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Ahmet Atay co-edits book with thoughts on teaching during the “post-truth” era

Ahmet Atay, department chair of Global Media & Digital Studies and program chair of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, is co-editor of a new book, Pedagogies of Post-Truth. The work, produced by Atay with David H. Kahl, Jr., is an exploration of ways in which instructors and students must navigate discussions in an era when any news story or piece of research can be labeled “fake” simply because it doesn’t align with another person’s world view.

“This project began when we were asking questions about how we teach what we teach in our classrooms, as the discourse of post-truth gained more visibility in our societal discourse,” Atay said. “We wanted to carefully examine social and cultural elements in play within and outside of our classrooms. After all, both cultural practices and the cultural discourses that surround media impact how we teach and what we teach.

Challenges arise when evidence-based news reporting is targeted by conservative groups and called “fake news,” but the contributors to Pedagogies of Post-Truth offer ways for educators to push through the noise. In addition to his role as co-editor, Atay contributed a chapter to the book: Challenging the Discourse of Post-Truth in Media Classes: Digital Media and Cultural Pedagogies.

“As a media scholar, I often question the role media play in our everyday lives, especially since we live in an information-saturated world. The chapter I wrote came about because I wanted to understand how teaching media studies have changed and what kind of competing forces are at play in our classrooms and beyond.”

Posted in News on May 24, 2022.