Hi there! My name is Angelica DeBenedictis (they/them), I’m a senior at Knox majoring in Anthropology & Sociology with a double minor in Religious Studies and Peace & Justice Studies. I started researching and discussing media literacy with Professor Jonah Rubin in October 2022. During that initial research, two major themes came up:
- A lot of media literacy educational material is decontextualized, often drawing upon hypothetical examples/scenarios not contextualized in the real world. I think that happens because the creators want users to be able to apply the material to any context, which can be useful at times. However, it can be hard to apply the skills if you don’t see them in context, especially with super divisive and hard-to-parse topics like abortion.
- Some media literacy organizations & educational materials completely abhor activist organizations and media. I remember attending a media literacy webinar where I was told that activist organizations are unreliable sources because they are “biased” and therefore not credible. This rubbed me the wrong way as an activist myself – I believe that much of activist media can be credible and reliable, even though it takes a stance on an issue. That’s not to say that all activist media is credible and reliable, but that many can be!
In order to address these issues, I decided that I wanted to make my own media literacy infographic. My goal was to create an infographic that was activist-oriented and contextualized within a specific issue. I chose to make the infographic about abortion because it’s a topic I’m very passionate about and I recognized that there is a ton of misinformation & confusion surrounding abortion media. I figured that this could be an abortion-activist-oriented resource for folks to use as they come across abortion media in the real world.
The process of creating this infographic included independent research, multiple drafts, discussion and revision with Professor Jonah Rubin, peer-revision by eight other Knox students, and post-feedback interviews with two of the peer-reviewers. Thank you to everyone who helped bring this infographic to fruition! Please see the infographic below. It’s interactive, so feel free to click around for various links!
