Shock and Critical Literacy...

Thank you for putting this collection together and doing the research behind these incredible lapses of judgment (we hope) in order to get a more visually appealing product to fit their desires. I think this collection is a great "into" activity for all  students for teaching critical literacy, especially with a focus on digital media. With the ease of access and pervasiveness  of digital media among young people and the often reification of what they produce online, it is absolutely critical we teach the importance of critical media literacy as well as the sociopolitical implications of how and why these multimodal artifacts come about.

Why might they automatically place a white, heterosexual male as the protagonist in their digital story? Why might they use an image of an urban environment to convey crime and violence? What images turn up when they Google search for "undocumented immigrant"? Are all undocumented immigrants, Latino? No. But one would never know this by the images that turn up.

This work speaks to the importance of challenging what we accept as "normal" and examining how much our language practices, ideologies, behaviors, beliefs, and actions are actually governed by these "lies" that have been presented to us as facts.