About The Journal of Media Literacy

JML, The Journal of Media Literacy began as Better Broadcasts News, an organizational newsletter for the American Council for Better Broadcasts in 1953. It evolved into Telemedium, The Journal of Media Literacy in the 1980’s, as the organization changed its name to the National Telemedia Council. Until our 65th Anniversary in 2018, our journal was one of the oldest, on-going, in-depth North American print journals in media education.   

Today, JML, The Journal of Media Literacy begins a new phase as we transform our organization into the International Council for Media Literacy. As such, it represents something more than an electronic version of a traditional print journal. We still bring together the thinking and experiences of the major pioneers, the current practitioners, and the future thinkers in media literacy. We still will have themed issues in which the editorial board invites an expert guest co-editor and outstanding contributors in their field. 

Rather than a finite date of publication, each themed issue will have the opportunity to grow and live on through deeper conversations between the expert authors, educators, and learners at all levels. We will create media cafe spaces for blogs and interviews between the authors and students, teacher idea exchanges, and echoes from our archives with dispatches for the future. We will follow the development of each theme to a point at which “the best of” can be collected into a print publication.

Our goal is to make JML, The Journal of Media Literacy a more accessible resource for our readership: K-12 teachers, teacher educators, professors, community activists, media professionals, and students from around the world interested in growing the field of media literacy. We want to be a bridge which connects the professional to the lay person across the various disciplines, pedagogies, and approaches that encompass today’s literacies.

The JML is…

• Bringing together the pioneers, practitioners, and future thinkers in media literacy;

• Themed issues with invited expert guest co-editors and outstanding contributors in their field

• A bridge connecting the professional to the lay person across various disciplines, pedagogies, and approaches that encompass today’s literacies.

… Seeing Where Others Have Not Yet Begun To Look.

We believe this is the definition of the artist AND the scientist. Both are inextricably connected through their common bonds of learning, testing that knowledge, and actively contributing to new knowledge and insight. This is the essence of critical thinking and media literacy.

Media Literacy is…

… the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate thoughtfully and actively with media and within media cultures in a more equitable, humane, ecologically resilient, and just world.

Our definition of media literacy is based on the following key concepts:

• Media comprise global infrastructures with material impacts (environmental and human) while also producing sensory experience and constructions of reality with unique forms and conventions.​
• Media express ideologies and values, but are also the source of pleasure and emotional substance.​
• Media can be interpreted as being embedded with economic, social, and political significance that contribute to the shaping of our societies and cultures.​
• Individuals and groups negotiate the meaning of media based on multiple factors.