The Youth and Media team has collaborated with Chicago-based organizations that encourage and support youth to be active, engaged, news-literate community members. The YaM team found fascinating trends in youth information behavior and identified new opportunities for learning. We challenged existing frameworks for news literacy and developed practical guidance for community-based practitioners.
1) Following the case study on youth interaction with online news, this article analyzes a spectrum of transformations: changing definitions of news, changes in news reading (such as new forms of participation, changing access modalities, and new types of gatekeepers), developments in social media practices, and emerging genres (such as memes).
2) “The Challenges of Defining ‘News Literacy’ ” research brief seeks to stimulate a discussion about approaches to defining, framing, and understanding core concepts such as ‘news’ and ‘news literacy’. The brief draws on our growing body of research into everyday youth behaviors, and identifies key competencies for youth to become empowered, informed, connected citizens.
3) The “Mapping Approaches to News Literacy Curriculum Development: A Navigation Aid” research brief helps build the capacity of our community of practitioners to develop and teach news literacy curricula. We provide a concise summary of approaches to news literacy, current methods of reaching youth through instruction, as well as a roadmap for innovative curriculum design.
4) The “Youth News Perceptions and Behaviors Online: How Youth Access and Share Information in a Chicago Community Affected by Gang Violence” research brief takes an on-the-ground approach to news readership and examines the everyday information needs of youth living in Chicago. The brief draws upon focus group interviews that raise new questions about how youth online behaviors are affected by community violence.
5) “Evaluation in Context: Reflections on How to Measure Success of Your “WNM” Program” is a thoughtful roadmap for organizations and programs to implement a data-driven evaluation cycle. Written by Youth and Media mentor Justin Reich, with the support of the YaM team, this practice brief encourages nonprofits, as learning organizations, to critically and impartially examine and improve their self-efficacy as they work towards meaningful objectives.
6) “Youth and Online News: Reflections and Perspectives” includes a series of short essays that offer interesting, alternative, exciting, sobering, unusual, out-of-the box perspectives, observations, or reflections at the intersection of news, digital media, and youth – broadly defined.
Other relevant links and materials:
- Based on previous research efforts and activities, the YaM team has made great strides building a curriculum focusing on information quality, particularly in the context of online news and journalism. So far, the YaM team has developed six modules about Information Quality & News Literacy: http://youthandmedia.org/teaching-and-outreach/curricular-modules/information-quality-news-literacy-modules/
- (November 2016) Sandra Cortesi, keynote “Youth and Online News”, Mobile Media Day 2016, Wuerzburg, Germany. Visit: http://www.slideshare.net/Lokalrundfunktage/mmd-16-sandra-cortesi-youth-and-online-news and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkLQZMV1.
- (April 2016) Sandra Cortesi, panel, “Fake News, Concrete Responses: At the Nexus of Law, Technology, and Social Narratives” moderated by Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA
- March 2017: Harvard Gazette, “Fake news is giving reality a run for its money”, http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/harvard-panelists-discuss-future-of-journalism-in-fake-news-world/