In 2016, the Council on Foreign Relations and National Geographic surveyed over 1200 college students between the ages of 18 and 26. The Global Literacy Survey found that only 29 percent of respondents achieved a minimal base score of 66 or better. While respondents rated global awareness as being important, they generally demonstrated a lack of knowledge commensurate to desired awareness.
In other words, students rightly recognize the proper, even good, information they require, but demonstrate they are not consuming that information. They have poor information diets. In fact, most of us do.
Writing in the pages ofForeign Affairs, Eliot Cohen expressed concern at a developing void in foreign policy thought as average Americans seem to not understand the relevance of global events to their lives.
In podcasts ranging across the political spectrum, foreign policy practitioners and academics alike have registered growing alarm at a general ambivalence towards foreign policy and international issues in American public discourse (those podcasts include War on the Rocks, Net Assessment, Bombshell, and Intelligence Matters).
Foreign affairs: America’s “unknown unknown”
I share all of those anecdotes to demonstrate that the lack of “global literacy” and general ambivalence in the American public towards foreign policy issues is broadly recognized and a source of concern for academics and practitioners alike.
However, the bigger problem is how to achieve the twin goals of building global literacy and general interest in foreign policy when higher education and journalistic media seem to have failed to do so. To extend the diet metaphor, it’s like trying to eat healthy in a food dessert.
New media could be seen as an alternative, but has little to no quality control measures to identify and rank the quality of information. There are several new media platforms that are excellent (like the podcasts linked above), but how would an individual already in the dark on foreign affairs know to look for them?
Outlining a solution
There’s no one solution, but any viable one should start with information curation and aim at the following objectives.
- Make information more accessible: brief overviews with accompanying links to reliable sources from journalism, academia and think tanks.
- Look beyond major media: Expose the audience to information sources other than cable news or major news networks, which are dominantly focused on domestic politics.
- Demonstrate a broad spectrum of discussion: include information from multiple sources and perspectives on any given topic.
- Be useful for informative and educational purposes by eschewing ideologically driven language and demonstrating reasoned discourse.
Improving your information diet
In thinking through the above problem and objectives, I’ve worked to develop an information source that is a hybrid of news and research that models the type of conversation and content needed to broaden an individual’s knowledge generally, and develop their global awareness specifically.
My solution takes the form of a curated email newsletter, the Weekly Brief that I publish at TimTalksPolitics.substack.com.
The Brief is a weekly readout on relevant, but not always widely publicized, stories in politics and foreign affairs. It is organized as a topical conversation between domestic and international governments, think tanks, and news organizations.
The Weekly Brief can be skimmed in 10 minutes or delved into for over an hour if you want to read any combination of the 30-50 linked stories that pack each edition. But, whether you skim or dive in, readers are provided with a document that provides a common starting point for informed conversation and comparative analysis. I honestly believe one could start a discussion group with this newsletter and experience a depth and richness to their political thinking that cable news and Twitter just won’t give you.
Building a balanced information diet
International awareness and information literacy requires the development of a general knowledge that is not easily developed in any one institution like a school or singular media source. The Weekly Brief serves as a connecting point between multiple institutions of journalism, academia and government, and represents a wide spectrum of thought and philosophy.
Not only does the Weekly Brief provide a basic foundation of global knowledge, but it also provides a common reference point for readers to engage in critical and constructive discourse. Right now, the average American doesn’t know much about the wider world, but that doesn’t have to be you and your network. You can begin to change the discussion with a simple decision to start improving your information diet.