Teaching Literature in a Post-Truth World: Three Strategies for Integrating Critical Media Epistemology into Literature Curricula

In a ‘post-truth’ international media landscape increasingly shaped by misinformation and propaganda, English teachers face new and growing challenges in teaching critical literacy. This article reports selected findings from a six-month multiple case study examining how secondary English teachers integrated critical media epistemology (CME) – a new framework synthesising critical media literacy and epistemic cognition – into literature instruction. Focusing on three strategies for embedding CME within existing literature units that emerged from our data analysis, we illustrate how teachers connected student- and teacher-selected digital media to anchor texts and engaged students in creating media grounded in literary study. Drawing on classroom examples from diverse instructional contexts, the article demonstrates how integrating CME into everyday English instruction can foster students’ rhetorical awareness, epistemic reflection, and critical engagement with texts across media. The findings suggest that CME offers a feasible, theoretically grounded approach for addressing post-truth conditions through literature-centred instruction.