An Introduction to News Media Literacy

• Adults

This Civic Empowerment Series event is hosted at Schaumburg Township District Library. Register for Zoom or In-person attendance.

Our media ecosystem today is increasingly messy, with a mix of professionally produced and user-generated content that often blurs together on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has added yet another layer of complexity, making it even easier for misleading or fabricated material to appear credible. In this session, Dr. Michael A. Spikes, of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, explores how this blending of sources—and now AI-generated material—creates a “blurring of the lines” between types of content, making it harder to know what to trust. Attendees will gain practical skills for assessing the credibility of information from different outlets and strategies for building a set of reliable sources you can return to regularly.

The Civic Empowerment Series 2026 is brought to you in partnership with Skokie Public Library, Vernon Area Public Library, Blue Island Public Library, Highland Park Public Library, Aurora Public Library District, La Grange Public Library, Fox River Valley Public Library, Algonquin Area Public Library District, Roselle Public Library and Oak Park Public Library. 

About the Speaker: Michael Spikes, Ph.D., has been teaching, writing about, and developing curriculum on the subject of News Media Literacy and its production for more than 15 years. Currently, he is a Professor of Practice and the Program Director of Teach for Chicago Journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Before joining Northwestern, Michael was a project manager for the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University.