The Promises, Challenges, and Futures of Media Literacy

Abstract

Media literacy has become a center of gravity for countering fake news, and a diverse array of stakeholders-from educators to legislators, philanthropists to technologists-have pushed significant resources toward media literacy programs. Media literacy, however, cannot be treated as a panacea. This paper provides a foundation for evaluating media literacy efforts and contextualizing them relative to the current media landscape. Media literacy is traditionally conceived as a process or set of skills based on critical thinking. It has a long history of development aligned along the dialectic between protection and participation. Contemporary media literacy tends to organize around five themes: youth participation, teacher training and curricular resources, parental support, policy initiatives, and evidence base construction. Programs like these have demonstrated positive outcomes, particularly in the case of rapid responses to breaking news events, connecting critical thinking with behavior change, and evaluating partisan content.However, media literacy programs also have their challenges. In general, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation data of media literacy efforts. Some research shows that media literacy efforts can have little-to-no impact for certain materials, or even produce harmful conditions of overconfidence. The longitudinal nature of both assessing and updating media literacy programs makes this a perennial struggle. Because of these challenges, we make recommendations for future work in the field.

“I'm Always Kind of Double‐Checking”: Exploring the Information‐Seeking Identities of Expert Generalists

“…Never has that been truer than the present moment. We undertook this research amid escalating calls for improved online literacy instruction in K–12 schools (Breakstone, McGrew, Smith, Ortega, & Wineburg, ; Bulger & Davidson, ; Caulfield, ; Hobbs, ; Kohnen & Saul, ), while also witnessing the savviness with which young people from places such as Parkland, Florida, used social media to promote civic activism (e.g., Samuel, ).…”

Youth and Digital Citizenship+ (Plus): Understanding Skills for a Digital World

“…Expanding from a tradition that developed during the 20th century, media and new media literacy frameworks have continued to evolve in the 21st century in response to the rapid pace of media technology innovation and the transformation of the communication environment. Academics, policymakers, educators, and activists, mainly from Europe, Australia, and the U.S., have developed these frameworks in an attempt to address questions about media access, production, interpretation, and distribution, and their relationship to participation in society, culture, and the economy (Buckingham, 2007;Bulger & Davison, 2018;De Abreu, Mihailidis, Lee, Melki, & McDougall, 2017;Hobbs, 2010;Hobbs & Jensen, 2009;Livingstone, 2003;Tyner, 1998).…”

Negotiating (dis)Trust to Advance Democracy through Media and Information Literacy

“…(Bulger and Davison 2018: 7). Media literacy can empower people to think critically, engage meaningfully, and contribute positively to a civil society (Hobbs 2013;Hobbs and McGee 2014;Bulger and Davison 2018) but in such a state of epistemic crisis, users alone cannot negotiate the risks and opportunities of the online world without additional institutional support from trusted sources (Bulger and Davison 2018: 7). Media literacy policy, therefore, needs to elicit participation from state, national, and corporate actors, in addition to training individuals on responsibility and trustworthiness (Bulger and Davison 2018: 7).…”

“…This is because democracy requires informed decision-making from citizens (Dutta 2018), and debate and deliberation over mediums of communication are essential for a flourishing, participatory democracy (Fraley 2004)-and MIL hones those skills. Members of a democratic public need to be able to assess and challenge the validity of information in a manner that is institutionally supported (Sunstein 2017: ix;Bulger and Davison 2018). Exemplary of Dewey's (1940) conception of democratic education which emphasizes active learning, experimentation, problem solving, and building skills of discernment, and instills attitudes of inclusion and empowerment, media and information literacy can be operationalized to advance democratization.…”