Critical Media Literacy, the Educational Force to Save and Preserve Democracy

My proposal is a call to educators and educational researchers to rethink the role of education in the twenty-first century, with the imperative need to develop and incorporate a critical-thinking based media literacy curriculum in the schools. In the online environment within which most students are immersed, the highly constructed visual images, complex sound arrangements, and multiple media formats organize, shape, and disseminate information, ideas, and values that are creating a powerful, and questionable public pedagogy. This is also an ecosystem that is constantly tracking and selling our communications, movements and personal data. (Kellner & Share, 2019) In addition, with the use of computers and the web for education being trumpeted and exaggerated for years, teachers could not have imagined the extent to which - especially with the advent of smartphones - the digital world would subsume us and utterly addict us. The consequent problems of the escalating role of online media, particularly social media, have become increasingly obvious. These include ever shorter attention spans, mental health problems, radical levels of confusion and escapism, withered self-esteem disguised beneath all sorts of self-promotion, and most recently, the inability to distinguish legitimate from pervasive, manipulative, unreliable and often outright false information. There is thus an urgent need to develop an overlooked field in educational research that focuses on how to prepare i-generation students to be critical, to lead, and to reverse the current deep level of relativism and the post truth political environment it has fomented Critical media literacy incorporated in educational institutions is more important than ever, as it will provide not only information about the dark side of social media, but the tools to develop awareness and empower students. Learning how to question, problematize, analyze, maneuver and also produce in this cultural environment are essential requirements for critical thinking, educated citizens, and real participatory democracy. My proposal is a call to educators and educational researchers to rethink the role of education in the twenty-first century, with theimperative need to develop and incorporate a critical-thinking based media literacy curriculum in the schools. In the online environment within which most students are immersed, the highly constructed visual images, complex sound arrangements, and multiple media formatsorganize, shape, and disseminate information, ideas, and values that are creating a powerful, and questionable public pedagogy. This is also an ecosystem that is constantly tracking and selling our communications, movements and personal data. (Kellner & Share, 2019) In addition, with the use of computers and the web for education being trumpeted and exaggerated for years, teachers could not have imagined the extent to which - especially with the advent of smartphones - the digital world would subsume us and utterly addict us. The consequent problems of the escalating role of online media, particularly social media, have become increasingly obvious. These include ever shorter attention spans, mental health problems, radical levels of confusion and escapism, withered self-esteem disguised beneath all sorts of self-promotion, and most recently, the inability to distinguish legitimate from pervasive, manipulative, unreliable and often outright false information. There is thus an urgent need to develop an overlooked field in educational research that focuses on how to prepare i-generation students to be critical, to lead, and to reverse the current deep level of relativism and the post truth political environment it has fomented.Critical media literacy incorporated in educational institutions is more important than ever, as it will provide not only information about the dark side of social media, but the tools to develop awareness and empower students. Learning how to question, problematize, analyze, maneuver and also produce in this cultural environment are essential requirements for critical thinking, educated citizens, and real participatory democracy