The Model of Critical Media Education: Toward a Critical Media and Information Literacy Paradigm

This article develops Critical Media Education (CME) as a theoretically grounded paradigm within media and information literacy (MIL) scholarship and media literacy education.Moving beyond instrumental or protectionist approaches, CME is theorized as an emancipatory model aimed at cultivating learners able to interrogate and contest the power relations reproduced through mediated discourse and platform infrastructures.Media and information are conceptualized not as neutral reflections of reality but as discursive and ideological practices that shape meanings, identities, and social consensus.Anchored in Freirean critical pedagogy and complemented by cultural studies and critical political economy, the article integrates four interrelated dimensions: critical epistemology, textual and discourse critique, political economy and platform critique, and praxis-oriented media production.These dimensions are operationalized through guiding analytical questions and indicative classroom practices, offering a usable framework for media literacy education, teacher education, and curriculum work.The article also addresses risks of moralization and outlines safeguards that preserve plural interpretation, autonomous judgment, democratic participation, and future empirical development in datafied societies for contemporary classrooms and wider public cultures.It further argues that CME advances media literacy education when critical reading, structural platform analysis, and civic action are connected within one coherent pedagogical model for contemporary democratic societies.