Supporting Critical Media Literacy and Civic Learning with Ideologically Diverse Youth and Teachers Through Media Fandoms

Karis Jones

This project is a multi-sited social design research project with comic convention-affiliated Teacher Studios to support critical media literacy and civic learning with ideologically diverse youth and their teachers. The aims of the fellowship are to a) study how youth learn in media fandoms across digital and in-person spaces; b) study how educators notice youth learning at comic conventions and apply that learning into formal curricular designs; and c) examine how educational programming designed in tandem with media fandom conventions can address civic issues and problems of polarization in online spaces. These aims will be accomplished through the development of a Youth Studio, to be run in parallel with already-existing Teacher Studios. I will convene diverse youth from across the country (California, New York, and Texas) to support their consideration, analysis, and critique of media texts that they encounter online in fandoms as well as related issues of polarization and civic participation. This project will support critical youth participation across digital and in-person media fandom spaces, while simultaneously informing teachers about ways they might innovate designs for youth learning through media-fandom informed curricula.

About Karis Jones

Karis Jones (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor for the Curriculum & Instruction Department at Baylor University. As a literacy scholar, learning scientist, teacher educator, and community organizer, her research relates to issues of equity in literacies learning and writing across disciplinary, fandom, and gaming space. She is PI/Co-PI on research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Sociological Institute Foundation, the International Literacy Association (ILA), and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). She has received funding for community partnerships through Humanities New York, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the Wycoff Family Foundation. Dr. Jones's research agenda is based on her teaching experiences serving culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse students in public schools, and her work supports innovative and creative ways of addressing complex issues in literacies research and ELA education. Moving forward asset-based literacy instruction movements in the field of English Education and beyond, she draws from youth-centric contexts of fandom and gaming to design more equitable and engaging formal and informal learning spaces. Her book Fandoms in the Classroom: A Social Justice Approach to Transforming Literacy Learning written with Dr. Scott Storm was published Winter 2025. She received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Literature SIG's 2022 Shelby Wolf Award for Outstanding Dissertation, and the Writing & Literacies SIG's 2025 Steve Cahir Early Career Award for Research on Writing.