Villains, Heroes, and Headlines: Media Literacy in Fiction and Beyond

Who gets to tell the story? Who decides who's the hero‚ or the villain? From the Big Bad Wolf's defense in The True Story of the Three Little Pigs to the smear campaign of Elphaba in Wicked, and the Capitol's propaganda in The Hunger Games, fictional worlds give us entry points for examining media messages. Together, we'll put on our media literacy lens to explore how propaganda, spin, and misinformation drive some of the most familiar plots in children's and YA literature, film, and pop culture. Participants will leave with ready-to-use strategies to teach essential media literacy skills and help learners spot manipulation & misinformation in both fictional worlds and their own feeds.