Rethinking Literacies Research and Practice in the Post-Truth Media Context

• In Event: 15.010 - Skeptical and Affective Literacies: Redefining Critical Media Pedagogies in a "Post-Truth" Era

Abstract

In a post-truth context, educators confront two apparent truisms: (1) General distrust of the media is reportedly eroding young people’s beliefs in democratic processes (PEW Research 2017); and (2) Social media texts are the largest source of public opinion and crowd-sourced wisdom presently available (Deng and Zhao 2016). In an era when heuristics, rather than arguments, are profoundly shaping beliefs and values, in what ways are we required to rethink assumptions and “best practices” in literacy education? What approaches to educational research, and to literacy pedagogies and curriculum, might help us address the profound influence of social media in shaping identities and beliefs?

This presentation re-evaluates four key findings that emerged in the author’s recent review of curriculum and instruction research into high school and undergraduates’ digital literacy practices (Author, 2017), literacies emergent from young people’s engagement with social media texts (e.g., political news, chat, and social networking sites). Drawing on pedagogies of discomfort (Boler, 1999), this paper explores the need for attention to the unconscious, affective investments underlying traditional conceptions of literacy. A pedagogy of discomfort invites students to critically reflect on “beliefs inherited non-critically” (Boler, 1999: 180), and to develop a meta-perspective through which they come to understand, and account for, their own “habits of attention.” How might this approach and heuristic encourage nuanced skepticism in a post-factual era?

The first finding to be critiqued is that media technologies for sharing information socially tend to encourage bullying that can lead to a toxic environment for its victims (Fassbender, 2017). This points to the urgent need for pedagogical change (Blikstad-Balas & Davies, 2017). Without such change, the potential of online spaces in which young people can explore sides of themselves denied by society will likely wither, along with a decline in social justice work. What kinds of “affective” pedagogical work is required to challenge practices of bullying in online spaces? A second finding to be critiqued is research (grounded in a theory of musicality) that suggests music harbors a special capacity for its listeners to sympathetically relate to values that were at one time foreign to them (Volgsten, 2014). How might literacy pedagogies concerned with the affective dimensions of learning, develop music-based curriculum and instruction? The third finding to be critiqued, drawn from literacy educators’ research on young people’s identity formation (Moje, Luke, Davies, & Street, 2009), suggests that formal and informal learning are hardened categories in young people’s online literacy practices. How might pedagogy of discomfort work to dislodge such overdrawn distinctions? Through these critical re-evaluations of research findings in literacy research, this paper suggests ways in which literacy education, and media literacy in particular, must think outside the box.

Author

• Donna E. Alvermann, University of Georgia - Athens