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\"Presented as a two-fold concern of digital and civic literacy, surveillance and privacy expert Heidi Boghosian argues that our fight to uphold democracy must extend to the online world\"-- Provided by publisher.

In the twentieth century, illiteracy and its elimination were political issues important enough to figure in the fall of governments (as in Brazil in 1964), the building of nations (in newly independent African countries in the 1970s), and the construction of a revolutionary order (Nicaragua in 1980). This political biography of Paulo Freire (1921-97), who played a crucial role in shaping international literacy education, also presents a thoughtful examination of the volatile politics of literacy during the Cold War.A native of Brazil's impoverished northeast, Freire developed adult literacy training techniques that involved consciousness-raising, encouraging peasants and newly urban peoples to see themselves as active citizens who could transform their own lives. Freire's work for state and national government agencies in Brazil in the early 1960s eventually aroused the suspicion of the Brazilian military, as well as of U.S. government aid programs. Political pressures led to Freire's brief imprisonment, following the military coup of 1964, and then to more than a decade and a half in exile. During this period, Freire continued his work in Chile, Nicaragua, and postindependence African countries, as well as in Geneva with the World Council of Churches and in the United States at Harvard University.Andrew J. Kirkendall's evenhanded appraisal of Freire's pioneering life and work, which remains influential today, gives new perspectives on the history of the Cold War, the meanings of radicalism, and the evolution of the Left in Latin America.

News Literacy and Democracy invites readers to go beyond surface-level fact checking and to examine the structures, institutions, practices, and routines that comprise news media systems. This introductory text underscores the importance of news literacy to democratic life and advances an argument that critical contexts regarding news media structures and institutions should be central to news literacy education. Under the larger umbrella of media literacy, a critical approach to news literacy seeks to examine the mediated construction of the social world and the processes and influences that allow some news messages to spread while others get left out. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines, including media studies, political economy, and social psychology, this book aims to inform and empower the citizens who rely on news media so they may more fully participate in democratic and civic life--back cover.

Literacy is a key indicator for comparing individuals and nations in contemporary society. It is central to public debates about the nature of the public sphere, economic markets, citizenship and self-governance. Literacy and the Politics of Representation aims to uncover the constructed nature of public understandings of literacy by examining detailed examples of how literacy is represented in a range of public contexts. It looks at the ways in which knowledge about literacy is created and distributed, the location and relative power of the knowledge-makers, and examines the different semiotic resources used in such representations: images and metaphors, numerical and statistical models, and textual narratives and how they are related to one another. The book focuses on the UK from 1970 to the present, but includes a range of international comparisons and examples. In addition, exemplar chapters offer a model of analysis that can be used to deconstruct the representations of social policy issues. This book is vital reading for postgraduate students in the areas of education studies, literacy, discourse analysis and multimodality.

‘This is a map of the field of critical literacy – drawn with precision and care. Our guide on the journey is a scholar and teacher, political activist and woman warrior of the greatest strength and wisdom.’ Alan Luke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia ‘Hilary Janks argues that to critically change the educational system you need to understand the interrelationship between language and power. Her framework of dominance, diversity, access and design constitutes a complete theory of critical literacy, one that explains the successes and failures of past and current educational movements. Her thinking has helped me and the U.S. and Canadian teachers I work with outgrow our very selves as we plan new, more powerful, and more critical ways to change education.’ Jerome C. Harste, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA ‘Unlike the biblical prophets, Janks is honoured in her own country, South Africa, for her enormous contribution to language and literacy education in complex linguistic and socio-cultural contexts. As a writer, her special gift is to make the complex accessible in ways that move readers to cry, to laugh, and most of all, to begin or to renew a commitment to critical literacy teaching and research.’ Yvonne Reed, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg ‘Readers who know Janks’ ground-breaking work with critical language awareness with teachers and learners in South Africa have been waiting for this book. For those who don’t, now at last there’s an opportunity to learn how to make critical discourse analysis a central part of a pedagogical repertoire for critical literacy. Immediately helpful to teachers, teacher educators and researchers who are concerned with literacy and power, this fabulous book provides a review of key theory, original approaches to text analyses, and illuminating accounts from classrooms. It makes you want to teach. This will become the essential guidebook for language and literacy educators and researchers.’ Barbara Comber, University of South Australia ‘Hilary Janks develops an innovative model of critical literacy which makes a major contribution to the field. You will look at texts in new ways after reading this book. It will transform your understanding of how language works, it will give you new insights into language and politics in South Africa, and it will provide a principled basis for rethinking the teaching of language and literacy in your own context.’ Roz Ivaniĉ, Lancaster University, UK ‘Admirers of Janks’ scholarship will welcome Literacy and Power and recognise its qualities of lucidity, argumentative coherence, courage and compassion. With its organisation around four interdependent themes of domination, access, diversity and design, this book is the best introduction to critical literacies around.’ Terry Locke, University of Waikato, New Zealand

\"Written in the spirit of resistance and hope, United States of Distraction offers a clear, concise appraisal of our current situation, and presents readers with action items for how to improve it. \"Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon emphasize what we can do today,\" says Ralph Nader in the foreword, \"to restore the power of facts, truth, and fair, inclusive journalism as tools for people to keep political and corporate power subordinate to the engaged citizenry and the common good\"-- Provided by publisher.

Cowinner of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology’s Edward Sapir Book Prize Since the early 1990s hundreds of thousands of Tamil villagers in southern India have participated in literacy lessons and other events designed to transform them into active citizens with access to state power. These efforts are part of a movement known as the Arivoli Iyakkam (the Enlightenment Movement), one of the most successful mass literacy movements in recent history. This rich ethnographic account of highlights the paradoxes inherent in such movements that seek to emancipate people through literacy. “A work of linguistic anthropology that makes crucial contributions to the study of literacy and language ideologies. It is also a broadly ranging work of social theory that will be of interest to students and scholars of the postcolonial state and neoliberal governmentality in South Asia and beyond, and of activism and social movements more generally.”—Anthropological Quarterly

In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, these early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature. Children’s books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices. Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images. A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form. Spotlighting three thematic threads – communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda – The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.