About the Guest:
Rachel Besharat Mann, PhD is a scholar at Wesleyan University interested in the academic and personal literacy practices that support adolescents through a sensitive developmental period marked by identity exploration, that in turn provides the foundation for behavior and self-conceptualization in adulthood. Her current work explores how social media impacts adolescent consumption and interpretation of information used to inform the development of civic identities and political ideology. Past work has explored the impact of social media use on self-esteem and identity development through the lens of possible self-ideation.
Episode Transcript:
CORY BARKER: In November 2023, a document written more than twenty years earlier suddenly re-entered the public conversation: Osama bin Laden’s Letter to America. The reason wasn’t a history class or a news documentary. It was TikTok. Videos referencing the letter began circulating widely on the platform, with creators reading excerpts, reacting to its arguments, and debating its claims—often stripped of historical context. The trend drew enough attention that TikTok ultimately removed videos and hashtags related to the letter, while news outlets including Vox and The Guardian reported on how and why it was spreading. In this case, a primary source tied to one of the most consequential events in modern history resurfaced not through curriculum or journalism, but through an algorithm, reaching social media users, many of them young people. For adults watching this happen, the reaction was often alarm. Why are kids seeing this? Who’s teaching them? What are they being influenced by? But those questions rest on a familiar assumption: that young people are passive recipients of information, simply absorbing whatever appears in their feeds. What if that assumption is wrong? What if moments like this are actually part of how young people begin forming civic identities, testing ideas, negotiating values, and figuring out where they stand?
MATT JORDAN: That’s the focus of research by Rachel Besharat Mann. She’s an Associate Professor of the Practice at Wesleyan University whose work examines media literacy, adolescent development, and how K–12 students engage with news in social media environments. Rather than asking only what young people are consuming, her work asks how they’re making meaning, and why identity and belonging matter as much as facts. We’re going to talk with her about how young people encounter news through peers and platforms, what adults often misunderstand about youth media use, and what it actually means to support civic learning in a digital world shaped by algorithms, emotion, and social context. Rachel Besharat Mann, welcome to News Over Noise.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
MATT JORDAN: One of the things we've discussed on this show a lot is news avoidance as something that hinders the ability of the public to deliberate in a democracy. And one of the most news avoidant demographics, according to the Pew Center and other research firms, are young people and young adults. Are young people avoiding the news, as Pew indicates? And why?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah. So, I think the answer is yes, they are. But to an extent, right? I think what they're looking for is exerting some control over what they see in a way that they couldn't do otherwise without social media. So, most of my participants have shown that they see news on social media, and they actively will ignore people whose opinions A. may differ from theirs or B. they deem harmful in some way, whatever that means for the individual. It seems like they cleanse their algorithm when they feel like they're getting too much news that might affect them emotionally. But the big thing that I'm seeing is that they are looking down at social media news outlets in a way that they think it might not be critically as impressive as other news sources. So, when they are consuming news through social media, they are going to the typical culprit. They're looking at New York Times, they're looking at NPR. And what they're doing is that they're skimming the headlines and they're really cherry picking what they're looking at.
MATT JORDAN: So, they're negotiating through the process of choice and algorithm what it is they see for the sake of wellness?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yes. There's a big emphasis on this wellness idea that they're being bombarded with a lot of information that sometimes they don't want to see. And it's not only wellness, but oftentimes they feel like a lot of the information they're seeing through these platforms specifically is performative. And so, they're deeming it more as an opinion than as fact, which is why I believe they're clinging to these typical news sources, even through social media platforms. And it may be they are regurgitating a lot of maybe very traditional media literacy curriculum that they're seeing in school, right? That social media creates echo chambers. A lot of our participants there's an echo chamber. And so, they are more questioning of what they're seeing. But at the same time, they seem to enjoy an echo chamber because they don't really want to hear things that are at odds with what they firmly believe.
CORY BARKER: And is there something that they say about the type of content that the more conventional news outlets are producing in these social platforms spaces that makes them feel like those places are more legitimate? Or do you feel like that that is just a part of them having heard or, you know, experience or second hand that, well, The New York Times and NPR credible. So, I should check what's going on there in sort of a breaking news context.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah. So, one of the big things that I think really speaks to that question is a lot of our participants refer to, and I think this kind of combines what I've been saying, the performativity of these, of a lot of the content creators, the sharing of infographics, AI generated imagery. Those sorts of things that they felt like are less informational and are really kind of to draw viewers and to think about discourse in the comments versus original reporting, where they're getting information from the ground. And they also, they're looking a lot at stories on social media and those quick kind of the things that you go through very quickly, rather than sifting through accounts and their grid posts where they're looking at, maybe there could be a little bit more content there. And I think the last thing is a lot of those content creators are linking out to things like The New York Times, and so they feel like that's kind of the ground where the real reporting is happening.
MATT JORDAN: And do they do they leave the social media platform very much. I mean, do they link out or do they stay pretty much on the platform?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: So, this is a really positive thing that I'm seeing. When our participants are seeing something that they want to know more about. They are definitely leaving the platform, but they are going to those websites that they have deemed already credible. Right? They're going to The New York Times; they're going to NPR. Those are the two big ones that come up a lot. But I think it also should be said that the last time we collected data on this was about six months ago. So, I'm wondering what that looks like now with, the incredible explosion of independent reporting that's been happening through social media, which is something that we're going to attend to very soon.
CORY BARKER: What's your sense through these interviews and conversations with young people of how they feel about social media platforms overall? Not just in the role of news being delivered to them, or content creators discussing news topics. How do they feel about the existence of social platforms in their lives?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah. So, this is interesting. Our latest study, we did get a lot of information on how they're conceptualizing these spaces. It's almost like a push and pull. They are very aware of how pervasive these spaces are in their lives. They know that their social lives exist here. They know this is where they're getting most of their information. They also feel this outside judgment on them from other generations, from institutions, right? In schools, they're hearing, you know, your phone, they're hearing these narratives about them, their generation. And when I say that, I mean, kids who are currently in high school and middle school and even college students, right? They feel this narrative that everyone thinks they're on their phones, that they're scrolling, that they're doing limited reading. Right? And they are pushing back against that. They don't want to be seen as that. And they're recognizing that social media has a lot of shortfalls. And I think that they're to amplify their voices a little bit, they want other institutions and generations to understand that they're doing great things in these spaces. But sometimes they are doing mind numbing stuff. Right? And, actually, this is interesting. As we were collecting data, I had to pull back from being the one to collect the data from young people, as they were thinking aloud through their social media usage, and my research assistant had to do it because they were performing for me as an older person about what I wanted to see. And it was so interesting because every other sentence was, “Well, you know, I'm not on here that often, and I would never look at this because I think it's not credible.” And the ways that that changed when my younger undergraduate research assistants got practice doing this—
CORY BARKER: It seems like in my our conversations with our students, this is happening all the time, right? Like we come to those conversations with the sense that older generations are putting these kind of stereotypical assumptions on what younger people are doing with these platforms, and they agree with that. But then when they're talking about their experiences, right, they'll either say, “Well, I, I don't really do it this way, or I know that other people do…” Is that is that something that you feel like is just inherent in how we feel about our own technology use and thinking about how other people are perceiving of that? Or do you feel like that’s pressure that's coming to them from parents or teachers and so, they're trying to perform it, or is it all of those things?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: So, I think it's a little bit of all of that, coupled with the fact that these this is an area, this is an age group that is really in the throes of identity development. So, they're constantly negotiating that out loud with themselves and with their immediate environment. Right. So, I think they're getting the messaging from the major institutions that they are in. Right? They’re at school. They're dealing with their home life. Right. They're dealing with their peers to an extent, who are also getting the same message. So, I think it's a constant identity negotiation with them. I think they're trying to find their footing. And I think that the messaging is becoming very internal. I also think that there's, there's a media aspect of it too. Right? There's a lot of information about screen time and short-form content that flows through social media that they're seeing, and then they're seeing media representations through television shows and movies of people on their phone. And, they're seeing that, internalizing it and trying to push back.
MATT JORDAN: Their awareness of that, does that change their behavior at all? In other words, they're aware that maybe they shouldn't be rotting, that's my favorite term that my, my kid likes to use in relation to that, because he's aware that there's something about scrolling on TikTok that is not good, so he uses the verb rot. So, he's aware of it, but I still think he rots on TikTok a lot. So, is that is that part of the negotiation?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah And, you know, we do this as adults. I mean, I least I do, right? You know, I know this is bad for me to be on the screen right before I go to bed. And I do believe they are very aware, which I think is something that adults and educators and parents need to know, like young people are aware of these narratives, but they are not always attending to it. Right? Because a lot of the social work in their lives is happening through these spaces. And so, there is this element of, if I'm not here, I'm not going to be included in this space. Or alternatively, a lot of schools have, you know, social media feeds that alert them to different events and things. So, like, they feel that they need to be in those spaces. And, especially a lot of our participants are our students currently, whether they're undergraduate students here, or their high school students, they have a lot going on, between school, work, social stuff, clubs, athletics. Once they get a chance to unwind, that phone is their best space to do that. And so regardless of how they feel about these messages, they're going to rot as you say, because it just makes them feel like, okay, I can shut down for a moment.
CORY BARKER: If you’re just joining us, this is News Over Noise. I’m Cory Barker.
MATT JORDAN: I’m Matt Jordan
CORY BARKER: We’re talking with Rachel Besharat Mann from Wesleyan University about how young people encounter news on social media and how those experiences shape developing civic identities. In the piece that you recently published that that we read, you conclude with a point that young people tend to trust the quote unquote, fairness of the algorithm on social media. Can you share a little bit more about how they expressed that perception in your sessions with them?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah. So, this was the my favorite finding in this paper, right? This this space that we're calling the reciprocal algorithmic manipulation. Right? Where they believe that they are exerting a lot of control over their algorithm. They anthropomorphize the algorithm over and over again. “My algorithm is good. My algorithm is bad. I can train my algorithm to do this.” And they all were hyper aware that “Oh, if I talk about this, my algorithm will change.” And so ,they were very trusting in the fact that they had control over these algorithms, but I think they aren't as aware of how little control they might really have over it when it comes to economic marketing and targeting through algorithms. And I think they're not as aware of how really targeted they can be through multiple spaces, through email, through discussion, through buying patterns. I do think they believe they have more control, even though they do trust in this fairness of the algorithm. And I, I do believe as the AI conversation grows and grows, they become a little bit less trusting of this fairness. So…yeah.
MATT JORDAN: One of the frames that people have used to think about this as a “news finds me mentality,” right? That the, the algorithm knows what everybody needs in terms of the news content related to your disposition, your personality or whatever. And so, it feeds it to you. Do you think that they have a certain confidence that the algorithm will provide in that sense?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yes, definitely. And I also think there's another nuance there. I think, this becomes very platform specific. Right? They go to specific platforms for specific things immediately. If they're looking for… I need to be informed about what's happening right now. They are still going to X; Twitter. Right? They're still going there. They're looking at Instagram threads, right, for that immediate sort of written expression verses are they sifting through… and they're definitely not sifting through Facebook, but, sifting through Instagram and going through the photos and going to their creators, they're really going to those kind of like snippets sort of spaces. They also are going to Reddit to an extent there too, but that's more, search-oriented. Where the other platforms, when we went through this, they are not searching specifically for things through any of these platforms, which I think speaks to your point. They are letting things find them through social media platforms.
MATT JORDAN: We’re talking about identity formation. And one of the identities that you are interested in in your work has been civic identity. Right?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah.
MATT JORDAN: So, obviously we all have a developmental identity and it sounds like that's the one that they're most comfortable with. Right? How who how am I as a person in the world? How are howam I relating to things? How am I maybe deluding myself into thinking I have agency over my algorithm, etc., etc. but I wonder if there's a difference between that and something like a civic identity that they might be aware of, or maybe not aware of.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Their civic conceptualizations of themselves, they exist along a few different lines, right? There's kind of their political identity in terms of what party, what ideological space they're identifying in, but also their responsibility as a citizen. So, it's kind of twofold here. And as a community member. Right? What are they supposed to do in their own communities? And I don't know how much they're recognizing their civic responsibilities in their small communities. Right? Like, this is how I'm enacting this through my school, right? They just think that that's part of their role-related selves. Right? But in terms of the larger, you know what… how am I going to vote? What am I thinking about this issue? I think that's where they tend to shut down because there's so much out there on social media and they're having a hard time sifting through the performative versus the informative. And that's something that I'm seeing when it comes to civic identity, because the other identity piece, right, like that, you're talking about, you know, the different things that they purchase, the things that they're interested in, you know, recreationally, that stuff is pretty fluid and it comes pretty naturally through those spaces. Right? That's what they're for; their social connections. I think the civic stuff is a little bit different for them. And I think that's also as a result of their developmental stage. Right? They're adolescents and young adults. Which university students, they're definitely a continuation of, of adolescence, right? These emerging adults. And the fact that they're still in the university setting. They don't really know the world as well as they think they do. Right? So they when they hear these opinions on these larger scale things that don't necessarily affect them, I think they have a hard time when they're being inundated with all of this information processing it.
MATT JORDAN: So do you think they develop a sense of the public good or of public interest or anything like that, that you would say is an important feature of a civic identity?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: So, this is one thing that I'm toying with, but I don't know if my participants in my findings necessarily support this beautifully. But as a tangential. So, I do think that social media has the potential to highlight that social good. And I'll use one example that a few of our participants not enough to have it be a real finding, but they were talking about Reddit as a platform and how there's a lot of crowdsourcing in Reddit. You know, help me choose my new pair of glasses. Help me choose this. And the and they always commented about how the commenters in these spaces come together and discuss in a way that feels so much more nurturing and caring than other platforms. Right? So, in places like Instagram and X and these other platforms that they do go to get more information, it seems like they're yearning for that. And so when they see it, they highlighted immediately. So, they'll bring it to your attention, “I love when I can go to the comments and see people come to a consensus about this or see, you know, people sharing ideas.” And when they said that, they would go to the comments themselves to see what people were saying, right. That gives me hope that social media can be leveraged in that way to give this idea of the public good. The other thing isn't that it is, exposing them to multiple perspectives, which we know from the literacy research and, you know, social studies research and all that, that that really helps build empathy and this understanding of public good in that way. So I can't really I know that I'm beating around the bush on your question because I feel like I can't answer it definitively because it's from my specific studies. But from what I read and from the preliminary findings, I think, yes, it can be, but maybe we're not doing a great job of leveraging that yet.
CORY BARKER: Related to identity creation. In your conversations with young people, is there a sense that, like news consumption is at all central to their identity, or maybe even emerging news consumption as they're maybe getting a little bit older that they're recognizing for any number of reasons that they should be a news consumer, and that that should be a sort of core part of their identity in any way.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah. And I see this specifically with the university students. They have a very specific idea about where they should be getting their news, how informed they should be, what discourses they should be participating in or not. Because we are seeing, you know, a decline in them actually participating in that commentary. But yes, they have a very specific idea of what an intellectual news consumer looks like. And it is not somebody who's getting their news from social media, even though that appears to be what they're doing most of the time. Right? But yes, they do have this idea in their head about what it looks like.
MATT JORDAN: One of the things that I find interesting, sifting through some of the Pew stuff and whatnot, is that and this is something you describe, is that the generation that is most likely to use social media is also seems to be one of the lowest in terms of credulity. They believe the least of what they read on social media. Whereas, apparently, my generation, Gen X is the most credulous of all the generations. We believe, apparently, every conspiracy theory that comes down from the pike. So, I guess one of the questions I have on this is whether the identity that is emerging through the social media use is a, like, a deliberative, democratic disposition that kind of makes them want to learn more, or is one that is more cynical, that makes them kind of want to tune out and say, I don't believe much of anything.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah, I think, I think it's the latter. I do believe they're becoming more cynical. And I think it's because of the sheer amount of information and the amount of creators that come into it through social media. Right? And I also think we have to take into consideration the climate in which they're growing up. Right? The inundation of the news cycles, right? The emotional turmoil that they're constantly facing. Right? Because of the availability of these platforms. And I think also media literacy education as a whole. It's all about credibility evaluation, right? Everything's about making judgment. In the pilot study for this, every single student participating said, “I make sure that the website says dot-edu or gov or else I don't think anything that they say is true.” Right? So, they have these very strict guidelines for what's true and what's not. And social media doesn't fit into that for them. And so I think that they struggle with thinking about that as a very real source of information. And I do think it's making them more cynical. And I think so that coupled with the performativity of a lot of the influencers and commentators that they follow, makes them more cynical. And I think this is a problem because we don't want them to become overly cynical to everything, but we also want them to develop real time skills to take that cynicism and be critical and evaluate and make decisions based on what they're seeing. And that's very difficult when they're young and they may have limited experiences with it.
CORY BARKER: On that point. And some of your previous research you found young people also express a cynicism toward some of the training that they receive, either informally or formally, about how to navigate this information ecosystem. How does that manifest? And maybe then we can talk a little bit about how to potentially combat that cynicism as well in media literacy education.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Oh, great. Ask me to solve all the big problems. So. It actually is going to be sad to hear, but they generationally believe that their older teachers may not have an understanding of the media landscape that they're facing, even though we do. We know what's going on, but they believe that we don't really understand their processes that, you know, we didn't grow up with this, so we don't know. And I think coupled with the messaging that they're hearing, “We don't want to you on your phone and stop doing it. And your phone’s… don't trust this,” and then also paired with the this scripted media literacy education that they often receive, I just don't think that they feel like it's authentic enough. And this is obviously not speaking for every teacher. I have seen some teachers do amazing work authentically with this in the classroom. Right? A lot of teachers, actually. It's just I think sometimes kids have this picture of the generation gap and, you know, like every generation goes, “You don't understand what's going on in front of me.” And in this case, it's on my phone. And I think also to be fair, that is an issue when it comes to almost anything that teachers are bringing into the classroom. Right? And we find a way to make these things very authentic. And, moving outside of the algorithm for a second, rethinking, from a, from a psychological perspective. Right? We're thinking about self-presentation, right. How they're curating their image and social comparison, how they're looking at others. Right? As stuff that happens offline. Right. But now it's being super amplified online. I think that's where we need to pay attention to. I think most of the research that's showing all the negative effects is coming from the comparatives, the comparison stuff, right? Where they're constantly comparing themselves to other people that they're seeing, other images that they're seeing. And I think that's something that could be a space to support young people in. And I always use the example with, my students, when I had my first child, right. What am I doing at the time when I'm up at night? I'm looking at social media. Okay. Gisele Bundchen and Kourtney Kardashian are also having kids at the same time. I don't need to compare myself to how they're raising their kids. Right? That has a lot of implications for identity development, because those are not my immediate others. And that's what's happening to our kids online. Right? They're seeing so much that's way outside of their immediate peers and community that when these activities happen offline and it's not happening on that scale. So, I think that's one area of identity construction where we're thinking about so much being put in front of them that is so outside of their immediate possible realm. And I think that's another area of support that these kids really need. And I think that that is something that we can leverage. There's some great work that researchers are doing that’s really centering the student voice; showing what these kids want, what they want out of media literacy education, what they want adults to know about what they're doing on their screens, and what parameters they feel like they need, what limits ,and what support they need. And I think that that could be one way that media literacy education can rise to the occasion.
CORY BARKER: What do you feel like young people most want older people to know about their experiences on social platforms, whether that's connected to news or otherwise, that might be helpful to think about the relationships between generations in these spaces.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah, I think the social aspect of social media is something that we all need to be really aware of, because they are having a lot of difficulty removing their social life from social media. But at the same time, I think that they want us to know, like, “Hey, I'm not always on my phone doing something stupid. I'm connecting with my friends. I'm creating a social life,” right? “I'm curating an image. I'm doing whatever I'm doing that is helping me socially make sense of what's going on around me.” And, also, at the same time, they are developing strategies to be like, “Okay, I need to take a social media break for three days. I'm done, I'm off,” and they're doing it right. They're taking these social media cleanses, right. There are students who are getting the flip phones and are like, hey, we need to get off these spaces, right? So they are they're taking control in that way to an extent, particularly when they have support. But I think we need to be aware that so much is happening through these spaces that we can't always think that they're doing the rotting. Because they are doing some stuff that goes beyond the scope of what we're thinking.
CORY BARKER: A lot of your work in our conversation today underlines, at least for me, that so many of the things that we're interested in or concerned about regarding young people and their news consumption habits or their social media habits can be upscaled to other generations. That there are some universal things that we all experience. And I think your response there about, you know, seeing other sort of like celebrity moms, in the comparison piece being really meaningful there. To that point, is there is there more from your work that gets you thinking about how adults could be served by better news or media literacy education, or different types of information and outreach to them to bring them into this process. In the same way research is focused and discourse is increasingly focused on how it's impacting young people?
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Yeah. So one area of my research, and maybe this doesn't answer your question exactly, but I think it does. I'm currently working on a few projects centered around civil discourse; online civil discourse. Right? But it's a reflection of kind of what they're learning offline. Right? There's a huge focus on argumentative reasoning and argumentative writing in the schools. But when we think about participating in online discourse, what does that look like? Adults I don't think are modeling these discourses well for young people. And I think that's one area of media literacy that could really be bolstered. How do we discuss things online in a way that leads to productive discussion and free flow of ideas in a way that doesn't feel inflammatory? Because a lot of my participants, that inflammatory discourse that they read online often shut them down from creating meaningful participation and creating meaning in a space that they were seeking information. So, to me, that feels like an area that could really warrant a lot of exploration and a lot of support.
MATT JORDAN: Well, thanks so much for, for coming, and talking with us today. That gives us a lot to think about. And there's a, there's a lot more to be to be said about this. Thanks so much.
RACHEL BESHARAT MANN: Thanks for having me.
MATT JORDAN: That's it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was Rachel Besharat Mann, associate professor of the practice at Wesleyan University. To learn more, visit news-over-noise-dot-org. I'm Matt Jordan.
CORY BARKER: And I'm Cory Barker.
MATT JORDAN: Until next time, stay well and well informed. News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
Episode Credits:
Producer: Lindsey Whissel Fenton
Audio Engineers: Mickey Klein, Scott Gros, Clint Yoder
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.
