Toward an Abolitionist Model of Media Literacy

The Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University is committed to teaching students how to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports and news sources. It is the only center of its kind in the United States.

Critical Media Project (CMP) is a free media literacy web resource for educators and students (ages 8-21) that enhances young people’s critical thinking and empathy, and builds on their capacities to advocate for change around questions of identity. CMP has a two-fold mission:

To raise critical awareness and provide the tools to decode media representations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, religion, age, and disability, and develop an understanding as to how these identities intersect
To encourage and offer guidance for students to tell their own stories, create their own representations, and uphold their status as active and engaged participants in civic society.

GET FREE is a multimedia Hip Hop civics curriculum for youth and young adults. Its goal is to introduce students to a national network of young community leaders, artists, and activists who advocate for social change and democratic inclusion driven by grassroots organizing

The mission of the Media Education Lab is to improve digital and media literacy education through scholarship and community service.

Checkology is a free e-learning platform with engaging, authoritative lessons on subjects like news media bias, misinformation, conspiratorial thinking and more.

Learners develop the ability to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods.

We encourage educators and students to not only analyze the media messages they encounter, but to also reflect on why they interpret media the way they do and why others may decipher or convey information differently. Through this inquiry-driven, evidence-based approach, learners develop compassion and confidence to effectively collaborate and communicate across differences.

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. Since 2008, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. With more than 150,000 people registered, and growing by more than 10,000 new registrants every year, the Zinn Education Project has become a leading resource for teachers and teacher educators.