Life
Higdon's education focused on History, Latin American Studies, and Critical Media Literacy Education. [1] In the 2010s, Higdon began writing for Project Censored.
In 2019, Higdon co-wrote United States of Distraction Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It), with Mickey Huff. Higdon and Huff argue that the implementation of neoliberal policies in the 1970s created weaknesses in the U.S. news media system that Donald Trump exploited. They argued that a dramatic transformation of the U.S. media and education system were needed to strengthen American democracy. The text received mixed reviews. [3] [4]
In The Anatomy of Fake News: Critical News Literacy Education, Higdon argued that the U.S. has always wrestled with fake news. Rather than panic, democracies can mitigate the influence of fake news by making critical news literacy education available to the citizenry. [5] Higdon warned that treating government regulation and censorship as a solution to fake news empowers corporations and government to determine what is true and what is false for citizens. [5] Robin Blom mostly lauded Higdon for making “a convincing argument throughout the book about the need for critical approaches in news literacy education.” However, Blom lamented that “Higdon doubled down on using fake news. Whether he is talking about hoaxes, propaganda, or petty lies…The consistency is praiseworthy, but it also brings us back to square one: What is the actual value of the phrase in public discourse when applied to such a wide range of communication forms?” [6] Wayne Journell celebrated Higdon's history of fake news arguing that it “provides much-needed context for those struggling to understand both the complexities of fake news and how we arrived at the misinformation era we find ourselves in.” Journell wrote “Higdon is at his strongest when providing historical context.” However, Journell's “main criticism” of the book was Higdon's “underlying assumption that consumers of information want accurate information.” [7]
In The Podcaster's Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasters in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism, Higdon and Nicholas L. Baham III surveyed a 100 podcasts to determine how media makers are using podcasting as a space of decolonization. [8] In a review, L. Dugan Nichols said Higdon and Baham “excel at categorizing the gamut of subversive podcasting, informing readers how the hosts of various shows “confront dominant ideologies” (p. 6) through inquiry, criticism, and “cultural reformulation” (p. 6)—which entails the telling of narratives from a subaltern position.” However, Nichols' summation of the text was mixed, “Ultimately, The Podcaster’s Dilemma contains ambiguities and omissions that prevent a more nuanced exploration into the world of leftist podcasting. However, academics conducting research in this area would be remiss to neglect this book. It is an essential read for anyone seeking insight on the resistant potential of a digital medium.” [8]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
