Media Literacy

Media Literacy is a critical skill students must learn to succeed in today's tech-driven, media-saturated society. This book helps students understand media literacy, and how to implement and share that knowledge with others. As an experienced media literacy expert and professor, Nick Pernisco provides a well-researched guide for learning this important critical thinking skill and using it in everyday life. This is a must-read for anyone interested in learning how to interpret the enormous amounts of information we are exposed to every day, both in traditional media and online.

The information we are exposed to each day is immense. This is due to a lower barrier to entry for media companies to deliver their messages, but also to the entry of non-professional media producers on social media. Anyone can have a Twitter or Instagram account, and anyone has the capability to grow their audience from nothing to millions of followers. How do these messages compare to the messages we get from our televisions? How have our smartphones changed the way we consume media? We clearly have an over-saturated marketplace for ideas, with too much information vying for our limited attention. This book holds the answer.

The 2016 election was another paradigm-shifting moment for our world. The election of Donald Trump made us pay closer attention to the news, and many people felt they were facing new levels of media intensity and messaging that had never been seen before. In this book we also interweave lessons learned since 2016 and provide the tools necessary to understand our new world.

The first and second editions of this book have been used by teachers and students around the world, and have sold thousands of copies in various formats. The books filled the need by teachers, students, and parents for a practical guide for explaining and using media literacy.

This book is perfect as a textbook for a course on media literacy, or as an undergraduate media or cultural studies course.