Nolan Higdon

Nolan Higdon is a critical media literacy scholar, author, and university lecturer whose work focuses on news media history, youth culture, propaganda, digital culture, and critical media literacy education. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz (Merrill College and the Education Department) and at California State University, East Bay, and has served on boards such as the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Northwest Alliance for Alternative Media and Education, and the Media Freedom Foundation. He holds an Ed.D. in education from San Francisco State University with a concentration in critical news literacy, an M.A. in history from San Diego State University, and a B.A. in history education from the University of California, Davis.

Higdon is the author of several works on media and democracy, including The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People (co‑authored, Censored Press, 2022), The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education (University of California Press, 2020), United States of Distraction (with Mickey Huff), Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (2022, with Mickey Huff), and The Podcaster’s Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasters in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism (2021, with Nicholas