Situating Media Literacy with a Theory of Change: “Mapping JMLE

This article uses a theory of change to identify the difference media literacy work makes to people’s lives, based on work published in the Journal of Media Literacy Education in 2024. This is a pilot study stage towards a global field mapping, aiming to make the case for media literacy as an essential element in the health of the communication ecosystem (forthcoming, 2025). This is an exploratory pilot sharing provisional evidence, but this is the point of the the broader work this article is a part of which seeks to is describe how media literacy can make a difference to people’s lives and to the health of the communication ecosystem, in particular ways but also to help us in the field to be more measured and more humble about what we have overclaimed, where the evidence is generally provisional, or where the broader conditions and imperatives mean the work we do cannot make the differences we desire. The idea is we learn to claim less, to change more.