Through his media literacy class Tim Clark, Odessa College professor of communications and speech, helps students sift through the deluge of information coming their way by tapping into their critical thinking skills.
The course is one of the language, philosophy and culture options for students, and it is required for any student wanting to be a communications major, Clark said.
Previously, Clark was executive director of enrollment services and a student success coach. He started at OC in 2013 as an assistant registrar.
“I became involved with it (media literacy) because that’s where a lot of my interest lies in studying communication. I love to teach speech, but I also really am involved in, like to appreciate and like to see the media and all the things that it can do,” Clark said.
The past few years in particular the term fake news has been thrown out.
“That is a very real thing. We maybe in the past might have talked a lot about propaganda and talked about some misleading things that are that are sent out there, but really it became more popular over the last couple of years because students, in particular younger students, are becoming more aware of the things that they consume. We are seeing things consumed constantly from all different levels,” Clark said.
He added that his niece and nephews are spending any of their spare time outside of school either at a movie theater or watching things on TikTok, YouTube or Twitch.
“We think about the media a lot, and we think about the news and we think CNN and Fox News, but the media is all around us all the time and that’s really where my fun in studying this has come from,” Clark said. He added that he tries to stay abreast of all the latest apps and technologies.
“I have relied on my students, as well as my niece and nephews, to continue to keep me up to date on where to follow and where they are consuming news,” he said.
He said it’s hard sometimes because he’s the instructor and his students might not want to share the cool places with him.
“But I do make it a point to go out there and find and see where users are tracking and what the age group of people on Twitter is, what the age group of people on Facebook is. We talk a lot about that a lot in our course,” Clark added. Showing an outline of the course, he said it is constantly under review because things are always changing.
“We can talk about printed media vs digital media. We talk about the movies because that’s where one of my passions is. I spent a good week on the movies just in general. We start to look at them from a different point of view other than just hey, I’m here for entertainment. What are we trying to say with these movies? How did this movie get produced? Where did it come from? We talk about who owns the media and how maybe there’s some conglomerates out there that students might not even be aware of,” Clark said.
“Right now, we talk about why there are so many superhero movies and where that’s coming from, and we get to look at it from the audience’s point of view because we can start by saying, ‘Hey, who’s everybody’s favorite superhero?’ And they’ll all go around the room and everybody has one. And you’re like, ‘Okay, why is that part of our everyday life? Why is that something that we’re experiencing?’ They talk about thinking critically about what they’re consuming, doing their research, vetting sources correctly and the fact that things can go viral on Facebook and TikTok.”
Clark makes them think of origination and intention.
“What is the intention of the person that put it out there and why is it getting onto your page? Why is it getting onto your parents’ page? Why is it getting onto your grandparents’ page?” Clark said. “You may get a screenshot and then there are people who just read the headlines.”
He doesn’t limit the discussion to America.
“We talked about Iran recently in our class, and it’s really hard to get media from primary sources there because they shut it down — good or bad — and we have that discussion. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? But we can see something written by the New York Times. We can see an article of the same thing written by the Odessa American and we can see an article of the same thing written … in England. And we can say, ‘Okay, how is it different? What story are you reading based on where it’s from?’ “
Clark said that’s always a fun assignment.
He’ll also give students an assignment to pick something that has happened historically or in their lifetime that they want to know more about.
“Look at it. How did the New York Times cover it? How did USA Today cover it? And how did the local to that event cover it? Those are always fun assignments as well,” Clark added.
To teach how to figure out what’s real and what isn’t, he uses a couple of different, respected and peer-reviewed sources such as PolitiFact.
“It used to be that if something was .com you didn’t trust it. You were looking for .org. or edu. Not so much anymore, so we get into peer-reviewed journals where the data comes from and then we use the resources that are available to us online,” he said.
Clark said NPR has a way for listeners to figure out if something is fake news.
There is also a standalone course from a group of graduate students at MIT. Clark said it walks through what would have happened if the moon landing had not gone successfully. They also talk about deep fakes and social media.
Another thing they do in Clark’s class is have students fill out a form where they track what they were doing at various times of day and add up how much time they expose themselves to media.
“And then we talked about the times when they’re exposed to media and don’t even know it because that’s how it was designed,” Clark added.
Ariadne Granado, a former student of Clark’s, is the academic partnerships coordinator at OC. She earned an associate degree in early childhood and is working toward an associate degree in mass communication.
“I thought it was very informative. It was very interesting. What I liked about it was that I was able to really delve deep into the media and understanding of the different concepts of media literacy,” Granado said.
She’s planning to be a teacher, but she also thought seriously about being a reporter at one point.
Granado said she has learned to fact check and not automatically go toward one viewpoint, but look into others.
“Because not everything that you see on TV is factual. It’s kind of like it’s preprogrammed of what people are supposed to say, so I’ve learned to fact check a lot of my sources,” she said.
Asked if it has changed the way she looks at social media, Granado said she has cut down on her platforms, disabling her Instagram and Facebook accounts.
“The only tie I have to social media now is just Snapchat and Twitter. I just feel like it was kind of toxic being on Instagram and Facebook because, I didn’t realize it but, I was actually addicted to those two social media sites. I would actually have a panic attack not checking it or not posting so I just had to disable it. I feel better now that I did, but this class it really opened my eyes,” Granado said.
