With the 2024 US elections drawing near, host Mickey Huff moderates an expert panel discussion with three media scholars and educators about how critical-media-literacy education can enhance civic engagement. They outline the many challenges posed by social media, hyper-partisanship, and fake news, but also explore what educators can do to engage today’s students and equip them with critical tools necessary to deconstruct media messaging and bridge communication barriers, both inside and outside the classroom. This program is also a special broadcast that is part of the Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival.

GUESTS:

Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer in Communications at the University of Massachusetts and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst, MA, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy. Butler co-directs the grassroots organization, Mass Media Literacy, where she develops and conducts teacher training for the inclusion of critical media literacy in K-12 schools. She is co-author of The Media and Me and Surveillance Education.

Nolan Higdon is a co-founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas; a University Lecturer at the Merrill College and the Education Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz; a Project Censored National Judge; and an author of several books on media issues, including The Anatomy of Fake News, as well as co-author of The Media and Me and Surveillance Education.

Sydney Sullivan is a Lecturer at San Diego State University, and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on education and digital rhetoric with an emphasis on well-being. Sydney’s most recent chapter in Transformative Practice in Critical Media Literacy is out now, titled “Rethinking Curriculums: How Critical Digital Literacy and Mandatory Composition Courses Collide.”

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