Critical media literacy and second language acquisition Andrea Gambino and Jeff Share, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction 76 Disparities of access and information 76 A crisis of trust 77 Critical media literacy 77 Language acquisition 79 Asset-based vs. deficit-based approaches 79 Putting theory into practice 80 Photography 80 Curriculum interventions 81 Research studies 82 Conclusion 83 References 83 Further reading 84 Relevant websites 85 Introduction For most of the time that humans have been walking on this Earth, we have passed along our knowledge and culture through oral traditions, as the elders and those with the most experience have been the storytellers assuring that our collective wisdom is shared with the next generation. Only 500 years ago with the invention of the printing press, alphabetical literacy took prominence and stories could be mass produced and disseminated across the globe. Since then, the innovation of information communication tech- nologies (ICTs), from radio to television to the internet and cell phones, has changed the world. McLuhan’s (1997) warning that “the medium is the message” (p. 7) resonates today as never before. Today the wealthiest corporations on Earth are media compa- nies and technology platforms, and with over half the world’s population connected to these digital networks our dominant story- tellers are now marketeers, buying and selling information, products, our attention, and our personal data, often at the expense of society and the planet. Disparities of access and information In UNICEF’s “The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World” they assert, “Digital technology has already changed the worlddand as more and more children go online around the world, it is increasingly changing childhood” (2017, p. 3). They found that the most connected people (those with access to digital technologies and the internet) on the planet are youth between the ages of 15–24 and about one-third of all internet users are under 18 (UNICEF, 2020, p. 4). While this connectivity is increasing globally, access is not equal as the digital divide furthers the disparities. Globally, 2.2 billion youth remain unconnected to the internet at home and access for youth to the internet is also exacerbated in rural communities worldwide, with 25% of rural youth connected in comparison to 41% of youth in urban areas (UNICEF, 2020, p. 7). Additionally, African youth are more discon- nected (60% unconnected) than children in Europe (4% unconnected) based on many factors such as: economics, gender, and language (UNICEF, 2020, p. 2). More than half of all websites (56%) are only in English, inaccessible for most people on the planet (UNICEF, 2017, p. 10). Soon after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 officially a global pandemic, Guterres (2020), the UN Secretary General, tweeted, “Our common enemy is #COVID19, but our enemy is also an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation.” This was fol- lowed by two policy briefs from UNESCO warning the world about the dangers of a “disinfodemic” (Posetti and Bontcheva, 2020a,b). UNESCO (2020) asserts, “COVID-19 has led to a parallel pandemic of disinformation that directly impacts lives and livelihoods around the world. Falsehoods and misinformation have proven deadly and sowed confusion about life- saving personal and policy choices” (para. 1). At a time when the world needed reliable and factual information to save lives, our information systems were flooded with “fake news,”“alternative facts,” and conspiracy theories. While misinformation and disinformation are nothing new, the popularity and design of social media platforms have created the perfect storm for the most sensational messages to go viral instantly. At the same time, these digital tools are being used by individuals and orga- nizations to connect and build movements for political and social transformation, the power of information communication technologies has never been greater. 76 International Encyclopedia of Education, 4th edition, Volume 10 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.07072-X