ABSTRACT

To develop civic intentionality in media literacies, this chapter offers five constructs—caring, critical consciousness, imagination, persistence, and emancipation—that re-imagine the work of media literacy to embrace "being in the world with others toward a common good." Civic media literacies embrace critical consciousness as a practice of building in people the possibility of response in the lived world. Media literacy initiatives are often constrained by a sensitivity to the political or apolitical spaces they inhabit. As a result, media literacy practices often focus on the protection of young people from harmful media messages and designs, or focus on providing skills to empower individual media creation. Focusing media literacy practice on citizenship, especially at younger ages, is a political act in and of itself. A caring ethic allows us to define media literacy practice as relational, or that aspires to help people care for one another.