Media Literacy
Practical skills for reading what you see online, not just being told to "do your own research."
The Five Key Questions of Media Literacy
The real framework behind media literacy: where the Center for Media Literacy's five questions come from, and how to use them on something you saw today.
What Is Media Literacy?
A plain-language definition of media literacy, why 'read critically' undersells it, and how fast it's turning from a classroom ideal into state law.
Media vs. Digital vs. Information Literacy
Three literacy terms with real overlap and real differences: where each one actually came from, what it covers, and which one you should reach for.
How Many Types of Media Are There?
Why one source says four and another fifty-seven, which of the two competing frameworks actually catches a paid message, and what the research shows.
Why Media Literacy Matters More Now Than 10 Years Ago
The decade-over-decade numbers on news trust and how people now find news, plus what a preregistered experiment measured when readers got media literacy tips.
Kitty Genovese: The Story That Outlived Its Correction
The 1964 Times said 38 people watched Kitty Genovese die and none called the police. The trial transcripts and the Times itself say otherwise.
Roko's Basilisk: The Post That Got Famous by Deletion
Roko's basilisk was posted to LessWrong in July 2010, deleted, and banned for five years. The Hacker News mention record shows it got famous four years later.
Ethos, Pathos, Logos: The Three Levers Every Persuasive Post Pulls
Aristotle's three means of persuasion, and why manipulative content doesn't invent a fourth lever — it counterfeits credibility, emotion, and logic instead.
Stockholm Syndrome: The Diagnosis the Patient Never Agreed To
The psychiatrist who coined Stockholm syndrome in 1973 never interviewed the hostage he based it on. She spent the next five decades saying he got it wrong.
The Mandela Effect: What Actually Explains Shared False Memories
Thousands of people confidently misremember the same wrong detail. A 2022 study measured why, and the explanation isn't a parallel universe.
The Uncanny Valley: Why Your Gut Feeling No Longer Catches AI Fakes
A 1970 hypothesis about eerie robots became the go-to explanation for why AI faces feel "off." Recent research shows it stopped working for still images years ago.
Allegory: The Persuasion Technique Hiding Behind "Just a Story"
The technique that let dissident writers smuggle truth past censors is the same one that lets communicators dodge accountability today.
Catfishing: Why People Actually Do It, In Their Own Words
A 2024 study analyzed catfish perpetrators' own accounts of why they do it. Financial gain was one motive among four, not the whole story.
Rhetorical Questions: The Persuasion Trick That Cuts Both Ways
A 1981 study found rhetorical questions don't add persuasion on their own. They add thinking, which helps a strong argument and exposes a weak one.
Cognitive Dissonance: Why Paying You Less Convinces You More
A 1959 Stanford study paid people $1 or $20 to lie about a boring task. People paid less ended up believing the lie, and the same mechanism gets used on you on purpose.
Ad Hominem: The Attack That Isn't Always a Fallacy
John Locke's 1690 Essay records the term meaning nearly the opposite of a personal attack. A 2018 study shows which ad hominem attacks actually persuade people.
Confidence Interval: The 95% Number That's Only Right 60% of the Time
A 2022 study checked 1,931 polls' 95% confidence intervals against real election results. The actual hit rate was 60%, and telling people didn't fix the overconfidence.
D.B. Cooper: The Name Came From a Bad Phone Call, Not the Hijacker
The man who hijacked Flight 305 bought his ticket as Dan Cooper. A reporter's garbled phone call to an airline turned him into D.B. Cooper, and it was never fixed.
Hyperbole Examples: The Legal Line Between a Joke and a Lie
A federal appeals court had to decide whether "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza." was a lie or just hyperbole. The test it used works on more than pizza slogans.
Deductive vs. Inductive Reasoning: Valid Isn't the Same as True
A deductive argument can be valid and still false. Valid only means the conclusion follows the premises, not that they're true, which is where everyday persuasion hides.
Confounding Variable: A Treatment That Won Every Subgroup and Lost
A 1986 study found one treatment beat the other on small stones and on large stones, then lost once both groups were combined. That reversal has a name.
Free Media Literacy Teaching Resources: A Directory With Every Link Checked
16 free media literacy curricula, games, and reference tools for classrooms and libraries, with every link checked directly rather than trusted from the organization's own claims. Three are dead, retiring, or orphaned.
Syllogism: The Billboard That Called a Photo 'Proof' of Communism
A 1957 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. became a 1965 billboard calling him a communist, using an argument that's invalid even though both premises are true.
MKUltra: What the Surviving Records Actually Show
MKUltra was real. The CIA's 1977 testimony documented 149 subprojects and unwitting testing in just 6 of them. What's proven, what's disputed, and what got added later.
Loaded Language: When a Single Word Wins the Argument
Jeremy Bentham named the trick in 1824. NPR's own public editor traced how the outlet's vocabulary for one event changed four times in a single afternoon.
Adverse Selection: Rejected as Trivial, Then Proven by a State
Three journals called Akerlof's 1970 paper too obvious to print. Decades later, a state built his exact scenario, then quietly removed half of it.
Reasonable Doubt: What the Standard Actually Requires, and Who Copies It
A federal court's own jury instruction defines the phrase in one paragraph. A 1969 tobacco memo shows how the same word gets borrowed outside a courtroom.
Belief Perseverance Is Real. The Most Famous Case Study Proving It Isn't.
A 1975 Stanford study proved belief perseverance in the lab. The 1956 UFO-cult study everyone cites as real-world proof of it just got debunked by newly unsealed archives.
Moving the Goalposts: How to Spot an Argument You Can't Win
American football goalposts really did move in 1927. A 2012 test of two psychics at Goldsmiths shows the rhetorical version happening in real time, right after the result came in.
The McGurk Effect: Why Your Eyes Can Overrule What You Just Heard
A 1976 dubbing accident showed your eyes can rewrite a sound before you consciously hear it. Researchers who have studied the illusion for decades still fall for it.
Double Agent: What the CIA's Own Rules Say Makes One Real
The CIA's own declassified manual says most "turned" agents are faking it. The one who wasn't tricked Hitler over D-Day. The one who was got ignored by the FBI.
Nonresponse Bias: Right on Party ID, Off by 38 Points on Neighbors
The same 2016 phone poll, at a 9% response rate, matched party-ID benchmarks within 1.5 points and missed a question about neighbors by 38 points.
What Is a Bot Farm?
Thousands of fake accounts built to manufacture likes, reviews, and outrage on demand. How bot farms actually work, and why a busy comment section can fool you.
The Equivocation Fallacy: When a Word Quietly Changes Its Job
A Jesuit priest was executed in 1606 partly for practicing a courtroom version of it. In 2024, a federal appeals court ruled on it printed on a package of baby wipes.
Out-Group Homogeneity: The Bias That Predicts How You Vote
Every group outside your own looks less varied than it actually is. Documented since 1980, and shown in 2025 to independently predict political hostility and voting behavior.
Source Amnesia: How Forgetting Who Said It Makes You Believe It More
A 1989 study made an invented name "famous" overnight, revealing source amnesia: people keep what they heard and lose track of who said it, or why to doubt them.
Appeal to Ignorance: The Fallacy Locke Named One Section Before Ad Hominem
John Locke named it in 1690, one section before ad hominem in the same essay. Russell's clearest rebuttal sat unread for 45 years before anyone published it.
Thought-Terminating Cliché: Coined From Korean War POW Interviews
Robert Jay Lifton named it in 1961 after interviewing Korean War POWs. His own example, 'it is what it is,' started as sincere 1949 frontier philosophy, not a stop-sign.
Brandolini's Law: A 2013 Tweet, Not a Study
Alberto Brandolini coined it in a 2013 tweet inspired by Kahneman. The idea is centuries older, and one real case took 3 days to undo a 15-minute video.
Defamation vs. Slander: Why 'That's Slander!' Is Usually Wrong
Slander is spoken, libel is written, and defamation is the umbrella term. A 1990 Supreme Court ruling means 'it's just my opinion' isn't the shield people think it is.
Social Loafing: The Rope-Pulling Numbers Everyone Cites Are Wrong
The 93%/85%/49% figures cited everywhere as Ringelmann's rope-pulling data aren't rope-pulling data at all. The psychologists who found his original paper said so in 1986.
The Motte and Bailey Fallacy: Named After a Real Castle
A philosopher named this argument trick after Norman castle design in 2005, nine years before a blog post turned it into an internet staple.
Conditional Probability: The Question Only 21% of Doctors Got Right
A 2007 study gave 160 gynecologists real screening statistics. Most answered "90%" or "81%." The right answer was about 1 in 10, and only 21% got there.