The Center for Media Literacy:  Contains a large archive of readings about media literacy, information about courses they offer, resources to be purchased, and links to other media literacy websites (including a section of links for teachers and students).

National Telemedia Council: They publish a journal, Telemedium, on media literacy education and sponsor conferences.

Online Sources for Advertisements and Mock Ads:

Advertisement Avenue: This site has an archive of television commercials. You can browse by category (brand name, product type, spokesperson) or run a keyword search. Requires no registration.

ifilm: Commercial site that has some free Superbowl ads.

Adbusters: Good source of mock advertisements; can be viewed online or ordered as postcards. Adbusters magazine is a good resource for teachers as they develop their own thinking about advertising; may be a little pomo and dense for most high school students.

The Ad and the Ego, California Newsreel: This video introduces the idea of image as a language that should be learned and analyzed. It also does a nice job of drawing connections between advertising, consumption, and environmental problems. Presents advertising as a system of education that derives its power from being unacknowledged as such.

The Persuaders, PBS Frontline: PBS Frontline program that looks at the multi-dollar "persuasion industries" of advertising and public relations.  Companion website and teacher's guide here.

Merchants of Cool, PBS Frontline: PBS Frontline program that looks at how corporations do market research on teenagers. Includes footage of traditional teen focus groups and more aggressive MTV visits to teen’s homes. If you can't buy a copy, the episode is streamed on the companion website. Great companion website here.

Killing Us Softly I, II, and III, Slim Hopes, Jean Kilbourne: Using hundreds of magazine advertisements as examples, Kilbourne explores the connections between the objectification of women and violence against women. In Slim Hopes she analyzes advertising’s obsession with slimness and the effects that has on women’s health.

Ethnic Notions and Color Adjustment, California Newsreel: Historic analysis of stereotyped images of African-Americans. Ethnic Notions covers from slavery to the advent of television. Color Adjustment focuses on images portrayed on television.

Signal to Noise: Life With Television, Independent Television Service: Three part series (Watching TV Watching Us, TV Reality?, and Remote Control) examines the history of television, gives an insider perspective on the business, and talks about ways to critically view television. Video order info: GPN / University of Nebraska, Phone: 800-228-4630, Fax: 402-472-4076, gen@unlinfo.unl.edu

Media Education Foundation: "The Media Education Foundation is a non-profit educational organization devoted to media research and production of resources to aid educators and others in fostering analytical media literacy. We believe that a media literate citizenry is essential to a vibrant democracy in a diverse and complex society."  Excellent source for media education materials.

The Age of Missing Information. McKibben, Bill. New York: Plume, 1992.  McKibben contrasts his experience of watching 24 hours of TV on over 100 channels with a 24 hours spent hiking and camping in the Adirondack mountains.

Brave New World. Aldous Huxley. Perennial Classics, 1998. Huxley’s distopia relies heavily on the mass-production of consumers in order to keep the economy stable. From an early age the characters are exposed to hypnopedic messages that sound a lot like current advertisements.

Fast Food Nation. Eric Schlosser. Houghton Mifflin, 2001. The third chapter, Your Trusted Friends, contains shocking primary source information about fast food restaurants targeting children in their marketing. This chapter would be interesting to pair with Brave New World.

Rich Media, Poor Democracy. Robert McChesney. University of Illinois Press, 1999. McChesney examines the concentration of ownership of media outlets and the consequences of that concentration for our democracy. Or, as he states, "the contradiction between a for-profit, highly concentrated, advertising-saturated, corporate media system and the communication requirements of a democratic society."

Bibliography compiled by Suzanne Linder and Audrey Wells, March 2002.  Updated: Linder, February 2005.