When I thought about writing this book, it seemed to me that its content might be a bit redundant. The topic of media literacy has been covered in numerous publications. I thought educators, students and media producers had already had time to incorporate it into curricula from primary school through higher education. The psychology behind the use and misuse of media has been explained. Many possible remedies have been offered. It seemed as though there was not much left to say or do. Game, set and match.

And yet, current events do not square with the idea that efforts toward creating a media literate population that will use their skills to avoid false, misleading or inaccurate information are succeeding. Insurrection in Washington, D.C., uprisings of movements on the political far-right and far-left, growing authoritarianism, growing nationalism and increases in the number of conspiracy theories are all examples of ongoing evidence that media literacy education is not gaining the wide reach it needs to make a difference. Producers of media, from legitimate news organizations, concerned individuals, trained experts, trolls, bots, white supremacists and the public are creating media 24/7 to stream information to the public. This provides an overwhelming number of sources from which an individual must choose to receive information.

Individuals can access as much of this news stream as they care to, but the sheer abundance of possible sources makes it impossible to consider every source. An individual's selection of media sources is often based on beliefs far beyond the influence of the best educators, instilled by culture, by daily observation of life, through personal experience and by parental example. Laine Wilkinson (2016) says that what we choose to believe about a given claim is based on our prior beliefs about that claim. Even if the idea is completely new (meaning that one has no prior beliefs about the claim), the chance that it will be believed or dismissed is not zero. In the case of a given claim about which one knows nothing, it has a 50% chance of being perceived as true and a 50% chance of being perceived as false. The individual encountering new information for which they have only 50% confidence that the information is true (or false), must have some means of deciding how much credence the information deserves.