MEL Monthly Meeting
These gatherings are designed exclusively for the 71 people who are currently affiliated with the Lab as core team members, fellows, affiliated faculty, graduate students, or project collaborators.As our work continues to grow in reach, scale, and impact, these monthly meetings give us space to stay connected, share updates, coordinate…
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Together We Rise: December 2025
Dear friends of the Media Education Lab community,Like many of you, we are still processing the school shooting that took place at Brown University last week and the days of fear and anxiety that followed. Many members of the MEL community, including myself, live, work, teach, and study in and around Providence, Rhode Island. Many of you reached out to us in the past days, appreciating the…
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Gamifying The Feed
Social media algorithms are often invisible to students, but "The Feed" makes them tangible. In this competitive card game, players stop being passive scrollers and start acting as the manipulators - embodying trolls, influencers, and content farms to "win" in our attention economy. By gamifying the spread of information, students actively model the tactics that drive viral content, transforming…
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Media & Family Conference
The Catholic University of Croatia (CUC) hosts the "Media and Family in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" conference on December 10, 2025, focusing on media's impact on family life, alongside broader communication conferences addressing disinformation, with participation from international experts, promoting media literacy and digital citizenship, reflecting CUC's engagement in contemporary…
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Analog Tactility for Digital Literacy
Analog Tactility for Digital Literacy: Why AI, Media Arts, and Emerging Technology Are Best Taught Through TouchThis session explores how LitKit’s no-code STEM/STEAM maker kits use augmented reality to connect tactile, analog learning with digital and media literacy outcomes. Designed for high school and undergraduate classrooms, these kits introduce learners to creative technology pathways—…
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Media Mindfulness
Media Mindfulness: Building Media Literacy Through Meaningful Discussion  Discover how media mindfulness can be a powerful tool to help people become savvy news consumers by engaging in thoughtful discussions about local and current issues. Through guided reflection, students consider which news stories are meaningful to them and how they make them feel. This approach promotes respectful dialogue…
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New Models for Academic Peer Review: A JMLE Discussion
 What are some alternatives to the double-blind peer review system of academic journals? Not surprisingly, there are quite a few! Each model is trying to fix different weaknesses of traditional double-blind peer review (bias, slowness, opacity, gatekeeping).  Join JMLE Editors for an informal conversation to learn more about the options available as we consider a path forward.  DATE: Thursday,…
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Cell Phones, Social Media, and Student Well-Being
Cell phone and social media use have shifted rapidly in the last few years, raising urgent questions about school cell-phone bans, cyberbullying, psychological impacts, and academic performance.This webinar reframes the conversation through a digital empathy lens, blending media literacy practices with trauma-informed approaches that support student wellness and mental well-being. We’ll explore…
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In Our Media Literacy Era: Fandom, Politics, and the Power of Critical Support
This Media Literacy Week, we’re talking fandom, politics, and critical thinking, all through the lens of Taylor Swift. The Media Education Lab and Swifties4Hope team up to explore how the worlds of fandom and politics overlap and diverge. Together, we’ll reflect on how we can support our favorite political candidates passionately while still thinking independently.Since our girl knows Aristotle,…
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Media Literacy Institute 2025
In the AI age, media literacy education has never been more important. This course addresses the pressing need for students to develop media literacy skills, including critical thinking and deeper insights about the media messages they consume and produce each day. Media literacy promotes inquiry into stereotypes, representation, biases, ethical challenges, and other concerns that must be…
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Media Literacy in Massachusetts: A Landscape Scan
The first-ever major statewide initiative to document the scope of media literacy education in American public schoolsClick here to read the report To better understand the status, challenges, and opportunities for advancing media literacy education…
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Media Literacy in Action, 2nd edition 2025
The blurring of entertainment, information, and persuasion is reshaping work, life, and citizenship. As a result, our relationship to media has never been so important nor so complex. By asking critical questions about what they watch, listen to, read, and use, students can be better prepared to be responsible communicators who can use a variety of formats and genres for self-expression and…
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When Teens Create the News
Download the Publication When Teens Create the News:  Examining the Impact of PBS/NewsHour Student Reporting Labs Renee Hobbs, University of Rhode Island Abstract The PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs program (www.studentre-portinglabs.com) connects middle and high school students…
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Create to Learn
Create to Learn helps learners create multimedia texts as they develop both critical thinking and communication skills. Written by Renee Hobbs, one of the foremost experts in media literacy, this book introduces a wide range of conceptual principles at the heart of multimedia composition and digital pedagogy. Its approach is useful for anyone who sees the profound educational value of creating…
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The Library Screen Scene
PUBLISHED JULY 15 from Oxford University Press order your copy now!In the past two decades, several U.S. states have explored ways to mainstream media literacy in school…
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Your Turn to Talk
Now you can participate in online dialogue with people from across the country and around the world with "Your Turn to Talk," a digital interactive learning experience made especially for Renee Hobbs' book, Media Literacy in Action, 2nd edtion.  CLICK HERE…
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Teachers Guide, Media Literacy in Action
 This Teacher’s Guide will help you get the most out of the new textbook by Renee Hobbs, as it offers practical guidance on using this textbook in the classroom. Whether you are an experienced teacher or teaching media literacy for the first time, this guide…
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Deconstructing Disney
Deconstructing DisneyThis fun, intergenerational workshop explores what we love and hate about Disney films, characters and brands from the past and present. If you’re a kid, teen, parent, educator or anyone who works with youth, you will learn how people’s knowledge, beliefs and attitudes can be harnessed and expanded for deeper learning through simple instructional strategies. Discovering how…
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Discovering Media Literacy
Visit the website Discover Media Literacy to see lesson plans for staff development programs with teachers, along with videos and student work samples linked to our book!…
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Librarians on YouTube
Librarians are often challenged to connect with their communities (learners, fellow educators, and the public) with limited time, among competing priorities, and especially recently, across distance. Among many creative approaches to engagement, YouTube offers a fresh approach for librarians to build connections beyond the physical spaces of the library and outside of formal learning environments…
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Pushing Back
This guide is designed to help high school educators build learners’ skills in both analyzing and creating media messages, helping learners better understand how media affects them, and how to make healthy lifestyle decisions that will improve the quality of their lives.FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL PROGRAMSThe Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs participated in the…
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Internet: Indispensable or Evil?
OverviewIn these four lessons, students use the episode Adam Ruins the Internet (Season 2, Episode 12) as a starting point to discuss the role of the Internet in modern culture and learn about media policies that shape people’s online…
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Digital and Media Literacy: A Process of Learning
Digital and Media Literacy: A Learning Process …
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Understanding Implicit Bias: The Power of Reflection
Developed by Elizaveta Friesem, Media Education LabLESSON 1: Edward Adelson’s Checkerboard IllusionLESSON 2: The Implicit Association TestLESSON 3: Considering the Consequences of Implicit Bias OverviewDOWNLOAD THE LESSON PLANS HERE Students develop a better understanding of their own…
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All About Media
It's never too early to be smart about media!Give emerging readers the tools to learn about media, evaluate it, and understand it. Readers will learn essential critical thinking concepts along with important topics such as understanding how to find sources and how to properly source, privacy and Internet safety, evaluating ads and news reports, and determining the differences between facts,…
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