Media Education/Literacy

Comment

Comment by Faith Rogow on March 3, 2012 at 2:44pm

Dianna – I echo Antonio’s appreciation for sharing your article.  I’m intrigued by how deeply I both agree and disagree with it. 

I wholeheartedly agree that helping students to develop critical autonomy, confront social and economic inequities, and pursue social justice are important functions of media literacy education - and learning to recognize media structures is a vital part of that process.  I won’t repeat everything we wrote in The Teacher’s Guide to Media Literacy (TGML), but suffice it to say that much of it exactly matches your description of “contextual” media literacy. We include “taking action” as a key element of media literacy and recommend NAMLE’s Key Questions because they always call for examination of media structures, purposes, and effects. 

But like Hobbs, I think it is vital to distinguish between “activism” and “education.”  In thinking about that disconnect with your work, I wonder if we agree on goals, but not on teaching methods.  Or maybe we just define “activism” differently.

For example, I know from experience that the practice of showing and discussing a  Media Education Foundation video can be wonderfully effective in getting students to consider important perspectives that they will rarely encounter in mainstream media.  My activist self loves that. But without a great deal of teaching finesse, the screening can be like assigning students to read a persuasive “essay” without ever requiring them to learn to write a persuasive essay.  And because so many of the MEF videos are so good, I am likely to end up with students who can repeat what I believe to be true, but who can’t necessarily think for themselves.  At its worst, the screening can amount to indoctrination, i.e., asking students to adopt the conclusions of a cultural critic without ever really learning how to analyze media or society for themselves.  If the goal is to develop independent critical thinkers, that’s a problem.

To take a cue from the work of Robyn Jackson (Never Work Harder Than Your Students), we know that students learn more when they grapple with material and figure out things for themselves than when they are told what media mean. Because MEF videos always present media examples in the context of a particular interpretation, its tough to use them in a way that gives students practice in coming to their own, independent conclusions.  So even though I often agree with the perspectives in MEF videos, I tend to prefer the materials in Project Look Sharp’s Kits.  Their media documents are purposefully not surrounded by commentary and are therefore easier to use to help students develop critical autonomy. 

For me, psychologist M.L.J. Abercrombie summarized the greatest challenge of doing inquiry-based media literacy when she observed that the dilemma of teaching is “How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see.”  When I critique “activism” in the context of teaching, I am not speaking out against activism.  (I am an activist.  That would be self-defeating.)  Instead, I am critiquing a style of teaching that too often slips into “telling students what to see.” 

As we say in TGML, critical autonomy is not just helping students think independently of media, but also independently of us!  I often see well-intentioned educators who share my politics but who substitute activism for education by presenting pre-determined conclusions about media and society.  From an educational standpoint, that’s problematic because:

• it leaves no room for student voices who might disagree, and is therefore, ultimately disrespectful to students.
• it is incompatible with a literacy approach to media lit ed because it reserves the application of skills to texts that are objectionable instead of presenting a skill set that is applied to everything (i.e., we analyze Fox News, but not Democracy Now).
• it can easily produce cynicism instead of skepticism because students hear it as “don’t believe them, just believe me.”  That doesn’t give students skills, and without having a way to assess the strength and credibility of evidence, they conclude that “everyone is trying to manipulate me, including my teacher”.  

So, for me, the distinctions in the field of media literacy education aren’t about choosing between critical inquiry or not, contextual analysis or not (especially since nearly everyone - except for maybe theorists like James Potter - does at least come contextual analysis), being political or not, or even acknowledging media and societal structures or not.  They are about which teaching methods actually work best to help students become critical thinkers.

I’d love to hear how others “tell students what to look for” without telling them “what to see.”  How have you used MEF videos (or the work of other cultural critics) specifically to teach critical thinking?  If so, what prep for viewing and follow-up did you do, and how did you measure critical thinking skills?

Thanks for letting me ramble on a bit!

Comment by Antonio Lopez on February 29, 2012 at 1:59am

Dianna, thanks for sharing your article and link. I think it's an important perspective.

Comment by Ryan Goble on February 28, 2012 at 9:40pm

Hi Dianna - you should post your writing above as a blog and I can share it on a Blog and Cog monday!  Ry:)

Comment by Dianna Morton on February 28, 2012 at 5:42pm

Hi Faith--

The essay  The Struggle for Media Education and can be found in The Spectacle of Accumulation by Sut Jhally. This essay discusses contextual ML in depth.

 

I just found it on-line (yay!):

 

 

http://myweb.wwu.edu/karlberg/444/readings/struggle.pdf

 

Below is something that I wrote:

 

               The Contextual Versus Textual Model of Media Literacy

If those in charge of our society -- politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television -- can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.  -- Howard Zinn

Presently, there is a debate that exists regarding what Media Literacy Education involves. There are two schools of thought. In their essay “The Struggle for Media Literacy”, Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis (2006) clearly state their position:

The mass media should be understood as more than a collection of texts to be        deconstructed and analyzed so that we can distinguish—or choose—between them.     They should be analyzed as a set of institutions with particular economic and social    structure—structures that are neither inevitable nor   irreversible. (Jhally, 2006,p. 225)

On the other side of the argument is Renee Hobbs, who, according to The Media Education Lab (an affiliate of Temple University in Philadelphia) website, is “one of the nation's leading authorities on media literacy education.” Hobbs’ work has been embraced by school systems nationally, whereas this is not the case for the work of Jhally and Lewis. This is not surprising as Hobbs’ idea of media literacy involves deconstructing and creating media, or a text-centered approach. Hobbs does not delve into the depths of the economic and social structure of the media institution.  In her view, “it is inappropriate to lump media activism together with media literacy” (as in Jhally, 2006, p. 226).  Jhally and Lewis make a case that it is essential that Media Education must be contextual--it must examine culture hegemony in order for the work to be useful and meaningful. This would include how it (media) can be manipulated and how education can provide a prophylactic to this hegemonic manipulation, while simultaneously stimulating the consideration of holistic and analytical thinking.  In their argument, the authors cite Len Masterman, for whom:

The democratization of institutions, and the long march toward a truly participatory          democracy, will be highly dependent upon the ability of majorities of citizens to take    control, become effective change agents, make rational decisions, and to communicate          effectively perhaps through an active involvement with the media. (as in Jhally, 2006, p.        226)

Although Masterman resides in Britain, where much of media is a public service oriented government sponsored system, Jhally and Lewis state that this (understanding the media system) is particularly important in “ a media system in which messages are either explicitly or implicitly commercial” (Jhally, 2006, p. 226).In Media and Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences, Croteau and Hoynes explained that the process of domination through hegemony is extremely subtle as it operates “on the level of common sense in the assumptions we make about social life  and on the terrain of things we accept as “natural” or the way things are”  (Croteau and Hoynes, 2000, p. 164). As a result, this idea of common sense encourages a dismissal of alternative and creative thinking.  Yet, as we understand that hegemony is not permanent, but a process, there is true hope for a more compassionate and humane culture.

Much of all debate that takes place in our country seems to follow the Hobbs model for Media Literacy Education. An analogy of a “textual” rather than “contextual” approach to a heated issue is the abortion/right to life debate. It appears, within the current hegemony, as if one must choose an option or a side. This negates all unexplored options. It would be difficult to conceive that any one is actually for abortion. Yet, what are the cultural alternatives? A textual response subdues a creative response—a change in the culture. It shuts down further questioning, such as why do women choose to have abortions and what could the society do to eliminate the factors that encourage women to make this “choice”? Factors would certainly include poverty, lack of access to birth control, the non-existence of affordable childcare, and sexual violence against women. To examine and question the system that sustains the conditions that foster these problems does not enter the debate; the result is “the status quo” or what appears “safe”, yet feeds the ceaseless polarization of citizens, physical and emotional suffering, and no change. According to Stewart Hall (1994), a textual analysis, both the encoding and the decoding of media serves the essential issues of how representation are played out (as in Jhally, 2006, p. 227), yet it remains a narrow analysis.

In a contextual study of media literacy, the essential questions move from how messages are produced to why messages are produced. In addition, “under what constraints and conditions they are produced, and by whom they are produced” (Jhally, 2006, p. 228). An example of how this changes the discussion is having high school students critique an advertisement by The Campaign for a Drug Free America. A textual approach would most likely identify the propaganda techniques as “fear” based, and adolescents would most likely receive the message with cynicism.  In a contextual model of media literacy education, students would delve into the question of who constructed these messages, and discover that “The Campaign for a Drug Free America is a consortium funded by America’s leading alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies” (as in Jhally, 2006, p.229).  The political reality is then opened up with the “why” question. This then leads to an examination of the political and economic power structures that are the driving force of the propaganda.  In Derailing Democracy, David McGowan (2000) stated:
            Selling fear to the American people has become a mainstay of the press and of both           political parties in this country. Taking a "tough on crime" stance, particularly in a        climate of perpetual fear created by the "war on drugs" and the "war on terrorism," is always a politically safe posture... By focusing on crime, attention is effectively directed           away from more divisive issues on which a politician might have to take a stand that         would cost them votes. Meanwhile, a fearful populace continues to surrender their civil            rights and constitutional protections at an alarming rate, so that their government may           protect them from the rampant criminality of the masses. (McGowan, 2000)

This analysis would provoke further questioning into the root causes of drug use and abuse in the society; they may discover a society that does not address the ills of poverty and the economically (therefore socially) disenfranchised. If they were to question why alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies are sending out anti-drug messages, they may conclude that the situation is akin to the territorial drug dealer—and in this case, the drug dealer is supported by the political and economic power structures. If media literacy is not taught contextually, the learning is primarily superficial—bereft of social change.

            In Rich Media, Poor Democracy, Robert McChesney (1999) stated,

“... if we are serious about democracy, we will need to reform the media system structurally ... this reform will have to be part of a broader movement to democratize all the core institutions of society” (McChesney, p.ix, 1999). A difficulty that often arises, that is once again very much a part of the “system thinking”, is that the only alternative to commercial media is “the dull propagandist fare of totalitarian regimes (Jhally, 2006, p.230). A “this” or “that” system think holds fast to keeping the status quo by muting the questions. Media literacy education must explore the capitalist economic institution into which our commercial media emerged to serve the purpose of the system: profit making.

 

Comment by Faith Rogow on February 28, 2012 at 7:58am

Dianna - What do you mean by "contextual"?

Comment by Dianna Morton on February 27, 2012 at 8:22pm

Education or sales? I am confused here. Renee Hobbs' work is not contextual media literacy. ML must be contextual to be meaningful/effective. My humble thinking.  

Comment by Ryan Goble on February 27, 2012 at 8:07pm

Hi Everyone - The Gods Must Be Crazy is really priceless (as was the article in RS).   As you all know I've been a bit off the grid (update coming soon) here at MC POP but I'm trying to catch up on moderation.  Great discussion below in the future do consider posting questions above in the discussion forum - unfortunately, when these type of questions are asked on the wall they get buried over time AND because they have no URL (like the forum above us) they can't be broadcast or archived.  

Comment by Kelly Farrow on February 26, 2012 at 8:24pm

My husband and I rented The Gods Must be Crazy in response to reading that article. We enjoyed seeing it from that point of view. Neither of us had ever seen it before, either. Interesting!!

Comment by Dianna Morton on February 25, 2012 at 6:56pm

I meant "too" surface.

Comment by Dianna Morton on February 25, 2012 at 6:55pm

The Rethinking Schools article on teaching Gods Must Be Crazy was brilliant!

I was unfortunately disappointed with the Project Look Sharp material-- I purchased 3 sets of curriculum-- it was way to surface for where I take ML.

Maybe good for younger grades than HS? The Media Education Foundation, in my humble opinion, is the motherlode. The videos are pricey, yet the study guides are  free and outstanding. Besides teaching the deconstrucion analysis of ads-- it is essential to teach that ALL MEDIA has embedded values. And the economic/polical systems that this media is created.  Good luck with the endeavor, Kelly

 

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