Media Literacy in Times of Fakes – Between Discrimination and Critique
The project is concerned with Media Literacy, understood as the ability to critically engage with, discuss, read, and also produce different kinds of media (Alverman & Hagood 2000). Since the Brexit vote and U.S. elections in 2016, fakes and fake news on the internet – in particular on social media – are frequently discussed as problems, with increased Media Literacy amongst users being proposed as one solution. The project investigates this recent dimension of Media Literacy discourse and contextualizes it in relation to earlier attempts at media education in the 20th century. In particular, I am interested in exploring the parallels between the paradigm of ‘discrimination’, an approach to media education focused on differentiating between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ media, and today’s Media Literacy as the necessary qualification to differentiate between fakes and authentic content on social media.
The project conducts a historical discourse analysis, focusing both on materials from the early history of media education and Media Literacy in the 20th century as well as the more recent debates from 2015 onward. A systematic analysis of the materials (books, journals, reports, newspapers, websites, blog entries etc.) will show what Media Literacy means to different people and institutions in different times and which conflicts and issues with the term arise from that today. The research will be published as a chapter in an upcoming book dealing with fakes in digital cultures as well as paper in an international journal.
Main Research Topics
- Digital Cultures
- Social Media
- Media History
- Game Studies
Curriculum Vitae
- Since 11/2016: Assistant prof (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter/Akademischer Rat a.Z.) at the department for media studies, University of Bayreuth
- 2011 – 2016: PhD student at the department for media studies, Ruhr University Bochum. PhD thesis on the history of ideas of serious games and gamification.
- 2004 – 2010: B.A. in media studies & comparative literature, M.A. in media studies
Publications and Presentations
- Niebling, L., Raczkowski, F., Stollfuß, S. (Eds.) (in preparation, 2025). Handbuch Digitale Medien und Methoden. Springer VS.
- Raczkowski, F. (2024). Dogs and Data – the conflicting values of self-representation in social media. Digital Culture & Society, 9(2), 93-114. DOI: 10.14361/dcs-2023-0206
- Eickelmann, J., Raczkowski, F., Wustmann, J. (Eds.) (2024). Differences and the Digital – Practices and Politics of In/Exclusion in Knowledge Cultures. Special Issue of Digital Culture & Education, 15(2).
- (2019). Digitalisierung des Spiels. Games, Gamification und Serious Games. Kadmos.
