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

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Media education traditionally emphasizes cognitive skills: decoding, dissecting, analyzing. Yet a cognitive approach overlooks our key "post-truth" relationship to media: namely, the affective dimension of our reasoning, emotional investments in particular ideologies, and the dynamics of trust in particular authorities. Developing critical media literacies as praxis requires exploring our dynamic and changing relationship to narratives, myths, and authority. Rather than decoding static texts, media education demands skeptical self-reflexivity regarding our knowledge seeking behaviors and awareness of how the social networks we belong to shape the information we consume and trust. In particular, the research presented in this AERA 2019 Presidential Session focuses on perspectives of affective pedagogy, pedagogies of discomfort, media education for racial and social justice, and critical media literacy as praxis. This interdisciplinary panel features multi-generational scholars from the UK, Canada and the United States, who will share recent research on media education in public and counter-public spaces as a form of participatory democracy. Our panel urges new modes of media education that push beyond cognitive skepticism, and requires a cultivation of educators; and students' critical self-reflexivity regarding affective investments in narratives related to polarizing issues of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. The panel will include multimodal presentations engaging video clips, memes, and data visualizations, and popular cultural texts relevant to understanding how young people engage digital news media in the contemporary post-truth climate. The panel will appeal to educators and scholars from diverse arenas and AERA Divisions, including Curriculum, Policy, Philosophy of Education, Sociology, Literacy Studies, Cultural Studies, and Civic Education.

Session Format: Four papers featuring recent mixed-methods research findings will be presented and then discussed from two distinct perspectives, to outline how media education can best cultivate participatory democratic spaces. These presentations are also media rich – using multi-modal forms of representing their work and including multiple forms of narratives as a result. Our panel will include multi-modal formats, as well as engaging narratives about diverse approaches to media education--from policy reform, to curriculum development, to pedagogical innovation, to activism, to youth engagement in media production and youth participatory action.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Cosponsor

• Division B - Curriculum Studies

Chair

• Megan Boler, University of Toronto

Participant

• April D Baker-Bell, Michigan State University

Papers

• Media Education as Critical Praxis: Cultivating "Affective" Skepticism - Megan Boler, University of Toronto

• Race and Representation: Critical Media Literacy in the Wake of Racial Violence - April D Baker-Bell, Michigan State University

• Rethinking Literacies Research and Practice in the Post-Truth Media Context - Donna E. Alvermann, University of Georgia - Athens

• What Does Critical Media Literacy Look Like for Democratic Citizens in a Post-Truth Era? - Jeremy D. Stoddard, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Discussants

• Joseph E. Kahne, University of California - Riverside

• Jennifer Wemigwans, University of Toronto