Media Literacy Students Learn What to Believe in Era of AI

Tucked into the syllabus of Media Literacy: What to Read and Believe in the Age of AI, is a “quote” from Abraham Lincoln: “The problem with quotes on the Internet is you can’t always be sure of their accuracy.” This gets to the very crux of what students will be tackling in the new course, which examines media of all kinds — in particular, for accuracy — and how it shapes lives.

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Joe Stephens

Sameer Khan h’21 / Fotobuddy / Office of Communications

Joe Stephens, the founding director of Princeton’s Program in Journalism and a former longtime Washington Post reporter, has taught similar courses that focused on traditional journalism, but this new iteration, offered by the University Center for Human Values, where Stephens is a lecturer, incorporates modern social media and generative AI.

“I want everyone … to leave feeling that they’re a confident consumer of media in all its forms going forward, because we can draw on these more timeless truths on how to be a critical reader and use it to interrogate the material that we’re consuming in the future, no matter what form it comes up in,” said Stephens.

On the first day of class, which meets Tuesday afternoons in Wallace Hall, Stephens stressed that consumption and interpretation of media can be a life and death matter, both for individuals as well as for democracy.

The class of 13 includes undergraduates from all years, from intended computer science majors to philosophy majors.

Bridget O’Neill ’26, a managing editor of The Daily Princetonian and a history major, enrolled to better understand “the exciting realities and the scary realities” of AI.

Devonne Piccaver ’27, who is majoring in English, admitted to believing whatever she sees on Instagram, so she wants to “save myself from spreading misinformation” by learning “how to pick out where things are false and misleading.”

Tiffany Gan ’29 isn’t an avid news consumer, so she hopes through this course she can “recognize good news and find news outlets that are reliable,” to be more informed.

Guest speakers include Edward Tian ’23, creator of GPTZero, which detects the use of AI-generated text, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James B. Steele. Readings and assigned viewings include discredited mainstream media articles, AI-generated video news reports, and comedy shows such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

For the final, students will examine one aspect of the changing media by writing a paper, producing a podcast, or creating another type of project.

Stephens said he hopes studying these issues allows students to realize how media influences thinking and perspective.

“To actually guide our lives, we need to be able to control what we take into our heads,” he said.