Public media has the potential to play a powerful role in the media landscape for tweens and teens. With the By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted focus group interviews with tweens and teens across the country in order to better understand how young people are engaging with…

Public media has the potential to play a powerful role in the media landscape for tweens and teens. With the By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted focus group interviews with tweens and teens across the country in order to better understand how young people are engaging with…

This activity provides students with a way of understanding expectancy violations theory (EVT) by examining incidents that occurred during televised award shows. In this activity, in small groups, students will delve into well-known award-show incidents, such as Will Smith's slapping of Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards, to understand the…

Misinformation and disinformation about science have reached alarming levels. Here, we summarize a recent expert report, "Science Education in an Age of Misinformation," that outlines what science education can do to address this problem and, given the urgency, has to do. We highlight the significance of teaching how the social practices…

This article proposes the Kingdon-Khan Model (KKM) as an extension of John Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model (MSM) of agenda setting. While the MSM is comprehensively used to explain how issues reach policymakers' agendas, it underrepresents the influence of media, public opinion, and social movements on agenda setting. To address this limitation,…

The wars of the 21st century are not the first media wars, and many tropes and schema have long histories, particularly propaganda and the othering of a purported enemy. What is new today is that although mass media remains a central and hegemonic source of insight and perspective, citizen journalism, social media, spreadable media, and…

Mathematical concepts are regularly used in media reports concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. These include growth models, which attempt to explain or predict the effectiveness of interventions and developments, as well as the reproductive factor. Our contribution has the aim of showing that basic mental models about exponential growth are important…

This paper describes a year-long ethnographic, phenomenologically hermeneutically oriented project of research and practical education that focused on a) the media experiences of adolescents aged 15-17, and b) nurturing adolescents' ability to reflect upon their lived media experiences. Autoethnography is used to illustrate a day in the life of a…

Conviviality has travelled and been taken up in various national socio-political and historical narratives. We aim to add to this by examining conviviality in Finland where discourses of 'Nordic innocence' regarding colonial histories and racism has created an illusion of 'Nordic exceptionalism' regarding race and racism. Here we position media as…

Students explored using generative AI to create relational messages as well as audience reactions to both human-created and AI-created notes of encouragement. The activity helped students understand the practical, relational, and ethical implications of incorporating AI into communication tasks. By the end of the activity, students could discern…

This brief is the first of a series of applied research briefs that focus on specific challenges and opportunities public media faces in its approaches to youth content and engagement. Drawing from priorities surfaced through focus group interviews with youth across the country, these briefs highlight recent research and public discussions about…

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become commonplace in adolescents' lives, and they have grown in importance during the COVID-19 pandemic, when online communication became standard for many parts of life. This brings the need for developmental psychology to revise and update its theories for these new societal challenges. It…

This activity prompts students to go beyond the often reductionist responses to new technologies (e.g. technological determinism) by creating a media literacy-focused infographic about the role, uses, ethical concerns, and/or impact of generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT). Sample topics have included the role of AI in specific industries (e.g. film,…

With the introduction of personal computer systems and subsequent technologies that make flow of information fast and efficient, a new age emerged that is often termed as 'digital age' or 'digital era'. During this age, the capabilities of individuals and societies to access and use multiple forms of convergent media content got enhanced manifold.…

Instructors from K-16 incorporate current events and contemporary media in their courses in a variety of ways and with different educational objectives. Here, I present strategies for selecting and framing current events in high school and undergraduate biology courses and an example assignment, all explicitly tied to science practice skills and…