Dynamic Media Environments: Expanding the Scope of Media Literacy

An accessible introduction to understanding the current media environment and the culture it contains, this book provides an indispensable guide to dynamic media literacy in the digital environment.

Katherine G. Fry draws from philosophies of technology and communication, from media ecology, critical cultural theory, and critical pedagogy to explain the dimensions of media environments. Fry introduces an essential dynamic media environment model that can be used as a framework for understanding global social challenges. The model extends media literacy education and practice by de-centering media messages, instead explaining media as environments – as cultures created by and within our dominant form of communication. Exploring progressive education philosophies that advocate inclusion, independence, empathy, and critical thinking toward problem-solving in a rapidly changing world, this book includes media literacy examples, global case studies, exercises, and learning tools to facilitate learning the full scope of the current media environment. This book explores how the digital communication environment operates on many dimensions so that we, as citizens, as players within the shifting digital environment, can act to shape it.

Essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies, media literacy, and media education, as well as other disciplines where media is used as a lens to examine issues within society.

Katherine G. Fry is a professor in the Department of Television, Radio & Emerging Media at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Constructing the Heartland: Television News and Natural Disaster (2003) as well as numerous other works in media literacy and media ecology. Fry co-founded the New York City-based media literacy non-profit organization, The LAMP (www.thelamp.org). A Fulbright recipient to Turkey, she has also lectured internationally.