Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America

This edited collection is not a response to the 2016 United States Presidential Election so much as it is a response to the issues highlighted through that single event and since when incredibly smart, sophisticated, and intelligent members of our society were confused by misinformation campaigns. While media literacy and critical media literacy are ideas with long histories in formal education, including K-12 students and higher education, the need for increased attention to these issues has never reached a flash point like the present. The essays collected here are confrontations of post-truth, fake news, mainstream media, and traditional approaches to formal schooling. But there are no simple answers or quick fixes. Critical media literacy, we argue here, may well be the only thing between a free people and their freedom.

Christian Z. Goering, Ph.D. (2007), Kansas State University, is Associate Professor of English Education at the University of Arkansas. He has published widely in the field of education, highlighted by The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project: Culture, Place, and Authenticity (co-author) and Recontextualized: A Framework for Teaching English with Music.

Professor of Education at Furman University since 2002, Dr. P. L. Thomas taught English for 18 years in rural South Carolina. He holds a B.A. in Secondary Education (1983), M. Ed. in Secondary Education (1985), and Ed. D. in Curriculum and Instruction (1998), all from the University of South Carolina.