Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

The article argues for the urgent inclusion of critical media literacy in K–12 and teacher education curricula in response to the realities of the information era. It defines critical media literacy as understanding how corporate, profit-driven media operate through political and economic interests, supporting alternative nonprofit media, and empowering teachers to guide students and parents in media analysis.

The book focuses on critical media literacy as both a theory and a practice for contemporary education. It argues that traditional schooling is outdated in a world dominated by interconnected digital media, and suggests that educators need to rethink what and how students learn to include critical analysis of media systems and content. The authors trace the development of media and cultural studies, drawing on thinkers from the Frankfurt School to recent intersectional theories that examine how media represent race, gender, class, and power. They provide frameworks and classroom strategies for helping learners understand and critically assess the influence of media messages, fake news, bias, and dominant ideologies across platforms.

The book presents a comprehensive and critical exploration of critical media literacy. It emphasize developing skills to question, analyze, interpret, and make meaning from media, encouraging readers to recognize how media influence desire, consent, and everyday decision-making. It situates media literacy within broader discussions of power, ideology, and identity, using critical frameworks that draw on cultural studies, critical pedagogy, and political critique.

This study examines how literacy education must evolve in response to rapid technological and cultural shifts. The authors explore how critical media literacy is defined across theoretical perspectives, including cultural studies and feminist pedagogy. They review research on audience analysis, youth culture, and subject positioning to show how young people actively negotiate meaning from media texts. The article argues that literacy education should move beyond traditional print-based models to address multimedia and popular culture forms. It concludes by discussing how schools can incorporate critical media literacy into curricula to prepare students for the complexities of contemporary media-saturated societies.

Youth media consumption and disordered eating practices have historically been subjects of moral panics, often resulting in protective, deficit-based interventions like content removal. We argue for interventions which instead equip youth to evaluate and manage risks in their online environments, building upon their existing “information sensibility” practices. Drawing upon ethnographic research and intervention testing with 77 participants in the US and India, we analyze how youth (aged 13–26), including those with diverse political perspectives and those recovering from disordered eating (DE), engage with online news and health information. Participants generally algorithmically encountered (rather than searched for) information online, and their engagement was shaped more by social motivations—like belonging—than truth seeking. Participants interpreted online information collaboratively, relying on social cues and peer validation within their online communities. They demonstrated preference for personal testimonies and relatable sources, particularly those with similar social identities. We propose resilience-building interventions that build upon these youth online information practices by: (1) leveraging peer networks, promoting critical information engagement through collaborative learning and peer-to-peer support within online communities; (2) developing social media sensibility, equipping youth to critically evaluate information sources in situ; (3) providing pathways offline, connecting youth to desired in-person communities; and (4) encouraging probabilistic thinking.

Children aged 9–12 (tweens) are active social media users who frequently watch content created by influencers and content creators. Viewed as relatable and trustworthy, these creators often integrate advertising into their content, making commercial messages difficult for tweens to recognise. Since children at this age may lack sufficient media literacy skills, distinguishing between entertainment and advertising becomes challenging. Media literacy includes the ability to access, create, and critically analyse media, alongside digital, algorithmic, and advertising literacy. Developed within social contexts such as family and peer interactions, these literacies shape how tweens interpret online content. This study explores tweens’ media literacies in relation to social media creators within their social environments.

This study examines how visual media literacy helps combat misinformation spread through manipulated visual content on social media, focusing on educational settings in Jordan. Using a mixed-methods approach, including interviews with 18 media literacy educators and a quantitative analysis of rumors (January–August 2024), the research identifies strategies that strengthen students’ critical evaluation skills. Educators promote practices such as reverse image searches, cross-checking credible sources, and analyzing creators’ motives to detect bias. The study also highlights the Picture Superiority Effect, showing how visuals influence memory and perception more strongly than text. Findings reveal 481 recorded rumors, with 85.5% spread via social media and 58% related to political and security issues. Overall, the research emphasizes the importance of visual media literacy in fostering informed, critical, and resilient digital citizens.

This article situates contemporary critical media literacy into a postdigital context. It examines recent advances in data literacy, with an accent to Big Data literacy and data bias, and expands them with insights from critical algorithm studies and the critical posthumanist perspective to education. The article briefly outlines differences between older software technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), and introduces associated concepts such as machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, and AI bias. Finally, it explores the complex interplay between Big Data and AI and teases out three urgent challenges for postdigital critical media literacy. (1) Critical media literacy needs to reinvent existing theories and practices for the postdigital context. (2) Reinvented theories and practices need to find a new balance between the technological aspects of data and AI literacy with the political aspects of data and AI literacy, and learn how to deal with non-predictability. (3) Critical media literacy needs to embrace the posthumanist challenge; we also need to start thinking what makes AIs literate and develop ways of raising literate thinking machines. In our postdigital age, critical media literacy has a crucial role in conceptualisation, development, and understanding of new forms of intelligence we would like to live with in the future.

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on human society is indisputable. This paper explores AI's influence on the media industry, with a particular focus on understanding the effects and implications of generative imagery and other AI integrations across various dimensions of the media landscape. A methodical literature review highlights key themes, including content creation, curation, visual media, privacy concerns, and evolving media ethics. The findings demonstrate that AI-generated imagery serves as a powerful creative tool, yet remains in constant evolution and demands a well-defined legal and ethical framework for responsible use in journalism and media. The results also emphasize the need for professional guidance, continuous skill development, and the implementation of ethical AI practices within the industry.

This paper aims to compile evidence and explain available analytical frameworks to help UNICEF understand this rapidly emerging area of adolescent engagement. This analysis presents an overview of relevant research literature across the topic of digital civic engagement by young people.

The thesis introduces the Multidimensional Storytelling (MDS) framework to study hybrid new media narratives. It focuses on narratives combining digital, interactive, and transmedia storytelling elements. The research asks whether these forms share common features and can be unified conceptually. It also examines how narrative dimensions evolved between 2000 and 2015. A mixed-method approach was used, including literature review, expert interviews, and 61 case studies. Shared narrative and technological patterns were identified to design the MDS framework. The framework includes qualitative and quantitative tools for systematic analysis. It was tested on additional new media stories from 2000–2015. Findings show the framework supports standardized and reproducible analysis of hybrid narratives. The study reveals an increasing level of hybridisation in new media storytelling over time.

This study examines the transformative potential of Virtual Production (VP) technologies within news media organizations. By leveraging tools such as real-time game engines, LED walls, and Extended Reality (XR), VP redefines storytelling, enhances audience engagement, and alters journalistic workflows. This research focuses on case studies of innovative media organizations that have integrated VP, analyzing its impact on immersive journalism practices, audience interaction, and ethical considerations. The qualitative thematic analysis reveals how VP fosters participatory news consumption, aligns with the expectations of digital-native audiences, and addresses the complexities of integrating AI and blockchain tools in production. Findings highlight VP’s capacity to democratize content creation and promote inclusivity while also discussing the challenges of infrastructure investment, energy consumption, and accessibility. This paper offers a roadmap for news organizations to adopt VP technologies, emphasizing their role in shaping the future of journalism in the digital age.

Tis book explores how digital media convergence is transforming storytelling and education. It explains transmedia storytelling, where narratives unfold across multiple platforms to enhance learning, participation, and engagement. The book links media literacy, hybrid storytelling, and participatory culture with classroom practice, showing how multimedia projects, hypertext, and interactive content improve understanding and retention. Through theory, research, and case studies, it presents a framework for designing cross-platform educational experiences that promote critical thinking, collaboration, and creative expression in modern higher education environments for modern classrooms and future learners.

In today's hypermedia landscape, youth and young adults are increasingly using social media platforms, online aggregators and mobile applications for daily information use. Communication educators, armed with a host of free, easy-to-use online tools, have the ability to create dynamic approaches to teaching and learning about information and communication flow online. In this paper we explore the concept of curation as a student- and creation-driven pedagogical tool to enhance digital and media literacy education. We present a theoretical justification for curation and present six key ways that curation can be used to teach about critical thinking, analysis and expression online. We utilize a case study of the digital curation platform Storify to explore how curation works in the classroom, and present a framework that integrates curation pedagogy into core media literacy education learning outcomes.

Social media permeates the daily lives of millennials, as they use it constantly for a variety of reasons. A significant contributing factor is the availability of social media through smartphones and mobile apps. This kind of immersive and complex media environment calls for a literacy pedagogy that prepares students to understand, engage with, and adapt to social media that are inevitably going to remain a part of their lives. Research into digital literacy/literacies has sought to address the development of tools and methods to aid college students in becoming more situated and adept digital citizens. This article extends the conceptualization and application of digital media literacy through the inclusion of a critical, multimodal, and interdisciplinary pedagogical approach. The paper illustrates that critical digital literacy drawing upon multimodal and interdisciplinary analysis is imperative in preparing students to manage the predominance of social media in their lives.

Media literacy and digital skills are key challenges identified in the European Union 2020 Strategy. These skills are essential in today’s digital society and should be included in school curricula. A major focus is helping students develop critical thinking so they can use media and digital tools responsibly. This project explores how to better include media literacy in education and encourage active, informed participation in the digital world. It begins with a review of international models and research to understand current practices and key issues. The aim is to guide teachers and families in helping children and young people use digital media effectively. The study identifies important dimensions of media literacy and digital skills, which will be used to design an assessment tool. This tool will measure how digital media influence young people’s habits and learning outside the classroom.

The article argues that traditional ideas of literacy are too narrow for the digital age because they focus mainly on technical skills and information use, ignoring social, cultural, and ideological aspects. It proposes a broader view of digital literacy that encourages critical thinking about how media represents reality, who produces it, and how audiences interpret it. It also highlights the value of digital media production in classrooms for developing these skills, while noting challenges like unequal access to technology. Overall, it concludes that digital literacy should be part of a wider rethinking of literacy and the role of technology in education.

The Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) is a UNESCO Category II Centre established in 2000 by an agreement between the Government of the Republic of Korea and UNESCO. It promotes Education for International Understanding (EIU) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED) to foster human rights, peace, intercultural understanding, and sustainable development through research, curriculum development, capacity building, international collaboration, and educational resources.

Democracy in the digital networked age of “fake news” and “alternative facts” requires new literacy skills and critical awareness to read, write, and use media and technology to empower civic participation and social transformation. Unfortunately, not many educators have been prepared to teach students how to think critically with and about the media and technology that engulf us. Across the globe there is a growing movement to develop media and information literacy curriculum (UNESCO) and train teachers in media education (e-Media Education Lab), but these attempts are limited and in danger of co-optation by the faster growing, better financed, and less critical education and information technology corporations. It is essential to develop a critical response to the new information communication technologies that are embedded in all aspects of society. The possibilities and limitations are vast for teaching educators to enter K-12 classrooms and teach their students to use various media, critically question all types of texts, challenge problematic representations, and create alternative messages. Through applying a critical media literacy framework that has evolved from cultural studies and critical pedagogy, students at all grade levels can learn to critically analyze the messages and create their own alternative media. The voices of teachers engaging in this work can provide pragmatic insight into the potential and challenges of putting the theory into practice in K-12 public schools.

This chapter provides a theoretical framework of critical media literacy (CML) pedagogy and examples of practical implementation in K-12 and teacher education. It begins with a brief discussion of literature indicating the need for educators to use a critical approach to media. The historical trajectory of CML and key concepts are then reviewed. Following this, the myths of “neutrality” and “normalcy” in education and media are challenged. The chapter takes a critical look at information and communication technologies and popular culture, reviewing how they often reinforce and occasionally challenge dominant ideologies. Next, this critical perspective is used to explore how CML interrogates the ways media tend to position viewers, users, and audiences to read and negotiate meanings about race, class, gender, and the multiple identity markers that privilege dominant groups. The subjective and ubiquitous nature of media is highlighted to underscore the transformative potential of CML to use media tools for promoting critical thinking and social justice in the classroom.

The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet's implications in five domains: 1) inequality (the "digital divide"); 2) community and social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use adapts to existing patterns, permits certain innovations, and reinforces particular kinds of change. Moreover, in each domain the ultimate social implications of this new technology depend on economic, legal, and policy decisions that are shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. Sociologists need to study the Internet more actively and, particularly, to synthesize research findings on individual user behavior with macroscopic analyses of institutional and political-economic factors that constrain that behavior.

This publication is the first educational guidance from UNESCO to specifically address the problem of contemporary anti-Semitism at a time when, sadly, the need has become ever more crucial in our schools, universities and other educational establishments. This guidance resource will assist educators to establish expedient and effective peda-gogies to address prejudice and to respond to anti-Semitic incidents when they occur. It provides policymakers with tools and guidance to ensure that education systems build the resilience of young people to anti-Semitic ideas and ideologies and, more broadly, to all forms of racism and discrimination, through critical thinking and respect for others.

Increasingly, the concept of information literacy is considered as crucially important to enable people to deal with the challenge of making good use of information and communication technology. This non-technical overview explains what information literacy means. Designed for senior and middle level public and private sector executives, in government ministries, private enterprises, academic institutions, and not-for-profit organizations, it describes how to find, retrieve, organize, evaluate and effectively use information. This publication has been designed as a ready reference for consulting from time to time by busy officials and executives having to cope every day with the complex and daunting challenges being faced by all enterprises and institutions, public and private, as they make the transition to knowledge societies at the beginning of the 21st century.

DW Akademie promotes Media and Information Literacy (MIL) projects in many parts of the world, including Burundi, Cambodia, Moldova, Namibia, Ruanda, Tunisia, Uganda, and the Palestinian Territories. In all of these countries and regions, our aim is to help people exercise their right to freedom of expression and their right to access information freely. In addition, our MIL projects increase awareness for how media work and how individuals can make their voices heard in public discussion and forums. To reach these goals, we work with youth and adults, teaching professionals, NGOs, and government ministries. The experience and knowledge gained in these projects all over the world have shaped and enriched this collection of materials. We would like to thank everyone who has helped in this process.

“Behavioral targeting” is an Internet-based targeting strategy that delivers digital ads to individuals based on their online behavior (e.g., search, shopping). This research explores the unique ways in which consumers respond to ads using this type of targeting (vs. to ads that use more traditional forms of targeting), demonstrating that a behaviorally targeted ad can act as a social label even when it contains no explicit labeling information. Instead, when consumers recognize that the marketer has made an inference about their identity in order to serve them the ad, the ad itself functions as an implied social label. Across four studies, behaviorally targeted ads lead consumers to make adjustments to their self-perceptions to match the implied label; these self-perceptions then impact behavior including purchase intentions for the advertised product and other behaviors related to the implied label. Importantly, these effects only hold when the label is plausibly connected to consumers’ prior behavior (i.e., when the targeting is at least moderately accurate).