Abstract
This chapter explores the sociology of education concerns around the phenomenon of ‘news media’ and presents related findings. With the dawn of online news media, new waves of propaganda and the introduction of the US Trump Administration’s catchcry of ‘fake news’, there are renewed calls for careful news media education in schools in democracies. The majority of Australians surveyed reported that their school offered a liberal neutral objective approach to news media at school, based on viewing more than one source and distinguishing fact from opinion. Well over a tenth said their school had a critical approach to news media based on critiquing fake news targeting marginalised groups. Over a tenth reported that their school had a conservative approach to news media based on accepting official narratives of one main status quo news source. Just over a tenth selected a description of a post-modern approach to news media based on challenging the norms of a diverse range of news media. Students who attended schools taking a conservative view of news media (accepting one news media form as truth) were significantly more likely to attend conservative schools. They were also significantly more likely to experience abuse from teachers (34.4%, compared to around 20% across the schools taking any of the other approaches). Tutorial questions for this chapter ask readers to consider how their school covered news media and news ‘truth’, analysis of news media samples and designing of lesson plans around news media.
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Jones, T. (2020). News Media: Australian Schools on Fake News and Media Objectivity. In: A Student-centred Sociology of Australian Education. Critical Studies of Education, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36863-0_10
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