Media Literacy Education in the Era of Post-Truth

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors use Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions to examine the development of media literacy as a field of study and practice. More specifically, they focus on the current stage of media literacy, which they believe to be model drift that reveals the emerging crisis of the current paradigm based on epistemological assumptions of modernity. The authors look at this stage against the current social background of the era of post-truth and through the prism of ongoing debates between different media (literacy) scholars and educational practitioners. The era of post-truth can be seen as a logical manifestation of postmodernity, when the idea that truth and facts are relative is becoming part of the public discourse. In this period, different scholars and practitioners offer different ideas on what media literacy is and what its import may be. These debates are not new; yet, today they might have more serious consequences, signaling a need to reevaluate the existing paradigm that has formed the foundation of media literacy education since the field's emergence.