Pushing back against the surge of misinformation online, California will now require all K-12 students to learn media literacy skills — such as recognizing fake news and thinking critically about what they encounter on the internet.
Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed Assembly Bill 873, which requires the state to add media literacy to curriculum frameworks for English language arts, science, math and history-social studies, rolling out gradually beginning next year. Instead of a stand-alone class, the topic will be woven into existing classes and lessons throughout the school year.
The above poster isn’t saying that Trump made up ‘fake news,’ they are pointing out that the overuse of ‘fake news’ has become fatiguing to many people. We hear ‘fake news’ and we don’t have a visceral negative reaction to it as we should, it’s just something we roll our eyes at now because hearing it over and over again has desensitized us.
Another recent comparable would be the word ‘enshittification’ which, while apt, already seems like a tired expression that also somehow underscores the severity of the phenomenon it is describing.