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Improving Media Literacy Among College Students
Client: Facebook SF
Project: communication service for news consumption
Goal: improve media literacy among college students
*defining media literacy: the consumption, understanding, and opinion-forming of information in media
WHY MEDIA LITERACY
In a social landscape proliferated by declining readership, fake news, echo chambers, and viral hashtags, it is important to develop the ability to filter and process (an often overwhelming amount of) information available around us, starting with our college students who are in the prime of their learning.
MAPPING SHAREHOLDERS
Before beginning the brainstorming process and narrowing down our ideas, we identified the shareholders in our problem addressed. Here is our rendition of a college student's news consumption process:
RESEARCH:
Students' News Consumption Habits
We conducted preliminary research by collecting online data, interviewing students, and communicating with our client/partners at Facebook. We discovered that the most popular form of news among college students is satire news.
The most commonly cited example is the show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver". Students like that it delivers bite-sized news that is digestible, professionally curated (therefore reliable), and interesting (therefore relatable). They also like that it provides opinionated insights which they can readily recycle in conversation with others.
From our research, we mapped out journey maps of a typical college student's experience of news:
BRAINSTORMING:
How Do We Make News More Digestible and Relatable?
The main challenge is that traditional news sources are not successfully engaging college students. To aid our brainstorming, we developed some focusing How Might We questions.
HOW MIGHT WE:
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…leverage the successes of news commentary shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in order to improve news literacy among Northwestern students?
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…help news sources successfully reach exhausted college students with short attention spans?
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…guide less-politically active Northwestern students to form their own genuine opinion about current events, instead of blindly conforming to their peers’ opinions?
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…harness the entertaining aspects of news satire while maintaining a trusted news source?
Then, brainstormed according to the topics:
FINAL PRODUCT: News T-shirt Clothing Line
Our final service is a personalized clothing line that allows students to print personalized T-shirts with a piece of their selected news (headlines, photos, slogans etc.). This makes adds a personal component to the news content and increases exposure on campus. This service will be accessible with printing booths scattered across main crossroads and congregation points on campus.
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