The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People

From foundations in critical thinking skills to practical tools and real-life perspectives, this book empowers young adult readers to be independent media users.

The Media and Me is a joint production of The Censored Press and Triangle Square Books for Young Readers.

During the recent presidential election, “media literacy” became a buzzword that signified the threat media manipulation posed to democratic processes. Meanwhile, statistical research has shown that 8 to 18 year-olds pack more than eleven hours with some form of media into each day by “media multitasking.” Young people are not only eager and interested to learn about and discuss the realities of media ownership, production, and distribution, they also deserve to understand differential power structures in how media influences our culture.

The Media and Me provides readers with the tools and perspectives to be empowered and autonomous media users. The book explores critical inquiry skills to help young people form a multidimensional comprehension of what they read and watch, opportunities to see others like them making change, and insight into their own identity projects. By covering topics like storytelling, building arguments and recognizing fallacies, surveillance and digital gatekeeping, advertising and consumerism, and global social problems through a critical media literacy lens, this book will help students evolve from passive consumers of media to engaged critics and creators.

With decades of experience in critical media literacy, the authors include AVRAM ANDERSON, electronic resources management specialist in the University Library at California State University, Northridge; NICHOLAS BAHAM III, professor and chair of Ethnic Studies at California State University East Bay; BEN BOYINGTON, high school English teacher and media educator; ALLISON BUTLER, director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; NOLAN HIGDON, professor of history and media studies, and author of The Anatomy of Fake News; KATE HORGAN, an undergraduate studying Communication and Psychology in the Commonwealth Honors College at University of Massachusetts Amherst; MICKEY HUFF, director of Project Censored, a media watchdog that promotes independent journalism, critical media literacy, and freedom of expression; REINA ROBINSON, founder of the Center for Urban Excellence, a non-profit that fosters resilience in system-involved youth; ANDY LEE ROTH, a sociologist who coordinates Project Censored’s national network of students researching important but underreported news stories; and MARIA CECILIA SOTO, an undergraduate studying Applied Linguistics and Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
 
 
 
 

Cover art and illustrations by PETER GLANTING, a Portland-based artist and designer.