ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors argue that factual awareness and public responsibility should be integrated into media literacy theory and practice as a response to the chaos of content in the 21st century. Factual analysis refers to teaching people how to identify, examine and analyze the veracity of information and images they encounter; public responsibility means citizens also play a role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant journalism system. The concept of assessing the accuracy of media messages in a variety of forms is at the heart of journalism-inspired news literacy pedagogies that appeared shortly after the turn of the 21st century – a concept that countered traditional media literacy representation versus reality frameworks. The need for factual awareness instruction became clearer when “fake news” and “alternative facts” entered the common vernacular following the 2016 U.S. presidential election and officially ushered in what some refer to as the misinformation age.
