Fostering the truthful individualCommunicating media literacy in the comic Bamse

Abstract

This study examines the construction of media literacy in a special issue on source criticism of the Swedish children's comic Bamse – Världens Starkaste Björn [Bamse – The World's Strongest Bear]. This is done with the purpose of understanding what values, perspectives, and practices are promoted when media literacy is communicated via children's edutainment media. Using narrative and discourse analysis, we problematise how notions of truth (such as post-truth) guide much of the discourse on digital media in today's post-political society, and how that and individualisation shape notions of media literacy. This is visible in the analysed case in how source criticism is constructed in relation to notions of truth and falsehood, and as moral lessons aimed at the individual media user. We argue that such an individualised, decontextualised, and depoliticised take on media literacy is problematic and an expression of neoliberalism and a middle-class gaze.

Keywords

• bamse
• fake news
• media literacy
• post-truth
• source criticism