About Me
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I am a media literacy educator and advocate. After beginning my career as a journalist, then a book editor, I received a Ph.D. at USC Annenberg School for Communication and became a university professor and media consultant. That was more than three decades ago.
My passion for media literacy started as a teen. Traveling through a developing country, seeing antennas on the rooftops of shacks without indoor plumbing became embedded in my mind . . . the power of this image is a driving force behind my work. Whether teaching higher ed courses or facilitating workshops for K-12 schools, parent groups, community organizations, healthcare providers, and the media industry, media literacy is at the core as an essential life skill for living in an ever-evolving digital world. I teach media literacy to understand the social and psychological effects that media have on our lives, to deconstruct race, class, gender and gender identity portrayals that cultivate our social reality and affect the way we interact with people, and to critically examine the ideological, institutional and commercial forces that reshape how we learn, play, work, and communicate in a media technology-driven society. When Gen Z ─ who are the next generation of voters and leaders ─ started to get their news from social media where disinformation spreads faster and farther than factual news, news literacy became a teaching priority for me. I developed a news literacy course to teach students the knowledge and skills to keep informed with credible and reliable news from trustworthy journalism outlets, identify disinformation and apply strategies to disrupt it in the media ecosystem, and understand the vital roles the Fourth Estate and First Amendment play in a democracy. |
My approach to teaching about news intersects media and news literacy with community-engaged learning to inspire civic responsibility and empower students to use their voice for personal and social change. As part of the news literacy course, my students collaborate with NewseumEd, the educational arm of the Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C., applying what they learn to help find real-world solutions to the news credibility crisis that is further polarizing our nation.
Beyond teaching and consulting, I am involved in media literacy communities committed to advancing media literacy education. As a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), I serve as co-chair of the committee guiding the update of NAMLE's Core Principles of Media Literacy Education and Implications for Practice. I also am an Affiliate of the Center for Media Literacy whose framework for teaching and learning critical thinking skills for media literacy has been widely adopted around the world.
I am honored to be a recipient of the NAMLE Elizabeth Thoman Service Award for my contributions to the field, the National Eating Disorders Association Award for Activism and Advocacy, the Visionary Community Service-Learning Award and the Exceptional Teaching Award from California State University, Northridge where I teach in the journalism department. Over the years, I have taught at UCLA, Syracuse University Newhouse School in Los Angeles, Antioch University and its college program for prison inmates at California Institution for Women. |