most

either alluded to the importance of the real world applications of news literacy for students,

or that they expected it to improve students' literacy skills.

The 20% of teachers who neither saw news media enhancing the learning of their students,

nor used or made reference to news media in the classroom, were predominantly teachers in

subject areas that did not lend themselves to the use of news media, e.g. maths and music.

For the remaining teachers from other subject areas, it can be inferred that the News on

Atlas could be a useful tool.

Fig 7.

10

2734

11 100

010203040

Morethan

once perday

Everyday Mostdays

Once perweek

Veryrarely

I don'tread orwatch

the news

Num

ber o

f tea

cher

s

Frequency

How often do you read the news?

318

98

242

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Internet (mainstream news sites)Internet (news apps for tablets and smartphones)Internet  (Social  media  websites,  e.g.  Facebook  and…

NewspapersTelevision

Radio

Number of teachers

Sou

rce

for

new

s

Which is your preferred source for news?

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Figure 7 illustrates that the most popular method for keeping up-to-date with news is through

mainstream news websites such as the BBC and CNN. More than half of teachers (58%) favour

the use of the Internet for checking the news, in contrast to only 10% who read traditional

newspapers. Television proved to be the second most popular choice for keeping abreast of

news with 29% of teachers stating that broadcast news was their preferred medium. These

results indicate that although old media is still used by many, the majority of teachers prefer

the use of digital technologies for keeping up-to-date with news. This would suggest that for

most teachers, they would be comfortable using News on Atlas as a teaching resource, if they

recognised the need for it.

Fig 8.

Figure 8 illustrates that all the teachers perceive news to be important, with 78% of

respondents stating that they thought 'News can help us to understand the world we live in,

but it is important that we compare different sources of news in order to better judge its

reliability'. Given that News on Atlas enables users to easily compare different sources of

news, this feature should in theory be one of the main attractions of using the tool. Forty-

one percent of teachers also reported that they find it difficult to keep abreast of news,

which should be an additional benefit of News on Atlas for this group of teachers.

4

65

13

Which sentence best describes your overall perception of news?

News can be very unreliable so it is important to always critique and scrutinize everything you read or hear.

News can help us to understand the world we live in, but it is important that we compare different sources ofnews in order to better judge its reliability

News plays a key role in a democratic society by serving as a source of information and debate for experts andthe public.

Keeping up-to-date with news affairs is not important

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Focus group interview with students - Before exposure to News on Atlas

The focus group interview was held with four students studying for an IB in Information

Technology in a Global Society (ITGS). Minor editing has taken place to remove speech

elements such as hesitation and repetition and also to retain the anonymity of the

respondents.

On your course do you need to keep up with news?

Student 3: “Yes, for example Mr A is always givin' us articles, but also we need to be reading articles to be updated with new technology because we need to know this stuff for our exams, it really helps with our grades”. Student 4: “We read articles like one or two times a week. And like Student 2 said, this is helpful for us, because when making an argument or debating about stuff we get more information from the articles and that way we learn more about the subject...”

ITGS is typical of many social science/humanities subjects on the IB curriculum insofar as it

requires students to keep abreast of what is happening in the news. This would explain why

students generally responded to this question by saying that the news was ‘helpful’ for their

course. All of the students I interviewed though, seemed to genuinely enjoy their course,

which was their motivation for reading relevant news articles.

Similar to the responses gleaned from teachers, students emphasised their preference for

using the Internet over traditional paper-based newspapers for keeping up-to-date with news.

What do you think is the most useful way of keep up-to-date with the news? Student 2: “I think the Internet is better because, for example, in our case we live in El Salvador and the newspaper from here it's very subjective and it only shows news that are relevant to, for example, the politics here and economy here. And, for example, in my case I'm really interested in also not just the country, but the whole world, so I think that it's better to use the Internet”.

The other students all agreed with Student 2's response, preferring to use the Internet

because of the greater quantity of sources available. Two of the students also mentioned the

accessibility and convenience of using the Internet, which they felt were particularly

important factors. However, when asked if there could be any disadvantages to using the

Internet, the students showed some awareness of its potential pitfalls.

Student 1: “Well, I think the disadvantage of the Internet is that everyone has access to it right, so anyone can basically write anything on blogs or whatever. You cannot be trusting that everything in the Internet is saying is true”.

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Student 2: “I think one disadvantage of the Internet is that sometimes people don't know what to search for and they rely on for example, Wikipedia, that's the first thing on Google, for example. And so they like don't search for a variety of sources, so they might be influenced by just one opinion”.

In general, the students appear to be a homogenous group in terms of their attitudes and

approaches to reading news, specifically preferring to use the Internet over any other media.

As with the teachers, they did express awareness that sources available on the Internet may

not always be reliable either, and they agreed that different sources should be compared in

order to verify the reliability of a particular news source. That being said, given the students'

easy access to and preference for using the Internet, the affordances provided by News on

Atlas should make it a useful tool for students.

Analytics

I shared the News on Atlas URL with my work colleagues on 6th June, 2014 and then with my

peers at the University of Manchester on 9th June. I will now look at analytics data from 6th

June up to 5th July, 2014.

During this timeframe, there were 131 unique visitors 128 of whom signed up for

membership, including 34 teachers, 37 students, and 54 general users. Referring to Figure 9,

the amount of interaction with the website during this timeframe was minimal; on average,

teachers visited the membership section of the site 1.5 times, students 2.4 times and general

users 2.6 times. According to the Google Analytics represented in Figure 10, the average

session duration was just 46 seconds. This perhaps can largely be explained by the timing of

the website's launch, which was just 2-weeks before the end of term when the school was

wrapping up for the summer holidays. It could also be said that, implicitly at least, by

sharing the application with others, I was asking users to look at the application itself rather

than its content.

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Fig 9.

Fig 10. Google Analytics: 6th June to 5th July 2014

Nevertheless, with the usage data available above, some tentative observations can be made.

Teachers and general users appear to click on approximately nine times more countries than

students. Students ranged in age from 9 to 18 years; most showed little interest in opening

up news feed windows. This would support conclusions made by Buckingham (2000) that

young people are at best disinterested in news, or actively dislike it. Students in general

though, were more likely to "play" with the different features of the web application than

either teachers or general users. The analytics showed that students were more than three

times as likely to customise the atlas interface, twice as likely to add custom feeds, and the

students that did click on a country, were 50% more likely to add at least one as a favourite.

This suggests that students appreciated the interactivity afforded to them from News on Atlas

more than teachers and general users.

00.5

11.5

22.5

3

# Visits # Clicks onCountries (per

sessionaverage)

# Favourites # Clicks overfeeds (per

sessionaverage)

# Custom RSS # Notes Stored Is the mapcustomised?

Bespoke Analytics: 6th June to 5th July 2014

Teacher Student General User

Student ID: 7125928

32

On average, teachers clicked on an RSS feed just 0.6 times and students and general users

just 0.4 times. These statistics could suggest that most users tend to be incidental news

consumers; they are cognitive misers who prefer to be given news rather than follow up on

clickable headlines from the atlas interface.

Focus group interview with students - After exposure to News on Atlas

During the week of sharing News on Atlas with colleagues at the school, the teacher on the

IGTS course subsequently shared this application with his students. I provide below some

transcripts from my focus group interview with the same four students as before, which

highlight specific examples of their experience of using News on Atlas.

What do you think is the purpose of the web application, News on Atlas? Student 2: “To make it easier for the user to get news on like the country of interest, and also personalise it because you can edit the RSS feeds and enter the websites you like to read the news”. Student 3: “I agree with Student 2, basically I think it's to make the search for news easier for the user because like personally for me I like sometimes to find news about, I don't know China, and it's very difficult since like you have to do a five-minute search and with that I just click China and all the relevant news will appear so it's very easy”. Student 1: “Well, with News on Atlas the first thing you see is like the map, and like yeah you would get curious and look at other countries so therefore you would be reading more news and learning more”.

The students were able to quickly understand what the application was, why it was useful

and how to use it. The other students agreed with Student 1 about how the atlas interface

could generate curiosity, which ultimately led them to read more news.

When discussing the effectiveness of News on Atlas as an educational application, all students

considered the membership feature to be critical; the ability to add RSS feeds to the atlas

interface is seen to not only to direct them toward more news, but also to make them more

critical news consumers in the process.

Student 1: '... if you personalise it and you would know like that ok so maybe this website I have put, maybe is not very reliable because here this built-in feed says something else”. Student 2: “Yeah I think it is effective because you can get different sources from the ones you trust and the ones you like and also sources like the ones already there so yeah it would be better since you would have the news that you like so... you'd be reading a lot of news”.

Student ID: 7125928

33

Student 3: “If you put your own RSS you can compare them to the other RSS and you can see if it makes sense what another article is saying”. Student 4: “Well, I think for example, if something happens in Russia and the US, for example if you just go to like the CNN news, the first thing you would get is something which is the US point of view of it, but in the News on Atlas you can go to the US and Russia and you would like be able to see the differences and make your own conclusions based on both things...”

Firstly, students anticipate reading more news, because they could add feeds from sources

they like and thus become more knowledgeable about current events. Secondly, being a

member enables the students to compare their choice of RSS feeds with those already built

into the atlas. The students recognised that the act of comparing different articles made it

easier for them to critique and scrutinise the news.

Reflection

Laurillard (2012, pp. 2) states that 'too often technologies are key drivers of education,

though their development is rarely driven by education'. From the outset however, News on

Atlas has been developed specifically with one objective in mind - to improve the news

literacy of its users. This paper has looked at the importance of news literacy, its standing in

education and the effectiveness of News on Atlas for improving relevant news literacy

learning outcomes.

The need for appropriate information processing tools which enable users to easily find,

compare, and analyse news is more important than ever. This is especially true when it

comes to global news, because most consumers still interpret news pertaining to other

countries through the filter of their national news outlets. Since these outlets are motivated

to maximise profits and fulfil geopolitical agendas, any one nation's press coverage continues

to support a national bias.

In addition to the factors limiting news literacy, the distortion of global news through a

national frame of reference is a critical factor limiting global news literacy. As a result, less

global news is being read, critiqued and scrutinised. This matters because we are living in an

increasingly interconnected world; our economic, environmental and social problems to name

just a few, are becoming more global by the day. As global citizens, it is important to be

able to understand the relationship between events in global and local contexts, because the

two are now inextricably linked. Moreover, news literacy is a central catalyst for

international mindedness, which is fundamental to academic programmes such as the

Student ID: 7125928

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International Baccalaureate, and it is increasingly being quoted as one of the key traits and

values of many educational institutions.

Currently, the educational provision of news literacy, let alone global news literacy, is

neglected in most cases. The reasons for this can be attributed to a range of factors, which

ultimately boil down to the challenges of incorporating such a subject into a curriculum,

young peoples' lack of interest in news media and the lack of relevance the subject holds in

the eyes of educators. Nevertheless, it is important that these problems are overcome,

because the existence of reliable and high-quality journalism largely depends on the

willingness of future citizens to demand and support it.

Based on the literature reviewed from Fleming, Hobbs and Mihailidis, recommendations have

been made about what works when it comes to news literacy pedagogy. The problem is that,

in the main, successful news literacy programmes are costly to replicate. A multitude of

tools tend to be used, and given the ephemeral nature of news itself, it is not easy to apply

the same pedagogy to a different context. What is needed in part, I argue, is a tool with

multiple functionalities.

News on Atlas is my attempt at creating such a tool. It provides users the functionality to

quickly find, access and compare news feeds from multiple publishers around the world for

each country. In doing so, my intention has been to improve the global news literacy of users

by making it easier for them to be more regular and discerning news consumers.

Considerable time has been spent on the iteration process of the user interface and the

backend coding to make this possible.

However, some limitations still remain, namely that it encourages an incidental approach to

reading news, which may run counter to the careful reading of news stories. The usage data

available so far is too tepid to make definitive claims about the application's effectiveness,

but suggest users mainly take a "cognitive miser" approach to reading the news, in most cases

scanning headlines and not going much further. Most users have not yet fully taken

advantage of the membership section of the website, and Google Analytics indicates only

minimal traffic on the website.

As prefigured in the overview of News on Atlas and evidenced from the data, it can be

inferred that news consumers prefer to be directed toward the most popular or trending

stories. For example, both students and teachers indicated they mainly use ‘mainstream

Student ID: 7125928

35

news sites’ for keeping abreast of the news, which show them which stories are most

significant in the eyes of the publisher. What is needed for the next iteration of News on

Atlas is a drop-down window (automatically displayed upon accessing the website) that shows

the top ten news headlines from around the world. Through Facebook and Twitter

integration, it would be possible to create an algorithm that ranks the importance of a story

based on how often a story is ‘Liked’ or ‘Shared’. The ranking of the top ten news headlines

would be displayed on the drop-down window, overlaying the atlas interface that highlights

the relevant countries. Additionally, in order to provide users better access to news stories,

several filters need to be applied which enable the user to view the atlas through different

lenses (e.g. Economic, Environmental, Sport, etc.). The integration of Google Translate

would also create the opportunity for more foreign news publishers to be included in the

atlas interface giving users a wider variety of news sources and further helping to overcome

national bias. Once these new features have been integrated, my intention is to get News on

Atlas optimised for search engines so that it is easier to find by a wider audience.

The current version of News on Atlas still has several affordances, though unfortunately the

timing of the application's launch was less than ideal to trial it in an educational context, as

it was introduced just before the school community broke up for summer holidays. For the

purpose of news literacy projects and as a tool to assist a broad range of curricular subjects,

there is considerable potential for this application to prove useful. Data collected from the

teacher survey and focus group interviews show that teachers and students favour the

Internet for keeping abreast of global news over alternative media, and they recognise the

importance of comparing different sources to check the reliability of news stories. During

the focus group interviews, students were able to give several pertinent examples that

highlighted the application's usefulness, specifically referring to the atlas interface and its

customisability. According to the students, these features made it likely that they would

read more news while making it easier for them to compare different news sources.

In order to ensure that News on Atlas is successful in achieving its intended purpose, it is

critical that the application is implemented meaningfully into an educational context.

Teachers need to recognise that news is a fundamental part of the relationship between

citizens and political power, and they need to instil this message into their students. Without

an understanding of the factors that have driven the creation of News on Atlas, its intended

objectives for users are not likely to be met. As Laurillard (pp. 2) explains, '...it is

imperative that teachers and lecturers place themselves in a position where they are able to

Student ID: 7125928

36

master the use of digital technologies, to harness their power, and put them to the proper

service of education'.

Conclusion

By bringing together news publishers from around the world and putting their stories in an

easy to use atlas interface, the first steps towards a truly transnational news platform have

been taken. News on Atlas has been designed with some clear learning objectives in mind,

and the functionality afforded to users makes improvements in their global news literacy

much more achievable. There is still some way to go, and how News on Atlas holds up over

time in its endeavour to improve users' global news literacy remains to be seen. What is clear

though, is that News on Atlas can have an important role to play in education. It comes at a

time when most students and teachers are already very familiar with the Internet, and global

news literacy is more important than ever.

Student ID: 7125928

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Appendix

Bespoke Analytics: Raw tabulated data used for figure 9.

News Survey // Cuestionario sobre Noticias

This survey will not take long to complete. Please answer all questions honestly. // No le va

a tomar mucho tiempo llenar este cuestionario. Por favor responda a las preguntas honestamente.

Your abc-net.edu.sv username will be recorded when you submit this form.

a. Which section of the school do you work in? // ¿En qué sección del colegio trabaja? *

a. Primary // Primaria

b. Secondary // Secundaria

c. Both, Primary and Secondary // Ambos, Primaria y Secundaria

b. How often do you read or watch the news? // ¿Qué tan a menudo lee o ve las

noticias? *

a. Never // Nunca

b. Very rarely // Muy rara vez

c. Once a week // Una vez a la semana

d. Most days during the week // La mayoría de días durante la semana

e. Everyday // Todos los días

f. More than once a day // Más de una vez al día

c. Which is your preferred source for news? // ¿Cuál es su fuente preferida de noticias?

Type

#

Visits

# Clicks

on

Countries

(per

session

average)

#

Favourites

# Clicks over

feeds (per

session

average)

# Custom

RSS

# Notes

Stored

Is the map

customised?

#

Users

Teacher 1.5 1.9 0.6 0.6 0.2 0.06 0.06 34

Student 2.4 0.2 0.9 0.4 0.4 0.03 0.2 37

General

User 2.6 1.8 0.5 0.4 0.2 0.04 0.2 54

Student ID: 7125928

43

*

a. Internet (mainstream news sites, e.g. BBC, CNN, etc.) // Internet

(sitios de noticias principales, ej. BBC, CNN, etc.)

b. Internet (mainly news apps for tablets and smartphones, etc.) //

Internet (mayormente aplicaciones de noticias para tablets y smartphones)

c. Internet (social media websites, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) //

Internet (redes sociales, ej. Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

d. Newspapers // Periódicos

e. Television // Televisión

f. Radio // Radio

g. I do not check the news // Yo no reviso las noticias

h. Other:

d. Which sections of the news are of most interest to you? // ¿Cuáles secciones de las

noticias son de su mayor interés? *Tick all that apply // Seleccione todas las que apliquen

a. All types of current affairs specific to my home country // Todo tipo de

noticias de actualidad referentes a mi país de origen

b. Economics & Business // Economía y Finanzas

c. Health // Salud

d. International news // Noticias Internacionales

e. Science & Environment // Ciencia y el Medio Ambiente

f. Technology // Tecnología

g. Entertainment & Arts // Entretenimiento y Arte

h. Education // Educación

i. Politics // Política

j. Sports // Deporte

k. Other:

e. Do you think that the learning of your students would be enhanced, if they read the

news? // ¿Piensa que el aprendizaje de sus alumnos mejoraría si leyeran las noticias? *

a. Yes // Sí

b. No // No

f. If you answered "yes" to the last question, please briefly explain why you think your

students' learning would be enhanced by reading the news. // Si su respuesta fue "sí" a la

pregunta anterior, por favor explique brevemente por qué piensa que el aprendizaje de sus

alumnos mejoraría si leyeran las noticias. Do you ever make use of or refer to current news

Student ID: 7125928

44

affairs in your teaching? // ¿Alguna vez utiliza o hace referencia a noticias de actualidad en sus

lecciones? *

a. Yes // Sí

b. No // No

g. If you answered "yes" to the last question, please specify with an example how you

have used or referred to news in the classroom. // Si su respuesta fue "sí" a la pregunta anterior,

por favor especifique con un ejemplo cómo utiliza o hace referencia a noticias de actualidad en

su clase. Which grade(s) do you teach? // ¿Qué grado(s) enseña? *

a. Prekinder // Pre-kínder

b. Kinder // Kínder

c. Prepa // Prepa

d. First // Primero

e. Second // Segundo

f. Third // Tercero

g. Fourth // Cuarto

h. Fifth // Quinto

i. Sixth // Sexto

j. Seventh // Séptimo

k. Eighth // Octavo

l. Ninth // Noveno

m. Tenth // Décimo

n. Eleventh // Onceavo

o. Twelfth // Doceavo

h. If you work in secondary, which faculty does your subject belong to? // Si usted

trabaja en secundaria, ¿a qué facultad pertenece su materia? If you teach across more than one

subject faculty, please tick all the faculties that apply. // Si enseña en más de una facultad por

favor marque todas las que aplican.

a. Arts (including Drama, Film, Theatre & Visual Arts) // Arte (incluído

Drama, Cine, Teatro y Artes Visuales)

b. English // Inglés

c. French // Francés

d. Humanities & Social Sciences // Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales

e. ICT/Computer Studies // Computación

f. Mathematics // Matemáticas

g. Music // Música

Student ID: 7125928

45

h. PE // Educación Física

i. Sciences // Ciencia

j. Spanish // Español

k. Other:

i. Which sentence best describes your overall perception of news? // ¿Qué oración

mejor descibe su percepción general de las noticias? *

a. News can be very unreliable so it is important to always critique and

scrutinize everything you read or hear. // Las noticias pueden ser poco confiables, por lo que es

importante siempre criticarlas y escudriñar todo lo que uno ve o escucha.

b. Keeping up-to-date with current news affairs is not important. //

Mantenerse al día en noticias de actualidad no es importante.

c. News can help us to understand the world we live in, but it is important

that we compare different sources of news in order to better judge its reliability. // Las noticias

pueden ayudarnos a entender el mundo en el que vivimos, pero es importante comparar diferentes

fuentes de información para juzgar de una mejor manera su confiabilidad.

d. News plays a key role in a democratic society by serving as a source of

information and debate for experts and the public. // Las noticias juegan un papel importante en

una sociedad democrática al servir como una fuente de información y debate para expertos y para el

público.

j. Which of these reasons would you say discourages or prevents you from using news

media in the classroom? // ¿Cuáles de estas razones diría usted que le desmotivan o impiden

utilizar medios noticiosos en la clase? *

a. It's not relevant to my subject area. // No es relevante a mi materia.

b. News is constantly changing. // Las noticias cambian constantemente.

c. News is often sensationalised and is not always reliable. // Las noticias

son muchas veces sensacionalistas y no siempre confiables.

d. My students are not interested in news. // A mis alumnos no les

interesan las noticias.

e. There are practical factors of bringing news media into the classroom,

e.g. limited computers, etc. // Existen factores prácticos que dificultan llevar medios noticiosos a la

clase, ej. limitado número de computadoras, etc.

f. News can be highly political and this can create a contentious

environment in the classroom. // Las noticias pueden tener un alto tinte político y esto puede crear

un ambiente polémico en la clase.

g. It's not appropriate or useful for my students. // No es apropiado ni útil

Student ID: 7125928

46

para mis alumnos.

h. News can be too negative or depressing. // Las noticias pueden ser muy

negativas o deprimientes.

i. Other:

k. On a scale of 1 to 10, how important would you say it is for our students to be

internationally-minded? En una escala del 1 al 10, ¿qué tan importante diría usted que es que

nuestros estudiantes tengan una mentalidad internacional? *

l. m. 1

n. 2

o. 3

p. 4

q. 5

r. 6

s. 7

t. 8

u. 9

v. 10

w.

x. Not important at all // No es

nada importante y. z. aa. bb. cc. dd. ee. ff. gg. hh.

ii. Extremely

important //

Extremadamente importante

jj. Which broad category of news do you consider to be the most important? // ¿Qué

amplia categoría de noticias considera que es más importante? *

a. Local news affairs pertaining to home country or immediate locality

// Noticas locales concernientes al país de origen o localidad inmediata

b. International news affairs // Noticias internacionales

kk. Do you sometimes find it difficult to keep abreast of news from around the

world? // ¿Le parece difícil mantenerse al día de las noticias alrededor del mundo? *

a. Yes // Sí

No // No