Generative AI and Critical Literacy: Authorship, Media, and Education in an Era of Synthetic Content

Generative AI systems are now embedded in everyday practice. They shape how texts are written, images produced, and content circulated—not as neutral tools, but as sociotechnical systems that redistribute agency and reconfigure what counts as knowledge, authorship, and expertise. This shift is unfolding faster than educational research and practice can adapt, and robust frameworks for understanding the new literacy demands placed on learners, teachers, and institutions remain underdeveloped.Media and information literacy education has traditionally emphasized critical consumption: evaluating sources, verifying claims, and recognizing authorship. These approaches are increasingly insufficient in contexts where people are simultaneously creators and audiences of algorithmically generated content, and where provenance and credibility can be difficult to trace.These tensions appear across formal and informal learning contexts—from K–12 and higher education to communities, online spaces, and homes where synthetic media is encountered with limited guidance. Addressing these challenges calls for empirical, theoretical, and practice-based research into what it means to teach, learn, and create in an era of generative culture.This Research Topic examines how generative AI reshapes literacy demands across the lifespan, with attention to two interconnected sites: media environments where AI-generated content is becoming structurally embedded and boundaries between authorship, tool use, expression, and accountability are contested; and formal education, where these tensions surface in pedagogy, curriculum design, and assessment. Across both, critical literacy involves reasoning about credibility, bias, provenance, and manipulation as embedded dimensions of creating, circulating, and learning.The goal is not to deliver a verdict on generative AI in education, but to build a nuanced, critical, and actionable evidence base that can inform teaching, assessment, institutional guidance, and future research on AI and media literacy.This Research Topic welcomes contributions addressing the following themes:• synthetic media, disinformation, and the development of critical literacy practices• creative pedagogy, assessment, and academic integrity under AI co-authorship• transparency, provenance, and interpretability as literacy and educational challenges• ethics, inclusion, and accessibility in AI-mediated learning, including intergenerational and marginalized communities• everyday creative and communicative practices through which citizens engage with algorithmically generated content• institutional and professional responses to generative AI in journalism, media, and the arts (e.g., policies, guidelines, standards, and training)• arts-based, speculative, and experimental approaches to generative AI literacy (e.g., creative practice as inquiry, critical making, and aesthetic interventions).Empirical studies (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods), theoretical and conceptual contributions, systematic reviews, and practice-based or design research are all welcome. Research spanning formal education (K–12, higher education, teacher education), informal learning, and community-based settings is particularly encouraged, as are contributions from non-Western and underrepresented contexts. Topic editors: Iván Sánchez-López, Francisco Pérez-Fernández, Amor Pérez-Rodríguez, Octavio Islas Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82078/generative-ai-and-critical-literacy-authorship-media-and-education-in-an-era-of-synthetic-content