While media literacy can seem politically charged, its core goals are widely shared. Words like “fake news” or “misinformation” may raise alarms, but “everyone wants kids to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, critical thinkers,” said Higgin. He cited data from Media Literacy Now that said 84% of surveyed adults believe media literacy should be a required part of school, while a study from the News Literacy Project found that 94% of teens agree.
Despite widespread support, many educators feel unsure how to approach the topic, especially in polarized environments. Beddes noted that most teachers don’t have a background in media studies, and discomfort around addressing controversial topics can lead to media literacy being sidelined. The Center for Digital Thriving offers a possible solution with resources that help educators take a nonpartisan, student-led approach, including classroom-ready lesson plans and teacher training.
Build a Culture of Respectful Conversation
Media literacy isn’t just about analyzing content; it also requires students to discuss what they’re seeing and feeling, especially when they disagree. “What we find is many people are hesitant to share a view, especially a view that might be in the minority in a given group,” said Saltwick. “But with a few simple techniques, you can really get a good dialogue going to make sure all these perspectives are heard.”
Saltwick recommended using a clear structure for these conversations. He teaches the LAPP technique — Listen, Acknowledge, Pivot, Perspective — as a way to model respectful disagreement and build trust. “The tenor of the conversation changes dramatically,” he said. “So it’s not a battle of wills: ‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’ It’s ‘let’s understand.’”
Beddes agreed that structure can help students navigate difficult discussions. She provides sentence stems to help them express curiosity and respond without escalating conflict. In her classroom, she also uses the Dignity Index, a tool that evaluates the tone of speech, to help students ground their arguments in mutual respect.
When media literacy conversations touch on identity, they can be particularly challenging. “False belief systems, conspiracy theories, can fuse to people’s identities now. And that is something that any number of skills can’t unwind,” said Higgin. “That’s why I think media literacy needs to not just be about skills—it needs to be about character and social-emotional learning.”
Use Real Media, Not Hypotheticals
To be effective, media literacy education must engage with the actual media students encounter in their daily lives. While there are tools that recreate media and try to approximate what a newsfeed would look like, “it can be very challenging to get something that feels authentic,” said Higgin. “We need to increasingly figure out how to manage the privacy and safety and maturity level of kids, but get them as much exposure to the actual media and thinking through the media in authentic environments as possible.” That includes analyzing the social media platforms students already use since algorithms often present a partial view of a topic as if it’s the whole truth and may reinforce students’ existing beliefs.
To push back against those filters, Saltwick leads an activity called Walk a Mile in My News, in which students exchange the media they consume, such as a favorite news outlet or influencer, and reflect on the differences in perspective. Exploring news sources outside of their usual echo chambers helps students realize what perspectives might be missing from their own sources.
Beddes offered a similar activity to encourage critical thinking and highlight bias. She shares news articles from outlets with different political leanings, removes the names of the publications and authors and asks students to guess the source. “It’s helping the students recognize who’s not part of this conversation,” she said.
Additionally, starting small can make the work more sustainable and more impactful. That could mean doing a short “media moment” where students reflect on how a recent viral post relates to what they’re learning in history or science. According to Beddes, resources like The SIFT newsletter from the News Literacy Project can support this kind of integration by providing timely examples and analysis of real media.
Teachers are often hesitant to take on media literacy because it can feel like another box to check, but Beddes says it doesn’t have to be that way. “Make media the lens through which you teach your subject matter so that it is not just another thing,” she advised.
Episode Transcript
Nimah Gobir: Welcome to Mind Shift, the podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Nimah Gobir. This year, I went to the South by Southwest EDU conference in Austin, Texas.
Nimah Gobir: I moderated a panel all about media literacy and I got to talk to three amazing people who are really thinking about this work.
Tanner Higgin: Hey everybody, I’m Tanner Higgin. I’m a senior educational technology researcher at WestEd which is a large and old education research organization focused on all ages and stages.
Kierra Beddes: Hi everyone, my name is Kiera Beddes. I’m a digital teaching and learning specialist in Utah. Been in education for about 15 years.
Steve Saltwick: And my name is Steve Saltwick and I volunteer pretty much full time for an organization called Braver Angels, which is a national nonprofit totally focused on bridging the political divide in all demographic areas because we feel that is essential in strengthening our democratic republic.
Nimah Gobir: Together, they brought a lot of insight and heart to that conversation. And today we’re sharing an excerpt of that panel. Stay with us.
Nimah Gobir: I wanted to start with a question that you all could answer about a moment that made you realize how important media literacy is today.
Steve Saltwick: Right after the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoner Douglas, where several of the students became quite active and well-known on social media. I remember seeing a post on my social feeds of those students ripping up a copy of the Constitution. And I’m a conservative. I mean, the Constitution’s a pretty serious document for me. So with righteous indignation, I posted this thing. And then came to find out from several of my friends who posted saying that’s a fake video and it just absolutely stunned me. So I withdrew, you know, I apologized it withdrew the post You know, and it made me really think my goodness How powerful a video image was of something like that and I fell for it immediately. I realized I needed to be a lot more mature, if you will, I guess in the way I consumed media.
Kierra Beddes: I have kind of a similar experience. I was at my nail tech and I was a captive audience because, you know, when you’re there for a couple of hours getting your nails done. And she’d be telling me, “Oh, I saw this thing on TikTok and isn’t that the craziest thing you’ve ever heard?” And I’d be like, “I don’t think that’s real.” And so one-handedly I’d be like hurriedly like googling something on my phone So I could be like this article says that’s not true or or these things also say kind of the opposite and so it was this really kind of aha moment that I had where She was seeing things and her algorithm was telling her things that were not crossing my dashboard And I just realized that like oh if she is is thinking these things and having these conversations in her home, what does that look like in my classroom? What are my kids seeing and what’s impacting them? And I realized the skills of lateral reading, of fact checking, but even going beyond that to say why is it so easy to kind of fall for these things? And so that was my aha moment. I was like, this is important and we need to do more about it.
Tanner Higgin: Yeah, it may come at this from a different angle, which is, my academic background is more in the media studies world. And one thing I love about media literacy is that when done well, it sort of unlocks a whole new layer of meaning in the world. The world comes alive once you start to understand audiovisual media and how to interpret it and unpack it. And the different systems for understanding that by looking at the medium itself, right, as part of the architecture of the meaning of something. I had some great intro to film professors who sort of gave me this new media studies and media literacy lens, tapped into the, you know, the whole notion of film language, and it felt like I’d been let into this sort of secret knowledge that exists and can really make meaning everywhere you look once you tap into it.
Nimah Gobir: Thank you. And I do want to start with asking you a question, Tanner, because you actually brought to my attention when we were first discussing this session that media literacy has transformed throughout time because our world is also changing. Like the technology that we have, even in the past like two years, has grown by leaps and bounds. So can you kind of frame for us the way that media literacy has evolved over time? Maybe even what historical trends have shaped the way that we teach it today.
Tanner Higgin: What I love about media literacy is that it kind of reflects culture at that time, but then shapes it as well. Media literacy education, interestingly, is a whole other thing. And it really grows out of policy. And policy, as I think everyone knows, especially in education, often, needs to get pushed. And it often gets pushed from a standpoint of fear, I would argue, especially media literacy.
Tanner Higgin: You know, these new technologies pop up and with it you see a new spark and interest in media literacy but it’s often from a feeling of “We need to do something for the children because this new technology is scary and is transforming everything we see.” You know, television to internet, web publishing, eroding the whole idea of authority.
Tanner Higgin: Whereas traditional literacy, ELA kind of instruction is all about like building bridges, opening up worlds for kids to like see and read the world.
Tanner Higgin: Media literacy education when it gets operationalized through policy is like setting up fences. Like let’s protect and filter information and let’s make sure kids have that capability—Very, very important, but it cuts off all of the amazing extraordinary aspects of media literacy.
Tanner Higgin: So that’s kinda been my passion. And the way I sort of think through media history, media literacy history is this battle between what happens in the media studies world and what happens in the Media Literacy Education world. And how maybe we can be less reactive and more proactive in media literacy education.
Nimah Gobir: I want to bring it to Kiera, who I’m so happy to have on this panel, because I feel like when we get up in theories and ideas, you being at school really brings us back down to the rubber meets the road, ‘what does this look like in classrooms?’ So can you maybe talk about some of the challenges that you’re seeing with media literacy in your position in schools?
Kierra Beddes: The biggest thing that teachers are always gonna say is that they need time. And then also, they say I can’t add one more thing onto my plate. And so the problem with that though is that when we see media literacy as some sort of other, then it gets left by the wayside because they’re gonna focus on their content.
Kierra Beddes: Whereas like I try to emphasize with my teachers, media literacy isn’t another thing, it becomes the lens through which you can teach your content. Media literacy, when it’s done well, you’re not just looking at the film or the message or the content of whatever you’re looking at, whatever media that you’re interacting with, but you’re also looking at the form and the choices that were made in production that impact how you, the viewer, you, the consumer, interacts with that media.
Nimah Gobir: Thank you, and I’m curious, Steve, if you have anything to add to that, because I know that Braver Angels is in the business of creating containers for better conversations, which I think is a big part of media literacy.
Steve Saltwick: What we’re focused on is the idea that everyone has a perspective and a point of view, including the media you consume. We have one program called Walk a Mile in My News. So you take two people who have very different viewpoints, and they actually switch the kinds of media they consume. And then they talk about that. And they realize, well, wait a minute, I’m missing things, because I’m not reading what the other person is reading, and much of this is not that one is right or one is wrong, it’s just to appreciate the fact that others have perspectives that are quite different from you, and if you have ground rules that set the stage for a respectful dialog about that, you can really get to a further appreciation of what the topic is.
Nimah Gobir: I’ve heard of other teachers doing activities where they have their students swap phones and go through each other’s feeds to see what are you seeing? How is it different from what I’m seeing? Kiera, have you seen any activities that have actually been successful in having students realize that what I see is not what everybody sees?
Kierra Beddes: I’ve heard teachers where they will print out articles and they remove all identifying features of the article so that they’re just looking at the language that is used in the article. And based on the word choice, you can kind of see, oh, based on how they’re talking about this topic, you can guess, is it left leaning, is right leaning? And it kind of calls to mind the ultimate promise of media literacy, which is like looking at the form, right? What is the structure and how is it used and what choices are being used. But there’s also perspectives that are noticeably absent and it’s helping the students recognize who’s not part of this conversation. Just being aware of like, oh, there is more to this and how can I go out and find that missing perspective and bring it in.
Nimah Gobir: And I want to bring you into this too, Tanner. Are there tech tools or ed tech tools that can kind of foster this idea that, like I might be seeing like a certain thing, but I am aware that there is a bigger story or a bigger narrative out there beyond what I see on my own feeds.
Tanner Higgin: Since I would say 2016, there’s been a growing sector within ed tech specifically focused on various approaches to what one might call fake news. I’m of two minds about these tools because I think one of the tricky things with media literacy in particular is if the medium is the message. Then you need to engage with the medium to understand it. Tools that recreate media and try and like, especially for younger kids, approximate what a newsfeed would look like. I think it can be very challenging to get something that feels authentic to them.
Tanner Higgin: My recommendation is when possible to get kids engaging with the actual media itself. Otherwise, it’s like you’re teaching film studies by having students reading film synopses or something instead of looking at the actual film.
Tanner Higgin: I think we need to increasingly figure out how to manage privacy and safety and maturity level of kids, but get them as much exposure to the actual media and thinking through the media in authentic environments as possible, because that’s what’s actually gonna serve them well when they are. You know, maybe sneaking some usage of things that we otherwise might not approve of.
Nimah Gobir: When you were speaking, my brain snagged on, you mentioned fake news and I think even the words misinformation and disinformation can be kind of like politically coded and can feel a little bit divisive. Media literacy, I think we talked about this too, can be a non-partisan issue. What are some shared concerns that parents and educators across ideological lines can actually come together on?
Tanner Higgin: Yeah, I think particularly at this moment in time, it can feel like in education, there’s no common ground. But media literacy is one of, it has universal support. I think it’s somewhere around, media literacy now did a survey, like 84% of adults think it should be required in classrooms. And when you ask teens, 94% think it should be require in classrooms.
Tanner Higgin: Everyone wants kids to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, critical thinkers. I mean, everyone wants that. It’s at the heart of education, right? Media literacy is at the core of what we want education to do, which is to empower people to be self-determined, to think for themselves, and to explore and engage with the world thoughtfully. There is no debate around whether that’s important or not.
Kierra Beddes: I would add to that, for the average teacher, they don’t have the background of media studies to then feel comfortable talking about it in their classes. And so it gets put onto the wayside. And so I think it’s interesting that we see this universal need for it. But then the question is, how do we empower teachers to do it?
Steve Saltwick: What we find in the classroom, both in secondary schools and university, and really adults as well, is that with a few simple techniques, you can really get a good dialog going to make sure all these perspectives are heard and things like that. I mean, so a couple of just simple ground rules, right, of respectful conversation, especially body language, so no rolling of your eyes, sighing and things that, and just state them is a big deal. And then what we use is a very simple technique called LAPP for listen, acknowledge, pivot and perspective. And really the main thing about all of that is that the speaker needs to feel that they are understood. So when you listen, you’re not listening to frame a reply, you’re listening to understand. In Texas we call it, you listen to understand not reload. You know, and so, and that’s hard work. That’s hard, right? And then the pivot is to actually ask permission before you share your perspective. So someone would say, I hear you. This is what, you know, there’s an element I agree with. At the very least, you can say, it’s clearly an emotional topic for you. And then along, something along the lines of, you know I’ve been doing some reading on this, or I’ve seen some things on this. Would you mind if I share my perspective? And then if the other person says, sure, well then you now have permission to share a differing perspective. And that is handled differently than if the first reply you have is let me tell you my perspective, let me you what the truth is, right? That’s gonna be resisted. We find that as an amazingly powerful technique to use in these discussions.
Nimah Gobir: It sounds like that process slows down the conversation in a way where it’s not as reactive. And that seems like a really important component of a conversation not kind of devolving into, I don’t know, finger pointing or talking past each other.
Steve Saltwick: What we find is many people are hesitant to share a view, especially a view that might be in the minority in a given group, right? And if they feel heard, if someone says what you’re saying is blah, right, whether you agree with blah or not, right. But I now feel heard. Then there’s all sorts of trust that starts being built. There’s all sorts of personalization that starts being built. And the tenor of the conversation changes dramatically. So it’s not a battle of wills. “I’m right, you’re wrong.” It’s “Let’s understand each other” because both of us probably missed something in understanding this complicated thing, whatever it is, right?
Nimah Gobir: And I wonder, this is maybe something that Steve, you, and maybe Kiera, you as well, can weigh in on. I do feel like when we get into things that are related to maybe identity, social identity, things that are seen as values or like close to personhood, those can get really, really emotional very fast and they’re kind of unwieldy. It can be hard, I would think as an educator, to facilitate those conversations, and I know it’s really hard to be in those conversations. Do you have any strategies for, it sounds like LAPP could work for something like that. Are there any other things you’ve found that work?
Kierra Beddes: One of my favorites, and it sounds so simple, but having sentence stems available for students… I’ve seen elementary school teachers through middle and high school, when you’re going to have a conversation, and if it’s going to be about a heated topic, you have kind of these sentence starters of like, okay, I see where you’re coming from, or this is my perspective, or. And there’s like a whole list of them. But I think it helps give students a framework for having a conversation, right? And I loved what you said about slowing the conversation down because a lot of what we see online is people share immediately out of strong emotion, right, either anger or fear or whatever the case may be. And so slowing down the reaction and really getting at “why do I react this way? Why am I feeling this way?”
Steve Saltwick: One thing we’ve found with Braver Angels is that the importance of structure, right? So we will have some simple ground rules and there’s also a clear structure to the conversation. You know, here’s what we’re doing, here is how we’re going to do it, you know, here’s some very simple ground roles but it’s not just a free for all of everybody jumping in, talking over one another, all of that. By having ground rules and a structure to the conversation, you create a much open space for people to share their ideas.
Nimah Gobir: Tanner, was there anything you wanted to add to that?
Tanner Higgin: I’m really struck by this notion of identity and values and how it comes into play in the interpretation of media and how we receive it and understand it and what we cling to. And one thing I’ve really been doing a lot of thinking about is like, I picture this as a relatively modern phenomenon, I think spurred by social media and how as a medium, conditions culture in a way, where false beliefs, false belief systems, conspiracy theories, can fuse to people’s identities now. And that is something that any number of skills can’t unwind.
Tanner Higgin: You can teach people in that position all of the media literacy skills in the world and Dana Boyd had a great talk on this, titled, “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” because she was observing how in some of these communities, critical thinking skills get applied. They just go the wrong way. But I believe, I hypothesize, that to untether false belief from identity takes humility. And that is in very short supply in the world of social media. We’re almost conditioned against it. And people with false beliefs that are tethered to their identity, it becomes like their entire world can come crumbling down if they are to take a different view.
Tanner Higgin: And that’s why I think media literacy needs to not just be about skills, it needs to be about character. And social-emotional learning and that I haven’t seen many approaches that really take that seriously. I think there are some but I think a lot more work to be done and there’s a lot of research to be done in maybe proving me correct or half correct or completely false.
Nimah Gobir: That does make me think of, Kiera, you posed a question when you were answering a question earlier, which was teachers need to be kind of empowered to kind of take on media literacy. And from what Tanner said, it is kind of a tall order. What do you think teachers need to get that work started?
Kierra Beddes: My answer to this is always to start small, because I don’t want to overwhelm teachers, but I do want to start, right? Find a direction and head in that direction. The resources, The SIFT from the news literacy project, so it’s a newsletter they put out each week. In it, they have rumor guard where they take a viral piece of media and they break down why it went viral and what was true and what is false and kind of helping reinforce those skills. That we want our students to gain.
Kierra Beddes: And I think something as simple as a media moment, right? Where a teacher could be a classroom starter, it could be an exit ticket, it could anything that you just have two minutes, three minutes, pop up a piece of media, and this can be anything, right, because text is very broadly based. But then you have your students practice those skills, you’re reinforcing those skills. And as a teacher, you don’t have to have a degree in media analyzes, but you’re helping them break down not only what are they seeing, like what is the content, but you also ask them questions about how it was created and what is meaning behind how it is created.
Nimah Gobir: MindShift is all about solutions. I think it’s easy to get kind of mired in the work that needs to be done. But I’m wondering, for all three of you, if you can share an example of someone who’s doing this work well, whether it’s an organization or an experience that you’ve had where it’s gone really positively. You got one, Steve?
Steve Saltwick: Well, I would say Braver Angels, right? I mean, what a layup, okay, right, but I certainly know one thing that strikes me about Braver Angels. It started in 2016 where a group of Trump voters and a group Hillary voters got very worried about the state of the country and it was all adults, right-typically retired adults and all of that. And then subsequently has branched out to college campuses, high schools, some middle schools. And we do workshops, and I’ve moderated many of those workshops. I’ve probably seen about 100 workshops, and probably 20%, 30% of them have been in the high school and college area. What always strikes me is really unbelievable is the thirst that I see in students to have real conversations about this.
Kierra Beddes: I have two that came to mind. One is very similar to the work that Braver Angels is doing, so the Dignity Index, they’ve developed this ranking scale of public speech and whether or not it gives dignity to the people that they’re talking about, which is a fascinating way of looking at how we talk about other people, especially people we disagree with.
Kierra Beddes: You can look at articles, you can look at speech, you can also look at conversations between students, right? What kind of dignity are you offering the other person and how are you validating their perspective? So that’s one.
Kierra Beddes: The second one and I’m not just saying this but I honestly believe this: KQED teach has a whole bunch of mini courses for educators about this very topic. One is how to teach students how to look at the form and how to analyze media and how did look at bias and And how to like share their perspectives, which is great. That’s kind of the back end, the theory behind media literacy. But then they also offer very practical, like, this is how to do video projects in your class. This is how do photo projects in our class. Like you learn the theory and then you apply it and I love it. So those are my two.
Nimah Gobir: We did not pay Kiera to say that.
Kierra Beddes: I honestly love it so much.
Tanner Higgin: I’ll point to the Center for Digital Thriving out of Harvard, I think, is doing some really path-breaking work around digital well-being specifically, which I think is an increasingly important part of media literacy, is getting students to reflect on the presence of smartphones in their lives and to think critically about it and decide for themselves what purpose it should serve and if it’s serving those purposes.
Tanner Higgin: And to that end, that research group at the Center for Digital Thriving developed an activity that’s rooted in Harvard’s long-term Project Zero Thinking Routines framework, like real simple pedagogical moves anyone can apply to just about any learning scenario. And they’ve developed one of these called The Value Sort, where you get students to choose from a big board of values which ones kind of represent them, like which ones they hold really dear. And then you can use that as a sort of critical lens to apply to just about anything in the media world.
Tanner Higgin: So their example is using that value sort to get students to think about their usage of smartphones, track like what they’re doing on their smartphones, and then go, hey, remember those values that you hold dear? Like how are those being represented in that activity or not, right? And I think that’s a way of. Of providing students with a really interesting lens to make sure that like what they’re consuming and doing is in standing with what they truly believe and their image of themselves. And I think that’s like, to me that’s a picture of the future of media literacy is this merging of traditional critical thinking skills with values and character-based education.
Nimah Gobir: Can we give a round of applause to our panelists?
Nimah Gobir: That was Tanner Higgin, Kiera Bettes, and Steve Saltwick at the SXSW EDU Conference in Austin, Texas.