Accountability on the Interwebz

Accountability on the internet.

Who's responsible for it?
Simple answer would be everyone.

Unfortunately, we can't just say someone's accountable and then they will be, we (the public sphere) need to hold them accountable, and I think a start to learning accountability is developing an understanding of media literacy.

Media literacy is commonly defined as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and produce media. It is the process of becoming active, rather than passive, consumers of media. The importance of media literacy is that it helps bridge the gap between everyday media use and applying it to another context.

Our society uses media on an everyday basis, so we have the capability to use it, but it's using it properly and effectively that's the trick.  All too often I've seen people post "So many posts about [insert here current political response or response to a major current event]" and leave their response criticizing other media users for sharing, evaluating, and communicating about important events, albeit, sometimes comments that are misinformed, biased, and/or targeted towards a group, but at least their attempting to display a form of media literacy. Whether it's leaving a comment, status, or update on Blogger, Facebook, or Twitter, integrating it into our curriculum as a teacher, or even using the tools it provides to apply it to our jobs, we have an accountability to be effective, responsible media users.