Confronting the post-truth phenomenon in literacy education: The need for a critical media epistemology

The 2016 presidential election marked the beginning of a so-called “post-truth era” in which mis- and disinformation have contributed to political polarization and violence, the acceleration of global warming, and thousands of preventable deaths. In this paper, I draw on the results of a 2-week, practitioner inquiry-informed case study in an 11th-grade English language arts (ELA) classroom situated in a small, conservative Midwest town to explore the affordances of integrating two theoretical frameworks, one rooted in media literacy and one in epistemic cognition, in planning and implementing a unit designed to support students' critical engagement with digital media texts related to climate change. The findings point to the need for a new framework that draws on insights from both sociocultural and cognitive approaches to literacy. Implications for classroom practice include the importance of teaching students how to evaluate their positionality using platforms they already engage, creating authentic epistemic environments, leading students in explorations of different ways of knowing, helping them understand knowledge systems and processes, and promoting epistemic virtues and autonomy.