1st Edition
Everyday Media Literacy An Analog Guide for Your Digital Life
In this graphic guide to media literacy, award-winning educator Sue Ellen Christian offers students an accessible, informed and lively look at how they can consume and create media intentionally and critically.
The straight-talking textbook offers timely examples and relevant activities to equip students with the skills and knowledge they need to assess all media, including news and information. Through discussion prompts, writing exercises, key terms, online links and even origami, readers are provided with a framework from which to critically consume and create media in their everyday lives. Chapters examine news literacy, online activism, digital inequality, privacy, social media and identity, global media corporations and beyond, giving readers a nuanced understanding of the key concepts and concerns at the core of media literacy.
Concise, creative and curated, this book highlights the cultural, political and economic dynamics of media in our contemporary society, and how consumers can mindfully navigate their daily media use. Everyday Media Literacy is perfect for students (and educators) of media literacy, journalism, education and media effects looking to build their understanding in an engaging way.
Instructor slides and quizzes (with answers in bold) for this book are available through the Routledge Instructor Hub.
Introduction: Why Media Literacy and Why You 1. Using: How Your Time with Media Can Be More Intentional 2. Thinking: How to Protect Your Daily Allotment of Attention 3. Verifying: How to Find a Fact, and Know When You’ve Found One 4. Analyzing: How Media Messages Deliver Meaning through Content and Creativity 5. Creating: How to Create Messages with Purpose, Expression and Ethics 6. Spending: How the Big, Big Business of Media Affects You, and Where You Can Profit 7. Connecting: How Media Communicate Culture, and How Cultures Respond 8. Informing: How News Media Seek Truth, and Shape Reality 9. Protecting: How Technology Invades Your Privacy, and How to Protect It 10. Choosing: How to Curate Your Media Use to Positively Shape Your Sense of Self 11. Participating: How Technology Supports and Challenges Civic Engagement and Democracy.
Biography
Sue Ellen Christian is a professor of communication at Western Michigan University. She was the 2016 Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year and has received the highest honor for teaching from her institution. She is an award-winning former Chicago Tribune staff writer and the author of Overcoming Bias: A Journalist’s Guide to Culture and Context (Routledge).
"Everyday Media Literacy comes at a critical moment in the life of the American mind; we've never had more facts at our disposal, and we've never been more acutely aware of how wrong they can be. This wonderful book, as contemplative as it is clear in its instruction, offers insight into the overwhelming tide of choices and encourages us to make our decisions mindfully. It is required reading for students of the storytelling crafts. But it's also for anyone seeking clarity and understanding of the world around them."
–Christi Parsons, senior editor, The Atlantic
"Researching like the scholar she is and writing like the journalist she was, Sue Ellen Christian has produced a perfect handbook for citizens in an information (and disinformation) age: Readable, informative and important."
–Kathy Kiely, Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism
"Prof. Christian takes on the critical issue of media literacy with an approach that is clear, accessible and well-researched, and that considers the subject from a global perspective. Everyday Media Literacy will enable readers to navigate the contemporary chaos of misinformation to distinguish fact from falsehood and become more engaged, informed citizens."
–Louise Kiernan, editor-in-chief, ProPublica Illinois and faculty, Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University
"This book is accessible, engaging and important. Read it to regain control of the news as it affects you and to protect our democracy. A lot of people are trying to twist the news. This book straightens things out again."
–Joe Grimm, editor-in-residence, Michigan State University School of Journalism
