Media Literacy for Students in a Digital Age

Whether you call it digital, information, news, visual, or media literacy — it is vital for civic engagement and democracy

By Faith Rogow April 10, 2024

High school students sit next to each other, each on their computers, at Manor New Tech High School, in Manor, Texas. (Photo Illustration: Carnegie Corporation of New York; Photo: Getty Images)

No facet of our lives is untouched by media. Our public spaces are infused with an unending cascade of media messages promoting an array of corporations, causes, candidates, events, and teams. Social media has reshaped our culture, even for those who never log on. And AI is making it easier than ever before for anyone to create content that feels real — even when it’s not.

This presents schools and educators with a new challenge. In this rapidly evolving digital world, literacy means more than knowing how to use digital tools. Powerful computers now fit in the palms of our hands, and the resulting access to information and audiences requires new thinking and reasoning skills, not just knowledge of how to use a device or an app.

Yet media literacy education is a contested domain with divergent ideas about its purposes and best practices. While many educators have met the challenge with energy and creativity, a lack of school, district, or statewide coordination around media literacy education has left a dizzying array of practices and priorities. Some teachers dismiss media literacy education as extraneous or view it as someone else’s job. Some address media issues that are important to them, without considering the specific needs or experiences of the students they teach. The results create unnecessary repetition for some students while others receive no media literacy instruction at all. The status quo is a recipe for reinforcing existing inequities.

What Is Media Literacy Education?

Media literacy education teaches students to routinely apply critical inquiry, reading, and reflection skills to all forms of media that they encounter, use, and create. Rather than offering predetermined interpretations, educators ask students what they notice and then help them to develop the skills and knowledge to notice more, creating a space where everyone can think more deeply.

Just as media exists in all areas of our lives, media literacy can’t be reduced to a single lesson or something that’s separate from the rest of school. It can’t be the job of one educator or librarian; it needs to be integrated into a student’s entire education.

A lesson, activity, project, curriculum, or initiative is likely to meet the goals of media literacy education if it

goes beyond merely using media to teach; media are used to help students acquire new or improved critical thinking skills.
teaches students to ask their own questions about media messages rather than just responding to questions that the teacher asks.
teaches students to ask questions of all media (not just the things that they find suspicious or objectionable, and not just screen or digital media but also printed media like books or posters).
includes media representing diverse points of view (e.g., does not reduce complex debates to only two sides and/or actively seeks alternative media sources).
encourages students to seek multiple sources of information and helps them learn to determine which sources are most appropriate or reliable for any given task.
requires students to justify opinions or interpretations with specific, document-based evidence.
seeks rich readings of texts, rather than asking people to arrive at a predetermined “true” or “correct” meaning.
does not replace the investigative process with declarations about what a teacher or a cultural critic believes to be true.
incorporates an examination of how media structures (e.g., ownership, sponsorship, or distribution) influence how people make meaning of media messages.
teaches students to ask questions when they are making (not just analyzing) media, helping them to notice and evaluate their choices, and also to understand that their social media posts are media.

How Is Media Literacy Connected to Civic Engagement?

If a central purpose of schooling is to prepare future generations to exercise their civic responsibilities, then educators must encourage students to investigate rather than doubt media sources. They go from being consumers to interrogators of news and information.

The specific strategies of media literacy education are designed to provide students with the skills, knowledge, habits, and dispositions necessary to become the lifelong learners, critical and creative thinkers, effective communicators, and engaged, ethical community members and citizens needed to sustain a vibrant democracy in a digital world.

Media literacy students are given opportunities to hear diverse, evidence-based views. Freed from the need to convince others that there is only one right answer (and it must be theirs), students learn to engage in dialogue for the purpose of learning rather than winning. In the process, they learn about the lesson’s subject matter and about one another. Speaking things out loud can lead to surprising and powerful insights.

It can also build community and lay a strong foundation for civic engagement. That’s because, rather than uniform agreement, media literacy uses the process of logic and evidence-based inquiry as the group’s common ground. So media literacy discussions provide excellent practice for living in a nation that values pluralism.

Media literacy skills involve an understanding that all media are constructed (that is, media messages are always the product of human choices), and demonstrate an understanding of how and why those choices are made. These are foundational, essential skills needed to navigate life in a digital world so that we can participate effectively as a citizen in a healthy democracy. They are not the only skills, just the starting point.

Faith Rogow is an independent scholar and the Media Literacy Education Maven at InsightersEducation.com, which she founded in 1996 to help people learn from media and one another. She has taught thousands of teachers, students, childcare professionals, media professionals, and parents and guardians to understand and harness the power of media.

This article is an edited excerpt from Preparing for Civic Responsibility in our Digital Age: A Framework for Educators to Ensure Media Literacy Education for Every Student (2023), published by DemocracyReady NY, a nonpartisan coalition and a project of the Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, and supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.