The symposium will convene leaders from four decades of media literacy to discuss the field’s historical frameworks and to engage the next generation of researchers and practitioners in exploring how the past informs the present and future of the field.

The history of media literacy is the story of people’s efforts to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to respond to changing media environments in order to participate and claim power in societies where media and technology play increasingly important roles in education, family life, social relations, public health, politics, economics, the arts and sciences, and popular culture.

Submit a proposal (abstract only, 250–300 words) for a 15–20 minute presentation related to some aspect of the history of media literacy.
Accepted presenters will be invited to submit a scholarly article for publication in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Media Literacy Education (www.jmle.org).

Proposals due by June 14, 2013. Submit Now

You will be notified by July 1, 2013.

Call for Proposals

We seek presentations and papers on a range of topics that apply a historical lens to media literacy as a field, a movement, or a set of educational practices. Topics may include but are not limited to:

Shifts in the research agenda regarding media literacy and public health
How the discourses of visual and information literacy entered into the practice of media literacy education
How and why news literacy became a distinctive term
Relationship between digital media and learning (DML) and media literacy education
The origins of film education and its legacy for media literacy
Origins of the key concepts and critical questions
Historical intersections of media literacy with youth media, civic engagement, media ethics, media reform, parent education, etc.
How general semantics and propaganda studies shaped the development of media literacy education
The influence of critical cultural studies on the practice of media literacy education
Earliest forms of media literacy activism
Earliest examples of media literacy pedagogical practices in K–12 education
Role of media industries in media literacy
How values education influenced the practice of media literacy
Shifts in video technology and their influence on media literacy education
The relationship between media effects and media literacy
Discourses of education reform and their relationship to media literacy