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Education 466: Critical Media Literacy

Teaching Youth to Think Critically and Create Alternative Media

Education 466: Critical Media Literacy

Critical Media Literacy: Teaching Youth to Critically Read and Create Media

The material on this page supports UCLA's Teacher Education Program's Critical Media Literacy course (ED466), which prepares educators for teaching K12 students to explore their relationships with media, technology, and popular culture by critically questioning different types of representations and creating their own alternative media messages. This site is updated regularly.

UCLA Center X

Race and Racism

Gender and Sexism

Advertising and Consumerism

Junk Food Using Social Media
Lego Ads Gender Mashups
Sexist advertising from the past
Ads that Whisper to the Brain (NYTimes)
Ads in Schools
Putting ads on student lockers at school.
Truth in Advertising
Article on the fight for truth in advertising.
Who Owns What?
Use the pull down menu to find out who owns what.
Buy Me That (video)
The Century of the Self
British TV documentary by Adam Curtis (2002).
The Merchants of Cool
This Frontline report explores the marketing of popular culture to teens.
How Companies Get You Hooked (2014)
Generic Brand Video
How advertisers TARGET shoppers
Article in Forbes: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did.
Ridding the World of Ads (South Park)
Colgate dental floss ad (photoshopping images)
Generic Political Ad (great for studying elections)
Ad Age TV Pricing Chart
Reverse Advertising: Graphic Warning Labels Show the Sinister Side of Products
Naomi Klein on Culture Jamming Brand Trump
Ram Truck MLK Ad Remixed with different part of same speech
Duke Univ. digital repository of Ads from 1911-1955
Megan Fox enrols a 'hand double' as she peels off for sexy Super Bowl advert
Honest Ads: Fast Foods
Fast Food Ads on Twitter (by Sarah Z)
Commercial for Amazon Key
Podcast: A History of Persuasion (part 3 The Stakes)
Guide to Native Advertising (CJR, 2019)

Photography & Visual Literacy

Essential Lens: Analyzing Photographs Across the Curriculum
Free resources for teaching photography from Annenberg Learner.
Focus On Photography: A Curriculum Guide from ICP
The International Center of Photography's free photography curriculum.
What Happens When A Photographer Takes The Same Photo From A Different Angle
Unusual Photos from Famous Events
10 Intriguing Photos (NY Times, 2015)
Photo Analysis Worksheet (National Archives)
Common Core & 10 Visual Literacy Strategies (Edutopia)
Visual Thinking Strategies
World Press Photo (Introduction to Photojournalism)
Making Sense of Documentary Photography (by James Curtis)
What's Documentary About Photography? (by John Mraz)
When Photoshop Goes too Far (PBS July 2015)
Questioning Photographs
Misleading Images of Fitness (photo manipulation)
15 Historic Cartoons that Changed History
MoMA Course: Seeing Through Photographs
Free online course from Museum of Modern Art, NY
Police Body Cameras: What do you see? (NY Times, 2016)
How Photography Can Transform Social Justice in America (Sarah Lewis)
Mapping (ESRI)
What's Going On in this Picture? (NY Times)
Examples of lying with photography
Three pictures: Race & power among women
Comparing Biases in World Maps
2017 in Seven Charts
Photographic Plagiarism
How a Face Changes in Different Lighting
Sebastião Salgado (TED Talk)
NASA photos for free access
Altered Images (Bronx Documentary Center)

News and Journalism

Daily News Around the World
This website has newspapers around the world updated daily in different languages (English is in yellow).
Newspaper Front Pages
The Newseum website has this wonderful collection of newspaper front pages from around the world, updated daily.
Teacher resources from American Press Institute
The American Press Institute has free curriculum and other resources for teaching news literacy.
Podcast: Making Radiolab
PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsroom (2011) by John Sullivan
Political Ads in Ohio (2012)
No Escaping Dragnet Nation (Bill Moyers 2014)
Fox News Viewers (Feb. 15, 2012)
NPR "Message Machine" to analyze political ads
FAIR takes on Public Broadcasting
George Bush: Hurricane Katrina Photo
State of the News Media 2015
PEW Research Center
WWII Propaganda: State of Deception
US Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit on propaganda.
Political TV Ads Archive
Anatomy of a Campaign Ad (2016)
Infographic: History of Political Ads

Smear Speech (Mad Mag) Parody by Chris Columbi

Climate Change & Environmental Justice

In the News

Can the Internet be Archived? (The New Yorker, 2015)
The Wayback Machine and persistence of info online.
US sanitizes the history of the Vietnam War
Hollywood TV & Movie Salaries (who makes what?)
Data mining children (2014)
Chomsky (2013) Media Control & Indoctrination in US
Fast Food Ads and Children in 2012
Social Media Monitoring of Students LAT Sept 2013
Media Literacy is Not Ed Tech
Digital Merit Badges
Culture Jamming (May 2012)
Advertising junk food to kids - Freedom of Speech?
New Media Driving Occupy Movement by Leah Lievrouw
Infographic Thinking
EdWeb's Games for Learning Database
How the Media See the Media in 2012
Stacking Cell Phones
How Twitter's Trending Algorithm Picks Its Topics
New study shows students not so media savvy
Creating Iconic Logos
Benetton the Unhate campaign
Teens, Kindness and Cruelty on Social Network Sites
Ads & Parody (NY Times 11/4/11)
Naomi Klein on the Occupy Movements
Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom (NY Times)
An article in the New York Times about video games in the classroom. Sept. 15, 2010.
Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction (NY Times)
Libraries go Digital (LA Times)
Calvin Klein Ad banned (is this rape?)
America's Obsession with Numbers
An interesting look at the use of numbers in the US to invoke credibility.
What is real? (LA Times, 2010)
Determining what is real from what is fake in entertainment and beyond.
Ipsos OTX Study: People Spend More Than Half Their Day Consuming Media
Democracy Now! (NY Times)
Bill Moyers speaks
Typography
Video Literacy
Daily Bruin argues that all undergrads need critical media literacy
Democracy Demands Media Literacy (CNN 2017)
Google's Featured Snippets are Worse than Fake News
YouTube & Google Advertising (The Guardian 2017)
Facebook's Alert for Fake News (Guardian 2017)
Three Years Later The Chibok Girls are Still Missing
A gender & race critique of the Planet of the Apes movie: War
NY Times Graphs
Right-wing media blame public education
Trump has turned words into weapons by George Lakoff & Gil Duran
Indiana Teachers Shot “Execution-Style” With Pellets in Shooting Drill
Can you spot the terrorist? (Quiz)
Food as media text in presidential campaigns
Gerrymandering Fonts

Movies

Media Literacy Organizations & Resources

Critical Media Literacy Framework
Media and Information Literacy curriculum
UNESCO (2011) Curriculum for teaching teachers media literacy.
Pedagogies of Media & Information Literacies
UNESCO (2012)
The Global Critical Media Literacy Project (GCMLP)
Smart Media Education for the 21st Century (ACME)
National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)
US media literacy membership organization.
Association for Media Literacy (Canadian NGO since 1978)
Center for Media Literacy
The Critical Media Project (USC)
Common Sense Media
Lesson plans & resources
PBS: media literacy for kids
Teaching children to learn about media literacy.
Teaching Tolerance: Media Literacy Lesson Plans
Project LookSharp
Lots of excellent free resources for teaching ML
Newseum
Daily front pages from around the US & world.
The Journal of Media Literacy Education
Media Literacy Clearinghouse
eMedia Education Lab (Europe)
Media Education Lab (US)
ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education)
eSchool News (lots of technology for schools)
Creative Commons
Critical Commons
Cable in the Classroom: InCtrl
Powerful Voices for Kids
Computer History Museum
Educational Video Center in New York
Over 30 years guiding youth to make socially conscious documentaries
Civic Media Project (case studies around the world)
Eyes Wide Open (pop quiz)
Twitter Hashtags for Education
Zinn Education Project (Teaching a People's History)
Smithsonian Oral History Interview Guide
By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth & Participatory Politics
Media Literacy Journal 2015 (Common Core & ML)
Internet Archives
Library of free, books, movies, music & more
The Museum of Hoaxes
Frontline PBS documentaries on media
Teacher guides available online
Educating for Democracy in the Digital Age (EDDA)
Center Stage Teacher's Handbook: Teaching Playwriting in Schools
A Guide to CRAP Detection Resources
Stanford History Education Group--Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning
Get Smart Radio
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR, Extra!, CounterSpin)
Hidden Brain (NPR podcasts)
Grandparents of Media Literacy
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
KQED & PBS Media Literacy course & certificate
European Framework for The Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu)
Teaching for Change (Building Social Justice Starting in the Classroom)
Rethinking Schools
Media Smarts (Canada's Centre for Digital and Media Literacy)
Lesson Plan on Storytelling (StoryCorps)
California Department of Education media literacy resources
European Association for Viewers Interests, Brussels (EAVI) Media Literacy for Citizenship

Social Media & Digital Technologies

Recursos en Español (Spanish Resources)

Last Updated: Nov 17, 2019 5:50 PM
URL: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/educ466
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Subjects: Education & Information Studies