In what ways can developing students media literacy lead to civic engagement?
These lessons were developed to progressively build secondary students’ media literacy and civic reasoning skills so they can make informed and reasonable judgments about the media they consume, curate, and produce as digital citizens. The goal of the lessons is to help students build the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to critically engage in civic reasoning and discourse as media consumers, curators and producers.
What is my role in the media landscape?
This lesson is designed to help students think about the media landscape around
them and how it affects their lives and perceptions. Students will learn what "media" is, identify positives and negatives about their current media landscape, and track and reflect on their media use during a designated time period.
What role does the news play in our democracy and the wider media landscape?
This lesson is designed to help students identify elements of news, understand how it is different from other types of media, identify fact, opinion, and journalism, and discern what role it plays in our democracy.
What does it mean to be a civically-conscious media curator?
In this lesson, students will understand the concept of curation and discuss how they make choices about their media consumption and sharing. They will learn about algorithms and how this impacts the media with which they engage. Students will also discuss and decide upon the criteria they will use to support critical curation.
How can I produce and share media in a civically conscious way?
In this lessons, students will understand the importance of civically-conscious media production in the media they produce themselves; they will gain skills to curate their social media landscape in a civically-conscious way; and they will use reading strategies to analyze all kinds of media, including AI generated or edited content for accuracy and truthfulness.
Some of the materials in this collection have been developed and are maintained by the Media Literacy Collaborative, a partnership between the UC Santa Cruz History & Civics Project and UC Irvine History Project.