Women's Information Literacy / News Discussion Group

This is a study, civics, and reading accountability group for learned and unlearned women alike. Whether you're a knowledgeable, passionate leftist or someone who's undereducated on politics yet nevertheless protective of our democracy, you are warmly invited to join and learn with us.

I myself am only now meaningfully deepening my civics education, and it is my conviction that a good citizen encourages the public to stay informed while tempering that expectation with appreciation for people's difficulties in protecting time from the constraints of economic survival and life maintenance. Our broken, bloated media landscape further complicates this goal of staying informed; that’s exactly why I figured we should organize to better focus ourselves! I add these sentiments to emphasize that the ethos of this group will be educational--not punitive, not hostile, and not egotistical. You will not be shamed as ignorant for not knowing things, for risking “dumb questions” (no such thing), or for demonstrating idiosyncratic thought. The only defining characteristics among us are that 1) we are against and make no excuses for MAGA—an unabashedly unconstitutional administration—and 2) we are concerned about how America’s post-Internet environment has degraded its standards for both professional journalism and public discourse.

Our primary goal is to improve our information literacy, ultimately to empower our civic engagement. That said, here are our full tenets enumerated:

1. We value regaining our attention, restraint, and focus on fact-based sources by limiting or even abstaining from the scroll and LLMs. We avoid algorithmic, pathos-ridden platforms that condition users to consume, think and participate compulsively, and which provide little to no oversight/consequences for obstructions to learning, such as AI slop and outright disinformation. Examples include anything short-form, scroll-based and unmoderated or undermoderated, such as: Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, (most) YouTube, comments sections, etc. Which publications still qualify as fact-based/uncorrupted and newsworthy is something we'll regularly discuss in our meetings. We will also evaluate which independent journalists are doing their due diligence outside mainstream media.
2. We value protecting time to read and reflect together. We dedicate the first half of each meeting to warming up with some reading, and we dedicate the second half to evaluating what information we’ve encountered (intentionally versus compulsively versus involuntarily) over the past several weeks.
3. We value continuing our educations outside news reading to grow our information literacy in every way possible. We discuss which lectures, short courses, articles, books and other educational materials we’d like to complete together to achieve this goal. Our studies are likely to emphasize the areas of digital literacy, journalism, rhetoric, data analysis, research methods, scientific literacy, administration, basic statistics, et cetera.
4. We value ultimately utilizing our civics learning to expand our civic engagement, particularly at this precarious time for America. We utilize our time and learning in this group to better prepare ourselves for our volunteer and professional resistance efforts. This last value is more supplementary, not compulsory, as we appreciate not everyone joining will have the additional time and health necessary to take on additional, high-stress labor. At the very least, this group will make us wiser voters and conversational partners, and then those of us who are interested in engagement can organize within meetings as well.

Please join us, and remember you don't have to commit with one visit. A group of women with diverse backgrounds will enrich our learning.