Critical literacy: Democracy, postdigitalism and diversity

The key article, “Informed conversations as critical media literacy”, discusses the importance of critically engaging students in a time in which media is saturated with information and readers need to consider truth and alternative truth, facts and alternate facts. We were intrigued by the article’s advocacy for critical literacy, the need for critical discussions to inform future educational approaches, and what this means for adolescence and critical literacy in the second quarter of the twenty-first century. In our response, we wish to contribute to this conversation by describing recent critical literacy research that examined the democratic futures of middle-years students, understanding postdigital perspectives and what these perspectives mean for societies and education and the importance for educators to understand the literacy practices of young people and how their prior knowledge and dispositions can inform their critical literacy learning.