Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age

Winner of the AAP 2021 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences. Propaganda is inescapable. It’s everywhere. Students need to analyze, resist, critique—and create. Media literacy educators have always insisted that we are both creators and receivers of media messages. The truth of this is even more apparent in today’s digital environment, with children and adults alike participating in a ubiquitous, nonstop stream of social media. Clearly, students need the tools to interpret news and information critically—not just for school but for life in a “post-truth” world, where the lines blur between entertainment, information, and persuasion. Renee Hobbs demonstrates how a global perspective on contemporary propaganda enables educators to stimulate both the intellectual curiosity and the cultural sensitivities of students. Replete with classroom and online learning activities and samples of student work, Mind Over Media provides a state-of-the-art look at the theory and practice of propaganda in contemporary society, and shows how to build learners’ critical thinking and communication skills on topics including computational propaganda, content marketing, fake news, and disinformation.