As generative AI tools like ChatGPT become increasingly embedded in how people consume, create, and share information, educators face an urgent challenge: how to support students in navigating a media landscape where disinformation functions as design, not deviation. In this context, ethical, inclusive, and participatory approaches to media education are essential. AI systems now influence not only how news is produced and circulated, but also how public trust and civic life are shaped. This presentation shares a participatory model of AI education from an undergraduate action research course at a large public university in the southwestern United States, serving a diverse student body including many first-generation college students. In this setting, students co-created our classroom’s AI use policy; an entry point into broader inquiry around algorithmic power, surveillance, misinformation, and authorship. Students critically examined how generative AI shapes public discourse and contributes to distorted realities. Their reflections, informed by lived experience, led to student-designed AI literacy toolkits, media justice campaigns, and ethical critiques of dominant narratives. This session bridges journalism and education by positioning the classroom as a civic space. Participants will explore student-generated artifacts and consider how co-created policies can cultivate more critical, participatory, and justice-oriented approaches to AI and media education.

Authors:
Allison Lester, Arizona State University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Allison JoAnn Lester is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Arizona State University, where she teaches and researches ethical AI, critical media literacy, and participatory education with a focus on student agency and social justice.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonjoann/

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