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Author
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Sadia Khan
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Year
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2019
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Publisher
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Post digital Science and Education
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Abstract
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The new media environment, through multitudinous entanglements with processes of
digitization and commodification, has contributed to the formation of extreme distrust
in media and institutions in advanced democracies, and fluctuations in trust relations
worldwide, according to Pew Research and Gallup polling. Resulting from threats of
fake news, the overabundance of information, and intentional misguidance by bad
actors, individuals find it increasingly difficult to evaluate information and make
informed decisions. Ideally, in democracies, institutions help foster trust between
citizens and information sources by encouraging trustworthy institutions that are
responsible to citizens, since trust is so fundamental to a functional democracy. This
paper draws a link between trust, which is crucial to democracy, and media and
information literacy (MIL), which empowers democratic principles, to suggest how
the implicit reciprocity and negotiability of trust relations can be seized to advance
democratization through a media and information literacy policy framework. Using the
UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Policy and Strategy Guideline as a reference,
this paper builds an approach to show how, through the negotiability of trust, MIL and the
democratizing principle of civic agency might be concurrently advanced and mutually
reinforcing by educating a citizenry more literate about media and information systems and
generating democratic institutional change concurrent with greater trust between actors.