Reconfiguring Literacies in the Age of Misinformation and Disinformation

Employing a multiliteracies framework, this paper explores the ways in which literacy pedagogy might respond to the emergent challenges that the new information environment poses. We contextualize literacy as a socially constructed endeavor of meaning-making that ranges across multimodal texts and has implications for identity, society, and political engagement. This paper highlights findings from an in-depth qualitative case study, examining how senior high school students and their teachers contend with the new information environment-including information abundance, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on in-class observations, student surveys and interviews, and teacher interviews, we offer a window into the complexities of how students and teachers grapple with information at school and, in the case of students, their personal lives. Finally, we discuss some of the opportunities for future literacy pedagogy. We contend that, in order to be responsive and authentic, literacy pedagogy should seek to address: the changing ways students engage with information; the complexity of ideas of safety and risk; the potential for socially-situated multiliteracies pedagogy; and, finally, the possibilities for future research and development.