News Literacy

News Literacy and Democracy invites readers to go beyond surface-level fact checking and to examine the structures, institutions, practices, and routines that comprise news media systems. This introductory text underscores the importance of news literacy to democratic life and advances an argument that critical contexts regarding news media structures and institutions should be central to news literacy education. Under the larger umbrella of media literacy, a critical approach to news literacy seeks to examine the mediated construction of the social world and the processes and influences that allow some news messages to spread while others get left out. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines, including media studies, political economy, and social psychology, this book aims to inform and empower the citizens who rely on news media so they may more fully participate in democratic and civic life. The book is an essential read for undergraduate students of journalism and news literacy and will be of interest to scholars teaching and studying media literacy, political economy, media sociology, and political psychology.

Preface / Stephen Salyer -- Introduction: news literacy in the dawn of a hypermedia age / Paul Mihailidis -- THEORETICAL MODELS FOR NEWS LITERACY EDUCATION. Civic voices: social media and political protest / Stuart Allan -- Media literate "prodiences": binding the knot of news content and production for an open society / Manuel Guerrero & Mónica Luengas Restrepo -- Global news literacy: challenges for the educator / Stephen Reese -- Reaffirming the "journalist" as vital to 21st Century information flow, civic dialog, and news literacy / Raquel San Martín -- PEDAGOGICAL MODELS FOR NEWS LITERACY EDUCATION. Creating shared dialog through case study exploration: the global media literacy learning module / Constanza Mujica -- The role of multimedia storytelling in teaching global journalism: a news literacy approach / Moses Shumow & Sanjeev Chatterjee -- Incorporating in-depth research methodologies and digital competencies with media literacy pedagogies / Jad Melki -- Deepening democracy through news literacy: the African experience / George W. Lugalambi -- Conclusion: news literacy and the courage to speak out / Susan Moeller.

At a time when misinformation in the media is abundant, this book explains the difficulty in nurturing students to become critical researchers and offers practical lessons that empower students to excavate information that will help them learn. This guide to teaching news literacy explores a wealth of resources and classroom-tested lessons that educators in grades 7–12 can use in their own libraries and classrooms. To introduce the concept of news literacy, the authors explain the steps of the inquiry and research process in detail and examine the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) 2016 report "Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning" and related research studies. Lesson plans corresponding to each stage of the process are coordinated to relevant standards from the CCSS and ISTE and are accompanied by rubrics for providing students feedback on their progress as well as samples of student work as it evolved through the stages. Furthermore, the authors' anecdotal insights from their experiences in collaboratively implementing the lessons with colleagues are an invaluable addition for any librarian seeking to work with teachers to help students become critical researchers.

Inside, readers will find a wealth of intelligently crafted, ready-to-use lesson plans and activities designed to help promote critical thinking skills for K-12 students, making this a perfect teaching resource for school and public librarians, educators, and literacy instructors.

Every upper-elementary and middle school educator can teach news literacy and connected literacies, including text, visual, graphic, and video literacy, using this book. This book suggests that news literacy is made up of several other literacies and skills that must not only be explored across the subject areas, but also connected to students' real-world consuming and sharing habits. A series of lessons, some using technology, lay a foundation for building these multiple literacies and skills. While not meant to be a complete program, the lessons provide a holistic experience and are adaptable to personalize students' learning. The author melds strategies for finding and making meaning from information, the multiple literacies that young consumers of news must be familiar with to navigate news and other information, and the digital skills necessary to navigate today's news options. Whether students encounter news in the firewall-protected classroom or pushed out to them on their phones, the series of lessons encourage them to give pause and ask important questions as they move beyond simply consuming to become critical readers of the news.

At a time when misinformation in the media is abundant, this book explains the difficulty in nurturing students to become critical researchers and offers practical lessons that empower students to excavate information that will help them learn. This guide to teaching news literacy explores a wealth of resources and classroom-tested lessons that educators in grades 7–12 can use in their own libraries and classrooms. To introduce the concept of news literacy, the authors explain the steps of the inquiry and research process in detail and examine the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) 2016 report "Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning" and related research studies. Lesson plans corresponding to each stage of the process are coordinated to relevant standards from the CCSS and ISTE and are accompanied by rubrics for providing students feedback on their progress as well as samples of student work as it evolved through the stages. Furthermore, the authors' anecdotal insights from their experiences in collaboratively implementing the lessons with colleagues are an invaluable addition for any librarian seeking to work with teachers to help students become critical researchers.

Today, Americans face the challenge of information overload through increasingly accessible mediums, making it harder to identify valuable information and to move fluently and efficiently through social media, news and entertainment platforms. And yet, because of this profound connectivity, user engagement levels are at an all-time high. Individual consumers have more power than ever to shape the changing digital world and demand high-quality information merely by connecting with news sources online. It is of utmost importance, then, that this very consumer class is as informed and educated as possible in regards to the value of accurate, verified journalism and high-quality reporting, in order to demand a better journalistic product and to fulfill the American ideal of an informed, engaged citizenry.

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, concerns about fake news have fostered calls for government regulation and industry intervention to mitigate the influence of false content. These proposals are hindered by a lack of consensus concerning the definition of fake news or its origins. Media scholar Nolan Higdon contends that expanded access to critical media literacy education, grounded in a comprehensive history of fake news, is a more promising solution to these issues. The Anatomy of Fake News offers the first historical examination of fake news that takes as its goal the effective teaching of critical news literacy in the United States. Higdon employs a critical-historical media ecosystems approach to identify the producers, themes, purposes, and influences of fake news. The findings are then incorporated into an invaluable fake news detection kit. This much-needed resource provides a rich history and a promising set of pedagogical strategies for mitigating the pernicious influence of fake news.