With the November 5 presidential election fast approaching, social media feeds are increasingly inundated with political messaging.

“If young people are on social media, they are coming in contact with election information,” says Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).

Students are likely seeing a mix of mainstream media stories, influencer takes, memes, clips from speeches, and more. There is no way to avoid it, which means that young people must learn to think critically about what they see.

“If we are swimming in this content, we need to be able to assess and evaluate and understand that content,” ­Ciulla Lipkin says.

Media literacy education is vital to that effort. Educators must address why it’s important to talk about media literacy in political campaigns, how to bring media literacy skills into that discussion, and how to do it in a way that is inclusive, not polarized, and effective.

“Even if we are not old enough to vote, if we want to be engaged civically, we need to be able to assess the information that’s coming to us from the political realm,” says Ciulla Lipkin. “The best way to [teach] that is obviously by skilled educators in the classroom and at schools. We need our school librarians, our teachers, and educators to be willing to address the election for all ages because of what a significant moment in time it is, and to get [students] better prepared for when they are voters and part more formal part of our civic processes.”

And while the efforts might include fact-checking, that is only part of the education.

“It’s not as easy as ‘OK, we’re going to fact-check this,’” she says. “Yes, you can start there, but then let’s go deeper. I wish we could figure out a way to normalize the idea of quality of information—high-quality information [and] low quality—almost like we think about food. There’s a lot of stuff that we see in our [social media] feed that might be factual, but it’s low quality.”

Of course, the use of AI and deepfakes comes into the discussion, and there are resources available to educators to assist in these lessons. The News Literacy Project’s Misinformation Dashboard has a section on manipulated content with up-to-date examples and explanations.

Like fact-checking, though, media literacy education can and should go beyond, “Is this real?” Students can ask, “Why was this done and by whom?” and explore the motivation and ­methods of political messaging.

Ciulla Lipkin knows that in the current climate, not all educators are allowed or comfortable teaching media literacy through the lens of the current presidential election. Looking at past campaigns can give students the needed media literacy foundation to analyze the 2024 election, she says.

She suggests The Living Room Candidate, a website that has political commercials from 1952 through 2024. Educators can have students look at recent commercials—but not so recent to “trigger the intensity” teachers are trying to avoid—to allow them to identify the messaging and manipulation or agenda of political messaging.

Students can assess those ads using the same questions they would for campaign material from this year: What does this want me to feel? How might different people interpret the information?

“You can navigate it in a way that isn’t so specific to this moment in time,” she says.

Classes can also discuss how the media environment has changed since those commercials. To make it more relevant to the students’ current media landscape and moment in time, Ciulla Lipkin suggests a lesson where kids are shown a political commercial from the 1980s and asked to translate it into a tweet or TikTok video.

“All of a sudden you’re exploring how messages get made, and the different ways in which different mediums get used,” she says. “You’re not diving into really hot button topics that we have to respect that teachers are hesitant to do. You’re still getting to the crux of the skill building, and that’s what’s most important. … Effective media literacy is not teaching you what to think about something; it’s how to think.”

Ciulla Lipkin offered some of her favorite media literacy and election-related free resources for educators:

International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX)
IREX's Learn to Discern education initiative aims to help students recognize their bias, identify and resist manipulation, and participate responsibly in information spaces. The site includes a facilitator's guide to the program.  

The Living Room Candidate
From the Museum of the Moving Image, this site has political commercials from 1952 through the 2024 campaign and lesson plans on various subjects, including developing critical analysis.

News Literacy Project Misinformation Dashboard
This tool tracks “the topics and tactics of 2024 election misinformation,” helping students discern the tactics and narratives that influence ­public opinion.

Project Look Sharp
This resource from Ithaca College offers lessons in media analysis and decoding for students from elementary level through high school.

Teaching Elections
The website offers inquiry-based lesson plans, curriculum links from the Center for Civic Education, an electoral map, and links to election news updates and fact-checking sites.