Before college, I've never heard of a school that offers a media literacy course. That's an issue in a world in which there's so much information right at our finger tips. This is especially a problem when it comes to all of these biased political articles on social media. As someone who's always on my phone, I know that social media is a major news source for me. I'm a pretty busy person and I feel as though there's little time to sit down and watch multiple news sources to get my political information. Because I know I'm so directly affected by this, it leads me to believe others are as well. I also know how biased different sources can be, especially online because anyone can put anything on the internet. In my experience I've found multiple articles on the exact same event that tell entirely different stories. This has led me to not know who to trust. Having grown up in this information era without any schools to educate me on all of this, I feel like I'm qualified to write about this topic.

This first article, written by Monica Anderson, reveals different ways in which social media has an increasing role in politics. Throughout this article, data is given showing the increase of social media in the political world. In addition to this, examples of how social media is now part of politics are provided, the most notable of which is the fact that the President of the United States now has an official Twitter account.

Some of the values and interests at hand in this article deal with the affects that social media has on politics. For example, social media now changes the way in which the people get their information; and now it's often coming directly from the politicians themselves through their own social media accounts. This is so important because it helps the people feel more connected to the politicians in or running for office.

Seeing that the author of this article is a research analyst for the Pew Research Center (the website from where this article found), I'm inclined to find her to be very credible. My reasoning for this is that her claims are backed up my data that's often found by surveying a random sample of Americans.

The second article, written by David Shaw, discusses the reasons that we need media literacy classes in the schools. At the time of this article, we were spending an average of 10.5 hours a day with media sources. 25% of that time involved us using multiple forms of media at once. This study was done back in 2003, so the numbers could have only grown dramatically since then.

Having all of this media right in front of us can be beneficial, but we have to be cautious while utilizing all of these sources. Studies have shown that kids are already spending hours a day in front of screens and it's shown that the number of hours will only increase as they grow older. Because of all of this, it's necessary for people to learn how to process all of this information and that all starts in the schools

The Center for Media Literacy seems to be a pretty reliable source in the sense that it's working for a good cause. However, based on the name alone, it's clear what their bias is, so it's worth being a little bit cautious while reading this. Additionally, this article was written thirteen years ago, so times have definitely changed since then. Besides that, this article seemed to be very reasonable with the claims that it made, making this pretty reliable, especially considering this was originally published in the LA Times. 

This final article, written by Michael Shue, discusses other ways that the ever-growing social media has affected our politics. In some specific cases, potential candidates have hired people to their staff to only focus on the social media aspect of their campaign. Throughout this article, the changes occurring in politics due to social media is discussed and it isn't only limited to the US (the effects are worldwide and as mentioned in this article, similar changes are occurring in Europe, Australia, and South Africa as well).

The values and interests mentioned in this article are centered on the structural changes caused by social media. Between candidates adding social media specialists to their staff and leaders across the globe creating and maintaining accounts from various social media providers, it's clear that times are changing in favor of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Overall, this site seems to be fairly reliable. Although it doesn't have the name recognition of the Seattle Times like a previous article, there don't seem to be any outrageous claims being made and that leads me to believe most of this article is fairly reliable. Also, there seems to be a fair amount of evidence to back up the claims being made in this article.

This is an arguable topic because some may contest that social media isn't as influential as I may believe. Plus, some people may feel that schools aren't the right place to learn about media literacy. It's very possible that the data provided in some of the articles aren't enough to persuade some people. Most of these articles seem to agree that media, including social media, is becoming increasingly more important in the political world, but that may be due to the fact that I was looking for articles that would support my thoughts on the subject. I also think these articles gave me a new perspective on the topic as a whole because the more I research it, the more new things I learn about it. Finally, I think my question that I'm arguing for is just what I want it to be and at this point I wouldn't make any changes to it.

