Bio

I am a media educator and advocate. My work intersects media and news literacy with community-engaged learning to empower us to use our voices for personal and social change in the digital media culture. My recent book News Literacy Now: How to "Read" the News (Peter Lang, 2023) was inspired by my students who are growing up during the Age of Digital Disinformation -- they need the essential skills to think like a journalist and search like a fact-checker as they navigate the "fake news" crisis of credibility. 

To help develop and promote vital media and news literacy resources, I am involved in media literacy communities committed to advancing media literacy education. As a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), I co-chaired the committee guiding the update of NAMLE's Core Principles of Media Literacy Education and Implications for Practice. I also am an affiliate of the Center for Media Literacy whose framework for teaching and learning critical thinking skills for media literacy has been widely adopted around the world.

I am honored to be a recipient of the NAMLE Elizabeth Thoman Service Award for my contributions to the field, the National Eating Disorders Association Award for Activism and Advocacy, the Visionary Community Service-Learning Award and the Exceptional Teaching Award from California State ​University, Northridge where I am Professor Emeritus in the journalism department.

Where I Studied

I have been a student of media all my life. 

As a teenager traveling through a developing country, seeing TV antennas on the rooftops of huts without indoor plumbing became embedded in my mind. . .  the power of this image is the driving force behind my passion to understand the role media play in our lives and empower children, teens, and adults of all ages to use media wisely and responsibly.


Ph.D.,  Annenberg School for Communication
           University of Southern California
 
 M.A.,   Annenberg School for Communication
           University of Southern California
                   
 M.A.,   University of Michigan
                   
 B.A.,    University of Michigan

​Where and What I Teach

I am a Professor Emeritus at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in the Journalism Department. I started teaching college when I was a graduate student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. I never left the university. Over the years, I have taught at UCLA, Syracuse University Newhouse School in Los Angeles, Antioch University and the college program for prison inmates at California Institution for Women in Frontera. I also serve as a media literacy consultant for K-12 schools, parent groups, community leaders, healthcare providers, and the media industry.    

During my tenure at CSUN, I served as a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing and an Advisory Board member for The Office of Community Engagement. I was actively involved in faculty eLearning communities and mentoring students through community-engaged learning in the evolving digital media ecosystem. As part of my community outreach, I directed civic engagement initiatives about news literacy and mis- and disinformation, media diversity and inclusiveness, and social media and body image. 

My expertise focuses on the social and psychological effects of the digital world in which we live and the essential life skills we need to mediate its impact. Whether teaching higher ed courses or facilitating workshops for schools, parent and community groups, healthcare organizations or the media industry, I apply media literacy skills and strategies to understand the role media play in our lives, to deconstruct portrayals of race, class, gender and gender identity that cultivate our social reality and affect the way we interact with one another, to navigate the news in a post-truth world, and to critically examine the ideological, institutional and commercial forces that reshape how we learn, play, work, and communicate in a media technology-driven society.

I invite you to check out my course website at www.BeMediaLiterate.com.

My Civic Engagement Projects

Civic engagement through service-learning is a passion of mine. 

Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that emphasizes “learning by doing” - students apply what they learn beyond the classroom, collaborating with a community partner, to develop civic responsibility and empower themselves as citizens who actively participate in the world in which they live. Over the past several years, my students have partnered with NewseumED/Freedom Forum Institute, the Center for Media Literacy, and the National Eating Disorders Association.

NewseumED/Freedom Forum Institute. For the past five years, students in my News Literacy course have been collaborating with NewseumED in Washington, D.C., the education arm of the Freedom Forum Institute. Our current project is about the politics of disinformation. In the past, students facilitated a Teach-in and Pop-up News Literacy Discussions to demonstrate strategies to deconstruct different types of fraudulent, misleading and manipulative campaign messaging during the 2020 presidential election. In 2019 my students helped NewseumED develop a propaganda module for adult learning they offer in public libraries. After studying and discussing NewseumED's propaganda resources, they presented a virtual Teach-in to demonstrate innovative ways propaganda spreads in the digital environment. During the 2018 mid-term elections, students used NewseumED resources to deconstruct campaign messaging and facilitate a campus-wide teach-in about the candidates and ballot issues. For their culminating project every semester, students apply their news literacy skills and knowledge about the news process and the First Amendment to create podcasts, infographics, Ted Talks, raps, op-eds, memes, video interviews, and digital scrapbooks. Selected Student Voice projects are available to view on my course website at BeMediaLiterate.com  

Center for Media Literacy (CML). My students partnered with CML to expand its Commit2MediaLit Campaign. During National Media Literacy Week, students hosted a Screen & Tweet at the university library and invited the campus community to watch the documentary Digital Disconnect and use their media literacy skills to tweet their takeaways. They also participated in a Facebook Challenge in which they applied their media literacy skills to deconstruct messages posted on CML's Facebook page. This project provided an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of service learning as a teaching and learning pedagogy for developing media literacy skills and for empowering and inspiring college students to become active and contributing citizens in a digital society. We are currently analyzing two years of data and the preliminary results demonstrate that service learning increased students’ critical thinking and media literacy skills and helped them to better understand the course lessons, their personal biases and prejudices, and their role as a citizen in a democracy.

National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). For many years I collaborated with NEDA to affect policy change and create media literacy resources for their organizational website and youth outreach campaign Proud2Bme. My students developed the Get REAL! Toolkit, a digital media literacy toolkit for high school and college students to help counteract the media culture's potential influence on body image, and How to Spread Body Positivity in Your Community, an activity guide to advocate for diverse and authentic body shapes and sizes in the media culture. My students also helped NEDA launch its national outreach initiative Proud2Bme On Campus to inspire young adults to use their voice for personal and social change in the digital society.
Get REAL! about Media and Body Image
The Get REAL! Project is about talking back to media messages that tell us how we should look and feel and sell us ways to achieve that "ideal" body image - pressuring us to diet and exercise, even take supplements or undergo cosmetic surgery to attain a certain body standard. To help counteract media's potential influence on normalizing unrealistic body standards, students in my university classes partnered with the National Eating Disorders Association to create a social media-driven toolkit. The Get REAL! Digital Media Literacy Toolkit features interactive activities to think critically about body image messages we see, hear, and read in the digital media culture every day. Some of these messages are created by the media industry, advertisers, and celebrities who perpetuate unhealthy retouched body images in photos and products they endorse. Others we create ourselves - along with our friends and people just like us - when we text, tweet, post, pin, like and share online. The project is supported by The Office for Community Engagement at California State University, Northridge.
MPH-ACT Project: Media + Public Health Act = Truth in Advertising
The MPH-Act Project is a response to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) and other groups call to action to pass federal legislation requiring "Truth in Advertising" labels on photoshopped or airbrushed media images that meaningfully manipulate the human form. The project is a collaboration with NEDA and the Journalism Department, Department of Health Sciences, and Joint Advocates on Disordered Eating (JADE) at University Counseling Services, supported by The Office of Community Engagement at California State University, Northridge.
Project Goal:
Educate, engage, and empower students to counteract digitally altered body images that can normalize unrealistic "ideal" body standards and lead to unhealthy eating behavior 

Me and My BMI: The Body Media Image Project
The BMI Project is an interdisciplinary service-learning grant I co-direct with Joint Advocates on Disordered Eating (JADE) at the University Counseling Services and the Health Sciences Department. The collaboration promotes a holistic approach to eating, culture and coping involving media literacy education, counseling, and public health. The project is supported by The Center for Innovative and Engaged Learning Opportunities.

    Project Goal:  
    Create a media literacy toolkit to
    raise awareness about eating disorders
    and to counteract media messages that
    encourage unhealthy body images and
    subsequent lifestyle choices related to
    weight, diet and fitness 

Picture
Media Literacy Toolkit 
REAL - a webzine -
an interactive online magazine produced by college students for college students, filled with facts, informational articles, first-person stories, photo montage, activities, videos and resources
Click here to view the Toolkit

   Awards and Honors

    National Association for Media Literacy Education Elizabeth Thoman Service Award
    National Eating Disorders Association Award for Excellence in Activism and Advocacy
    Visionary Community-Based Learning Award, California State University, Northridge
    Exceptional Service to Students Award, California State University, Northridge
    Polished Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching, California State University, Northridge
    Who's Who of American Women
    Young Outstanding Women of America
    Kappa Tau Alpha, Honorary Journalism Society

   Professional Affiliations

    Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
    Broadcast Education Association
    National Association for Media Literacy Education