Toward Responsive Media Pedagogies: Youth Sociopolitical Sense-Making and Platform Politics in Digitally Mediated Worlds

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In response to the growing circulation of digital disinformation, media literacy research and practices have become increasingly focused on how youth evaluate information. While teaching students skills to assess and verify information is undoubtedly valuable, we argue that this focus on individual cognition overlooks the relational, affective and dialogical dimensions of media use. Our symposium seeks to understand the complex and situated ways in which sense is created by media users and overdetermined by media technologies. Together, we present multiple perspectives on what responsive media pedagogies – attuned to young people’s sociopolitical sense-making and to the changing politics of digital platforms – might look like.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Media, Culture, and Learning

Chair

• Catherine Burwell, University of Calgary

Papers

• Beyond Media Literacy Binaries: Analyzing Affective Dimensions of Youth Digital Democratic Dialogue - Nicole Mirra, Rutgers University

• Sociability and Sense-Making Circles: How Canadian and American Youth Navigate COVID-19-Related Media - Catherine Burwell, University of Calgary; Maren S Aukerman, University of Calgary; David Michael Scott, University of Calgary; Michelle L. Bence Mathezer, University of Calgary

• Young People's Experiences With Mis/disinformation: A Participatory Research Project With First-Year Undergraduates - Rebekah Willett, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Layla Coleman, University of Wisconsin - Madison