The media and me: a guide to critical media literacy for young people

Introduction. Looking Beneath the Surface. Critical media literacy ; Meaning, access and representation, and validity ; How media literate are you? ; Inside 'The Media and Me' ; Who we are and how we wrote this book ; Freedom of opinion and expression as human rights

Chapter 1. What Are Media? Mobile screens and "looking glass" selves ; What are media? ; How much time do you spend with media? How much time can you go without it? ; Media and storytelling ; Write a summary lede for a news story of your own choosing ; Media ownership ; Encoding and decoding media messages ; Powerful solidarities and fateful divisions : Making sense of interpretive communities ; Interpretive communities

Chapter 2. Critical Thinking. What is critical thinking? ; Making a good argument ; Avoiding common fallacies ; What are inferences? ; Objectivity and recognizing cognitive biases and their effects ; Applying critical-thinking skills to media

Chapter 3. Critical Media Literacy. Defining critical media literacy ; Critical media literacy ; Behind the context ; Who manages whom? ; Representation ; Stereotypes ; To be critical does not mean to be negative ; Not just one thing

Chapter 4. Representation. What is representation? ; Why we are influenced by media representations ; How media construct representations : Visibility, framing, and stereotypes ; The man behind the curtain ; Representations of race and inequality ; Constructions of gender and sexuality ; Linguistic representation, profiling, and stereotyping in film and TV ; Considering language and movies ; Representations of family and class ; Assessing ability ; Who tells your story? ; Representations reveal literacies

Chapter 5. Multiple Literacies. Expanding the idea of "literacy" ; Ways of communicating ; Thinking about texts and metamessaging ; Visual literacy ; Photographs are persuasive communication tools ; Aural literacy ; Songs are an influential instrument of communication ; Digital and algorithmic literacy ; The user is the product ; From prediction to direction : The "action" economy ; Filter bubbles and content moderation ; Looking to the future of "Metaverse literacy" ; Thinking about the future of Metaverse literacy ; Putting the pieces together : Understanding how technology "knows" us ; Seeing multiple literacies in advertising

Chapter 6. Advertising and Consumerism. Ads are everywhere ; Seeing behind the ads ; Cracking consumer culture ; Stealing our attention, stealing our minds ; What can I do? What can we do? ; Culture jamming is political and social expression that disrupts ; Advertising's influence on journalism

Chapter 7. News and Journalism. The role of the press ; Journalists and journalism ; Filtered news and the propaganda model ; Sources as a news filter ; Fighting media manipulation ; Pointers for evaluating news validity. Is the content journalism? ; Who is the publisher of this content? ; Who is the author of this content? ; Do I understand the content? ; What is the evidence? ; What is missing from the content? ; What is bias? ; What can you do?

Chapter 8. What Do You Want to Do? A Resource Guide. The gears in the clock : What's next? ; 1. Maneuver like a media citizen ; 2. Engage with media at a slower pace ; 3. Defend freedom of expression as a human right ; 4. Increase the amount of valuable content ; 5. Acknowledge the context ; 6. Analyze representation ; 7. Never forget the means of production ; 8. Draw on independent media sources ; 9. Make solutions-based journalism a priority ; 10. Engage in activism, not slacktivism ; What else can you do? Engaging in constructive dialogue ; Time to practice what we teach

Glossary

Deeper reading

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Notes

Index.