The MMM Initiative

We’ve determined that information collected and distributed by and on news and social media outlets has manifested in political biases of its users. It is clear that this issue has subsequently led to political polarization and ethnic prejudice. To combat this problem, we have devised an online informational package and an interactive experience to teach people how to use it. Our website provides the resources to check personal biases and recognize ethnic prejudices. The seminar encourages people to apply and spread their newfound knowledge. We conducted interviews with experts, surveys, and an extensive literature review. Through our research and feedback from over 40 partners, we have found that access to social media literacy education is virtually non-existent — hence the need for a comprehensive, easily digestible informational package. It\u27s not enough to create a package, we also need people to see it. Our interviews with experts tell us that the best way to engage students is through interactive experiences. Therefore, we supplemented these educational tools with an experience that consists of a community group and the extensive use of partners to promote our package to their respective networks. Our resources use text, visuals, videos, conversation, and other interactive elements to educate users on how the use of media can exacerbate ethnic prejudices. To measure the attitude change of our viewers, we created a set of surveys concerning media usage and its relationship with bias. We also tracked the attendance of the seminar so that we could understand how widespread our message is. Hundreds of people have accessed our website with an accumulation of over 2,000 views. We expect this to continue growing exponentially as word of its existence continues to spread. Our project has a global reach with at least 15 countries and 25 states reached

The MMM Initiative

Information collected and distributed by and on news and social media outlets has manifested in the political biases of its users. This issue led to political polarization and ethnic prejudice. To combat this problem, we applied the Human Centered Design method to develop a project that enhances media literacy to help reduce biases toward ethnic minorities. During the Inspiration Phase, we conducted interviews with experts, surveys, and an extensive literature review. Through our research and feedback from over 40 partners, we found that access to social media literacy education is virtually non-existent -- hence the need for a comprehensive, easily digestible informational package. For the Ideation Phase, we created an online educational package. Our website provides the resources to check personal biases and recognize ethnic prejudices. Our resources use interactive elements to educate users on how the use of media can exacerbate ethnic prejudices. During the Implementation Phase, we conducted an interactive webinar to inform leaders of diverse communities and organizations about the website and encourage them to apply and share these educational tools. We relied on 40 partners in 22 states and 14 countries to promote our educational package in their respective networks. We applied pre/post-experience surveys concerning media usage and subsequent bias to assess and document the outcomes and impact of our project. We also tracked the spread of attendance of the webinar. According to the analytics data collected through The MMM Initiative website, hundreds of people have accessed our website with an accumulation of over 1,000 views between January and March 2021. We expect this to continue to grow exponentially as the benefits of our educational package are spread. The global reach of our project promises to contribute to reducing prejudice against ethnic minorities exacerbated by biases on social media