Media Literacies: A Critical Introduction traces the history of media literacy and grapples with the fresh challenges posed by the convergent media of the 21st century. The book provides a much-needed guide to what it means to be literate in today’s media-saturated environment. Updates traditional models of media literacy by examining how digital media is utilized in today’s convergent culture Explores the history and emergence of media education, the digitally mediated lives of today’s youth, digital literacy, and critical citizenship Complete with sidebar commentary written by leading media researchers and educators spotlighting new research in the field and an annotated bibliography of key texts and resources

This updated Second Edition of Media Literacy introduces the fascinating world that operates behind visible media messages. This accessible edition includes updated figures and information about computers and the Internet. Media Literacy helps the reader to establish knowledge structures from which they can consciously filter out negative media effects, while acknowledging the positive instructional and entertainment value of media. The author provides the details necessary to facilitate media literacy, rather than merely surveying why it is needed; integrates theory with practice; includes exercises to help readers improve media literacy; emphasizes examples and exercises that support the key ideas of any media studies; and invites students to think like a psychologist, an economist, an advertiser, a journalist, a media critic, a producer, and a policy maker.

The contemporary young reader learns from a very early age to read and interpret through a broad range of media. Literacies Across Media explores how a group of boys and girls, aged from ten to fourteen, make sense of narratives in a variety of formats, including print, electronic book, video, DVD, computer game and CD-ROM. This book records these young people over a period of eighteen months as they read, view and play different texts, demonstrating variations and consistencies of interpretative behaviour across different media. Margaret Mackey analyses how the activities of reading, viewing and playing intertwine and affect each other's development. Her in-depth research shows young readers developing strategies for interpreting narratives through encounters with a diverse range of texts and media. The study breaks new ground in its illustration and exploration of the impact of cross-media fertilisation on how young readers come to an understanding of how to make sense of stories. Literacies Across Media offers both a vivid account of a group of young readers coming to terms with texts and a radical perspective on the growth of a generation of young readers. It is thought-provoking, fascinating and highly informative reading not only for theoreticians interested in the reading process, but also teachers, librarians, parents and anybody involved with young people and their texts.

Leading authority on media literacy education shows secondary teachers how to incorporate media literacy into the curriculum, teach 21st-century skills, and select meaningful texts.

Civic life today is mediated. Communities small and large are now using connective platforms to share information, engage in local issues, facilitate vibrant debate, and advocate for social causes. In this timely book, Paul Mihailidis explores the texture of daily engagement in civic life, and the resources—human, technological, and practical—that citizens employ when engaging in civic actions for positive social impact. In addition to examining the daily civic actions that are embedded in media and digital literacies and human connectedness, Mihailidis outlines a model for empowering young citizens to use media to meaningfully engage in daily life.

How do students' online literacy practices intersect with online popular culture? In this book scholars from a range of countries illustrate and analyze how literacy practices that are mediated through and influenced by popular culture create both opportunities and tensions for secondary and university students.