Short Version:
“Post-truth” was the Oxford English Dictionary’s “word of the year” in 2016, the year the Republican Party nominated (and voters elected) Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States and the year that the United Kingdom announced the “Brexit” referendum.
The post-truth phenomenon has been described as a populist reaction to postmodern thought in which truth is irrelevant and facts matter much less in public discourse than feelings, personal opinions, and political identity — a situation that hastens the spread of mis- and disinformation. From climate change denial to vaccine skepticism, from QAnon conspiracies to claims of a stolen U.S. presidential election, mis- and disinformation have contributed to political polarization and even the loss of lives.
As a former English teacher and journalist, I believe it’s vital for educators to find ways to respond to the post-truth problem in their classrooms. We need to find ways to integrate critical media literacy and other tools for critical thinking and reading into our curriculum.
Long (Academic) Version:
The material on this website is based on my dissertation research, currently in the data generation phase. This research is centered on an ongoing collaboration with three secondary English language arts (ELA) teachers and one student teacher in three different contexts (rural, suburban, and urban, purposefully selected for the economic, racial, political, and ideological diversity afforded by their populations) over the course of one semester. The overarching purpose of the study is to explore ways in which ELA teachers can address the so-called “post-truth” problem by integrating, throughout their curricula, theoretical and pedagogical principles and strategies drawn from critical media literacy (CML) and epistemic cognition (EC). The specific goals of the study are (1) to identify and examine secondary English teachers’ existing theoretical and practical understandings of CML and EC; (2) to collaboratively develop, implement, and assess CML- and EC-infused instructional strategies and materials; (3) to investigate the impact of this instruction on teacher and student knowledge; and (4) to build on this analysis to inform the broader integration of CML- and EC-informed instruction in both secondary and teacher education coursework in various contexts.
Problem Statement
The presidential election of 2016 marked the beginning of what has been called a “post-truth era” (Bacon, 2018). Mis- and disinformation (MDI) about elections, climate change, and vaccination—particularly on digital media—have contributed to political polarization and violence (Piazza, 2022), the acceleration of global warming (Marlon et al., 2023), and thousands of preventable deaths (Bagherpour & Nouri, 2020; Simmons-Duffin & Nakajima, 2022). Many educators have identified increased attention to media literacy as a promising pedagogical response. English language arts (ELA) teachers, tasked with teaching literacy, have an especially critical role to play in this respect (Hobbs et al., 2022; Korona, 2020; Share & Mamikonyan, 2020). However, there is little methodologically rigorous research documenting an intentional approach to integrating critical media literacy (CML) into existing ELA curricula.
Research Questions
The following research questions are guiding the study:
- How do three teachers and one student teacher in three diverse contexts (rural, suburban, urban) conceptualize critical media literacy (CML) and students’ epistemic cognition (EC) before and after participating in the project?
- What strategies do the teachers adopt for integrating elements of critical media epistemology (CME) into their curriculum?
- What pedagogical moves and resources do the teachers construct and enact as they work to integrate CME into their curriculum?
- In what ways do the teachers reflect and act on their own positionality and instructional context in conceptualizing, strategizing, and implementing CME integration?
- What new knowledge about the post-truth phenomenon, CME, themselves, their instructional practice, and their students do teachers gain?
- In what ways do the teachers’ actions impact student knowledge about the post-truth phenomenon, CME, and themselves?
Relevant Literature
“Post-truth” was the Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 word of the year, defined there as “denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (Bacon, 2018). A Google Scholar search for articles containing both “critical media literacy” (CML) and “post-truth” returns 687 results, suggesting that a perceived connection between the two concepts is fairly widespread. Wardle and Derakhshan (2017) mention “the integration of critical media literacy” as one of a menu of proposed international responses to the post-truth problem (p. 57). Within the field of literacy education, Alvermann (2017) may have been one of the first to link the two concepts, in a policy editorial the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literature. In the article, Alvermann argues that social media texts can be powerful tools for teaching critical inquiry skills in a post-truth world. Other scholars have built on this work. Comber and Grant (2018) root the nebulous concept of “fake news” in the post-truth phenomenon and describe a CML-informed curriculum addressing the issue. Leland et al. (2018) ground their approach to “talking back” to misinformation texts in critical (media) literacy. Nash (2021) emphasizes the importance of having student engage critically with both media texts and their own perspectives, observing that “asking students to consider their own contribution to meaning making is especially important in a post-truth era in which ‘reality itself is up for grabs’” (p. 720); the author discusses a critical approach to online reading that helps students consider their own biases and situated perspectives. Smith and Parker (2021) consider how students and teachers use digital and critical literacies and multiliteracies to navigate “tensions that accompany living in the post-truth era, which is characterized as a time in which definitions of truth and fact are contested and politically influenced” (p. 2). Finally, Hendricks-Soto and Nash (2023) discuss the challenges of post-truth online engagement along with two approaches to CML that attempt to meet those challenges, concluding that teacher educators must find new methods of addressing “the ways that information and power circulate in the post-truth world” in the preparation of teachers (p. 12).
Methodology
The study will draw on two methodological strategies, case study and practitioner inquiry. Case study is a broad approach defined in various ways, but most scholars of case study agree that it involves the study of a “bounded system” (Creswell, 2007; Jones et al., 2013; Merriam, 1985; Stake, 1995)—that is, a situation or event or problem with clearly defined edges. For this research, I am utilizing a “nested” multiple case study design (Thomas, 2011; Yin, 2003). In this research design, several clearly defined subunits are situated within a single, clearly bounded primary case. This nested case study will be informed by practitioner inquiry, a research paradigm that includes several modes of research (e.g., action research, participatory action research, self study) that share core features, including practitioner as researcher, community and collaboration, teacher knowledge as valuable, professional contexts as inquiry site, blurred boundaries between inquiry and practice, systematicity, and public accessibility (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). While it has faced methodological, philosophical, and ethical critiques, it has also gained widespread acceptance within educational research.
Research Contexts
For this case study, I purposefully selected the three research sites for their geographical and ideological diversity: (1) “Ithaca High School” (IHS) is one of the smallest schools in Indiana, serving just over 300 students in grades 6-12. Students of color comprise about 10 percent of the student body. The school is situated in a town with a population just over 3,000 in west-central Indiana. (2) “Ogden Nash High School” (ONHS has a student population of approximately 1,800 in grades 9-12. Situated on the outskirts of a mid-sized urban area, ONHS draws students from the city, surrounding towns, and rural areas. Students of color comprise approximately one-third of the student body. (3) “Geronimo Junior High” (GJH) is a school in the heart of a mid-sized urban area that serves approximately 1,100 in grades 7-8. Students of color comprise nearly 60 percent of the student body at GJH. At each site, I am working with a classroom ELA teacher; each secondary (nested) case, then, consists of the teacher, a student teacher (in two cases), and the students that agree to participate. The primary case is an inquiry group consisting of myself, the teachers, and one of the student teachers; the group meets for about three hours approximately once every three weeks to discuss theory and pedagogy, plan and evaluate instructional materials, and share and analyze student classwork.
Participants
At each school, I identified an ELA teacher I had worked with previously in some capacity. Two of those three teachers are hosting student teachers during the data collection period, so I also contacted the student teachers assigned to them, and both of them agreed to participate to varying degrees. Each classroom teacher has selected one or more classes to work with on the project, and we will recruit students from each of those classes for interviews and classwork analysis. All five teachers (1) identify as white women with moderate to progressive political views and (2) have expressed interest and concern about media literacy.
Methods of Data Generation
The primary method of data generation for this case study, which began in mid-December 2023, is participant observation. As a participant-observer in the tri-weekly meetings of the inquiry group, I am facilitating these meetings by providing guiding questions and structure while attempting to ensure that the teachers’ voices are centered. I am recording each meeting and transcribing the recordings with the assistance of Otter.AI. I am also taking on a participant-observer role in the teachers’ classrooms. Between each tri-weekly meeting, I am visiting each teacher’s classroom at least once during a lesson in which they (and/or their student teachers) are implementing an activity or strategy that emerged from the collaborative inquiry group discussions. In some cases, I may take on a role as co-teacher. I am not recording the classroom observations; instead, I will construct field notes during and/or immediately after observing (Bernard, 2011). Secondary data collection methods include interviews and document/artifact collection.
Theoretical Framework
Although various theoretical/pedagogical frameworks adopt the “critical media literacy” label, the one developed by Kellner and Share (2005, 2007, 2019) is cited most frequently in CML scholarship. As a “theoretical framework and practical pedagogy,” CML’s overarching goal is “to enhance individual sovereignty vis-à-vis media culture, empowering people to critically read, write, and create a better world” (Kellner & Share, 2019, p. XI) and “to challenge popular assumptions that frame media as unproblematic windows to the world” (Kellner & Share, 2019, p. XIII). The framework originally included five “conceptual understandings” (Kellner & Share, 2007), which the authors later expanded to include a sixth (Funk et al., 2016; Kellner & Share, 2019). The utility of CML in addressing the post-truth phenomenon, however, is limited by several internal weaknesses, including a neglect of affect and emotion (Boler, 2019; Logue, 2020); a concern that its overtly ideological and political stance could be perceived as indoctrination (Higdon et al., 2021); a worry that CML promotes an epistemology that may conflict with student funds of knowledge and ways of knowing (Barzilai & Chinn, 2020); and a related unease about the epistemological underpinnings of CML that have led, paradoxically, to the appropriation of its methods by the very post-truth actors and discourses CML seeks to refute and deconstruct (Bacon, 2018; Lathrop & Wessel Powell, 2022).
Approaches rooted in epistemic cognition (EC), an interdisciplinary field that has been tapped as another possible resource for pedagogical responses to the post-truth problem, have the potential to mitigate some of these shortcomings. However, no study to date has explored the effectiveness of instructional strategies and materials explicitly informed by both EC and CML. Therefore, I have drafted a theoretical framework that synthesizes a popular model of EC with the CML framework in a way that mitigates some of the limitations of both and also provides theoretical and practical guidance for the development of curriculum and instructional activities that may help teachers and teacher educators within ELA and other disciplines respond to the post-truth challenge. I have tentatively called this theoretical framework critical media epistemology. It integrates the six conceptual understandings from CML (Kellner & Share, 2019) with five aspects of “apt epistemic performance” and corresponding design recommendations from the Apt-AIR framework of EC (Chinn et al., 2021), organizing them around five new principles that I have articulated of critical epistemic practices and dispositions for engaging with digital media texts.
IRB Status
This study was approved by the Purdue IRB (IRB-2023-1425) on Oct. 26, 2023. The principal investigator is my adviser, Tara Star Johnson. The study is supported by a small research grant from the Purdue College of Education, which I am using primarily to fund a $900 honorarium for each teacher and to pay for meals at each inquiry group meeting.
References
Alvermann, D. E., & Harrison, C. (2017). Social media texts and critical inquiry in a post-factual era [Article]. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(3), 335-338. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.694
Bacon, C. K. (2018). Appropriated literacies: The paradox of critical literacies, policies, and methodologies in a post-truth era. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 26(147).
Bagherpour, A., & Nouri, A. (2020). Covid misinformation is killing people. Scientific American, 11.
Barzilai, S., & Chinn, C. A. (2020). A review of educational responses to the “Post-truth” Condition: Four lenses on “Post-truth” Problems [Article]. Educational Psychologist, 55(3), 107-119. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2020.1786388
Boler, M. (2019). Digital disinformation and the targeting of affect. Research in the Teaching of English, 54(2), 187-191.
Chinn, C. A., Barzilai, S., & Duncan, R. G. (2021). Education for a “Post-truth” World: New directions for research and practice [Article]. Educational Researcher, 50(1), 51-60. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20940683
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. Teachers College Press.
Comber, B., Janks, H., Hruby, G. G., & Grant, H. (2018). Working critically and creatively with fake news. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(3), 329-332.
Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. SAGE Publications.
Funk, S., Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2016). Critical media literacy as transformative pedagogy. In Handbook of research on media literacy in the digital age (pp. 1-30). igi Global.
Hendrix-Soto, A., & Nash, B. (2023). Critical approaches to media literacy in teacher education: Accounting for the challenges of post-truth politics. Journal of Language & Literacy Education/Ankara Universitesi SBF Dergisi, 19(1).
Higdon, N., Butler, A., & Swerzenski, J. (2021). Inspiration and motivation: The similarities and differences between critical and acritical media literacy. Democratic Communiqué, 30(1), 1.
Hobbs, R., Chapman, D., Doerr-Stevens, C. M., French, S. D., Lynch, T. L., Medina, C., Morrell, E., Sloan, C., Stringfellow, L., & Ziemke, K. (2022). Media education in english language arts.
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Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2007). Critical media literacy: Crucial policy choices for a twenty-first-century democracy. Policy Futures in Education, 5(1), 59-69.
Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2019). The critical media literacy guide: Engaging media and transforming education (Vol. 2). Brill.
Korona, M. (2020). Evaluating online information: Attitudes and practices of secondary english language arts teachers. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 12(1), 42-56.
Lathrop, B., & Wessel Powell, C. (2022). ” We shall take their children away and rear them to the fatherland”: A critical discourse analysis of a” Parent advocacy” Group. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 18(2), n2.
Leland, C., Ociepka, A., Kuonen, K., & Bangert, S. (2018). Learning to talk back to texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(6), 643-652.
Logue, J. (2020). Engaging the post-truth crisis in education affectively: Elements for a psychoanalytically informed pedagogy. Philosophical Studies in Education, 51, 22-32.
Marlon, J., Neyens, L., Jefferson, M., Howe, P., Mildenberger, P., & Leiserowitz, A. (2023). Yale climate opinion maps 2021. Yale University. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/
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Nash, B. L. (2021). Constructing meaning online: Teaching critical reading in a post‐truth era. The Reading Teacher, 74(6), 713-722.
Piazza, J. A. (2022). Fake news: The effects of social media disinformation on domestic terrorism. Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, 15(1), 55-77.
Share, J., & Mamikonyan, T. (2020). Preparing english teachers with critical media literacy for the digital age. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 20(1), 37-54.
Simmons-Duffin, S., & Nakajima, K. (2022). This is how many lives could have been saved with covid vaccinations in each state. National Public Radio.
Smith, K., & Parker, L. (2021). Reconfiguring literacies in the age of misinformation and disinformation [Article]. Journal of Language & Literacy Education / Ankara Universitesi SBF Dergisi, 17(2), 1-27.
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Teaching in a 'Post-Truth' World 