Michael Hoechsmann is Associate Professor and Chair of Education Programs at Lakehead University, Orillia. He is co-author of Reading Youth Writing: ‘New' Literacies, Cultural Studies and Education (2008), and the former Director of Education of Young People's Press, a youth-oriented non-profit news service. Stuart Poyntz is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, and the former Director of Education at Pacific Cinémathèque, Western Canada's leading film institute. He has published articles in the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, Sociology Compass, the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, the Canadian Journal of Education, Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, and various edited collections.

“That being the case, the authors’ primary recommendation is for media literacy to assume an increased role in school curricula worldwide. As Hoechsmann and Poyntz demonstrate, media practice is sufficiently academic and promotes critical citizenship, agency and empowerment – qualities that all teachers are sure to agree are highly laudable educational outcomes.”  (Pedagogies: An International Journal, 24 May 2012)

• Preface ix 1 What is Media Literacy? 1Media Literacy 2.000 4Natives and Aliens 7Media Education has a History to Draw On 9Media Education in the Twenty-First Century 122 Children's Media Lives 17Researching Young People in Mediated Environments 19Getting Older Faster, Staying Younger Longer 20Life Inside a Media Wonderland 23Inequities and Parents’ Worries about Media Use 25Media Concentration and the Big Four 28Creating Cradle-to-Grave Consumers 30Conclusion 333 Media as Public Pedagogy 35Media as Threat 37Media as a Form of Public Pedagogy 39New Learning Horizons 41Debating Dangerous Screens 43The Merits of Television for Education 46Children’s Learning Television 48SIDEBAR: An Inconvenient Truth as public pedagogy 50Public Service Announcements, Entertainment Education, and Culture Jamming 53Bricolage 58SIDEBAR: Pre-teen girls and popular music 604 Media Literacy 101 63A Demand for New Heuristics 65Cultural Life 67Production 68SIDEBAR: Moral makeovers: Reality television and the good citizen 69Text 76Audience 84SIDEBAR: Children's media encounters in contemporary India: Leisure and learning 88Cultural Life 92SIDEBAR: The Simpsons: Not such a dumb show after all! 955 Media Production and Youth Agency 100What Creative Work Adds to Media Education: Production as Praxis 101SIDEBAR: Youth cultural production and creative economies 102SIDEBAR: Assessing learning from practical media production at an introductory level: The role of writing 106What does Production Mean? 110How is Production a Form of Agency? 112SIDEBAR: Youth as knowledge producers in community-based video in the age of AIDS 119SIDEBAR: Youth Radio 1266 Literacies: New and Digital 137What does it Mean to be 'Literate' Today? 137Expanded Literacies 139New Literacies and New Ways of Thinking and Doing 141Digital Literacies and ‘Top-Down’ Approaches 144The Role of Learning Environments in Relation to Digital Literacies 1467 Media Literacy 2.0: Contemporary Media Practices and Expanded Literacies 151Media Literacy 2.0: The Seven Cs of Contemporary Youth Media Practices 153SIDEBAR: Learning in Second Life 156SIDEBAR: Immersive advertising and children’s game spaces 164SIDEBAR: Rethinking media literacy through video game play 175SIDEBAR: Understanding remix and digital mashup 180SIDEBAR: YAHAnet: Youth, the Arts, HIV and AIDS network 184Conclusion 1908 Critical Citizenship and Media Literacy Futures 191Thinking, Judging, and Critical Citizenship 195Last Words 200References 203Index 217