Media Smart: Lessons, Tips and Strategies for Librarians, Classroom Instructors and other Information Professionals

by Joanna M. Burkhardt

Information has become one of the most crucial commodities in today's world. From multinational corporations to single individuals, we all make critical decisions based on the information available to us. However, modern ease of access to information does not often guarantee access to good information. In this digital age, where facts can be easily manipulated to align with political, social or monetary aims, media literacy has become an essential skill. Media Smart: Lessons, Tips and Strategies for Librarians, Classroom Instructors and other Information Professionals  is an invaluable toolkit for navigating the fraught information landscape. From the history of media manipulation to practical applications of media literacy, this book will offer a thorough grounding in teaching students to defend themselves from mis-and dis-information. It discusses how technology affects the information we receive, offers a brief look at the psychology behind how we process information, describes the various means by which media can be manipulated and provides tips about how to recognize and avoid false or misleading information.

216 pages, Paperback

Published July 19, 2022

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an excellent resource for all information professionals, specifically for educators and those of us working in public libraries. It covers the basics of media literacy (though at the time of publication Twitter was still Twitter and not Elon Musk's club), and does the work of defining mis-, dis-, and mal-information clearly. Where it really shines though (and where I'm hoping to bring some ideas to the programming team at the public library where I work) are the exercises in each chapter. They are geared more towards students, but where lifelong learning is the ethos of public libraries, there's room to scale that across a lifespan because access to balanced information is important for everyone. I think this book would be an asset for schools to invest in as a resource for teachers and teacher-librarians to return to, if they have a professional library from which to reference for lessons on things like critical thinking and media literacy. The book is well-researched and laid out superbly, in a way that would make sense to outline a unit of media literacy study in schools or elsewhere (if you're doing an extended series of library programs, for example). Burkhardt does a lot of heavy lifting for readers, which leaves a lot of room for application. Overall it seems a pretty indispensable book for information professionals of all kinds, hoping to educate about critical consumption of media. It's books like this that remind the stewards of critical thinking like schools and libraries, "it is democracy, after all" and worth the effort, because people will always be worth the time it takes to maintain freedom.

[Cathy Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of exercise for classroom use, some repetitive information