PRISM: Steps to make sense of the news
Yet another mnemonic but it is recently getting some tractions
PRISM
Before I react, I think of a PRISM:
PAUSE: I shouldn't be hasty. I will check things out first.
REFLECT: Am I being misled? Am I emotionally manipulated?
INVESTIGATE: Is the content legit? Where is it from? Can I fact-check it?
SHARE: I share my findings. I tell what I know and what I don't know.
MONITOR: I will keep my eyes on the news. Truth builds over time.
Last summer, I briefly mentioned the mnemonic ‘PRISM’ that I started using in my curriculum.
It is supposed to help learners remember the steps they can take before reacting quickly to ‘irregistible’ information (to believe, share, etc.) and make a snap judgement.
There are many similar ideas in various countries in different languages, such as SIFT and ESCAPE in the U.S. or ソウカナ (So U Ka Na) in Japan.
So, PRISM is not unique. It is based on pretty standard, universal ideas that many news and media literacy educators use in their classrooms.
But it directly references the Pause Campaign launched by the United Nations in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN asked social media users to stop and think before they share information and consider the five Ws.
I thought I could go beyond the awareness campaign in my teaching by including the next possible steps after pausing and wondering about the validity of the information.
Last week, I received e-mails from other media educators in different countries asking me what I do (activities, lesson plans, etc.) in my class to discuss each step of PRISM.
Maybe because I mentioned the mnemonic in one of the media literacy mailing lists I am a member of a couple of weeks ago, or maybe because this particular graphic was adopted by some teachers for the upcoming summer workshops (which I didn’t know until I was told so by one of the media educators).
But no matter the reasons for their sudden interest, they said they particularly liked the final steps — Share and Monitor. Asking everyone to be a fact-checker is a tall order (although I do believe it’s important to teach fact-checking skills in class).
So I tell learners that it is OK to share even when their quick investigation goes nowhere. But they must indicate the validity of the claims, photos, videos, etc., is questionable and needs to be investigated.
The hope is that this way of sharing will alert other users to pay more attention. Research in cognitive science shows that ‘inattention’ can be a major factor contributing to people sharing unsubstantiated information.
Our goal in this step is that, by sharing content in this fashion, we can nudge each other to think about accuracy.
Monitoring the development of the news is another step that is often neglected. In our curriculum, we say, ‘journalistic truth is provisional.’ This last step reminds learners that truth builds over time, so discerning credible information also requires time and some effort.
The following video is a promotional preview we created for our online course on Coursera, talking about this idea of provisional truth.