ABSTRACT
Recent studies of youth and the media (Goodman, 2003; Nielson Media Research, 2000) indicate that the hours spent with electronic media (i.e., television, movies, video games) are highest among poor students of color, exceeding six and one-half hours per day. This intense investment in electronic media by urban youth has led the American Academy of Pediatricians (2001) to issue a policy statement encouraging schools to develop a media literacy curriculum; it has also led scholars to call for a critical media literacy pedagogy that empowers urban youth to deconstruct dominant media narratives, develop much-needed academic and critical literacies, and create their own counternarratives to those of the media, which largely are negative depictions of urban youth and their communities (Duncan-Andrade, 2004; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2005; Goodman, 2003; Grossberg, 1994).
