The real purpose of the programs on television, or the articles in a magazine, is to create an audience (and put them in a receptive mood) so that the network or publisher can sell time or space to sponsors to advertise products.
This is an interesting notion as it challenges the idea that the art comes first and the ads are sold to the same market of who is interested in the art.
money, ego or ideology.
Are these the top 3 things that influence the motives and purposes behind media?
skills to question and rationally identify both overt and latent values in a mediated presentation, whether from the news, entertainment – or now especially from the Internet – we are likely to be much more astute in our decision-making to accept or reject the overall message. That’s vital for effective citizenship in a democratic society.
The idea of identifying, questioning, and making decisions to accept or reject is a key component of a democratic society.
1) Less popular or new ideas can have a hard time getting aired, especially if they challenge long-standing assumptions or commonly-accepted beliefs; 2) Unless challenged, old assumptions can create and perpetuate stereotypes, thus further limiting our understanding and appreciation of the world and the many possibilities of human life.
This is what I and others like about contemporary social media as it allows for differing views which can challenge the embedded assumptions and views.
What type of person is the reader / watcher / listener invited to identify with?
This is an important question and part of the construction as I often don't feel like things are made for me or with people like me in mind.
we also need to know how to locate alternative sources of both news and entertainment and to be able to evaluate the alternatives as well for their own embedded value
More and more people live in their own information silos or islands. Modern algorithms give us more of the same type of information and suggest things to reinforce our own biases.
Sometimes, like us, media makers are careless and turn a generalization (a fl exible observation) into a stereotype (a rigid conclusion).
Those selling a product tend to create segments and then target them through advertising that speaks to that segment in ways that may be generalizations or stereotypes.
Because all media messages are constructed, choices have to be made. These choices inevitably refl ect the values, attitudes and points of view of the ones doing the constructing. The decision about a character’s age, gender or race mixed in with the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors that are portrayed, the selection of a setting (urban? rural? affl uent? poor?), and the actions and re-actions in the plot are just some of the ways that values become “embedded” in a TV show, a movie or an ad.
And this is part of how oppressive systems a la bell hooks are reproduced as the choices made are often done by people of the same backgrounds.
Even the news has embedded values in the decisions made about what stories go fi rst, how long they are, what kinds of pictures are chosen, and so on.
This is actually easier to see nowadays with how news organizations cater to various political leanings.
When you think about it, no two people see the same movie or hear the same song on the radio; even parents and children do not “see” the same TV show! Each audience member brings to each media encounter a unique set of life experiences (age, gender, education, cultural upbringing, etc.)
This is part of what Giroux meant by the idea of objective reality not existing as we all bring our subjective experiences and understandings to whatever is presented in front of us.
– lighting, composition, camera angle, editing, use of props, body language, symbols, etc.
ok, but where does one learn this?
Simply looking for political agendas, stereotypes or misrepresentations is NOT • media literacy; there should also be an exploration of the systems making them appear “normal.”
This is the space for critical media literacy
citizenship
The concept of citizenship is tied to the idea of legal rights of a person to a government/nation. What of non citizens, nationals, refugees, etc? Does citizenship conflict with the idea of full dignity of a human person when one is not a citizen?
but rather to learn to raise the right questions about what you are watching, reading, listening or contributing to.
The pandemic has been a fascinating case in media literacy as it relates to public health, authority, and narratives.
the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.
Kellner and Share third approach
Express Your View!Production / Construction / Creating“Writing
Learn through doing. As you make a message then you understand how others make messages to influence you.
© 2008
~15 years old.
Reagan administration deregulated children’s TV in the ’80s,
Reaganomics and the cult of deregulation. It's why our airlines are totally the best in the world.
(XII) ONE MEMBER WHO IS A PROFESSIONAL PRINT JOURNALIST ANDIS A MEMBER OF A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS; AND(XIII) ONE MEMBER WHO IS A PROFESSIONAL BROADCASTJOURNALIST AND IS A MEMBER OF A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION OFBROADCASTERS
Where are people representing social media?
THAT IS NOT A RURAL SCHOOL DISTRICT OR A SMALL SCHOOLDISTRIC
According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 22% of Colorado's population lived in urban areas in 2019.
According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 58% of Colorado's population lived in suburban areas in 2019.
According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 20% of Colorado's population lived in rural areas in 2019.
NOT A RURAL SCHOOL DISTRICT OR A SMALL RURAL SCHOOL DISTRICT,
Does this mean rural districts are over-represented compared to suburban and urban?
CCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, AND ACTTHROUGH THE VARIOUS FORMS OF MEDIA
Essentially the third approach to media literacy
To move forward with critical media literacy we need to lobby for better funding for education, especially where it is needed most in the inner cities.
need to change the funding structure from property taxes
While media education is now expected to be taught since it is listed in almost all the state standards, unfortunately little has been done to train teachers, provide resources or create curriculum
A lot has changed since 2005
Senator William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award for wasting taxpayer money to develop curriculum for teaching college students “how to watch television.”Footnote 6 Since that embarrassment, public funding and support for media literacy in the US has been rare.
The ability to create a narrative to draw disdain is powerful.
Consistent with critical pedagogy, the students move from being objects of other people’s research and media representations to becoming subjects empowered to tell their own stories and collectively challenge dominant oppressive myths.
From object to subject transformation. From it to I
Radical democracy depends on individuals caring about each other, involved in social issues, and working together to build a more egalitarian less oppressive society.
If this is even so desired by the populace.
One can teach how media culture provides significant statements or insights about the social world, empowering visions of gender, race, and class, or complex aesthetic structures and practices, thereby putting a positive spin on how it can provide significant contributions to education. Yet we ought to indicate also how media culture can advance sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice, as well as misinformation, problematic ideologies, and questionable values, accordingly promoting a dialectical approach to media.
double edged sword again.
polymorphous
Polymorphism refers to the ability of something to take on multiple forms or shapes.
polysemic
In linguistics, the term is often used to describe words or concepts that have multiple meanings, often in different contexts.
multivalent
In linguistics, the term is often used to describe words or concepts that have multiple and sometimes conflicting meanings or interpretations.
Since media culture is often part and parcel of students’ identity and a most powerful cultural experience, teachers must be sensitive in criticizing artifacts and perceptions that students hold dear,
Kids! I'm talking about kids today.
democratic pedagogy, which involves teachers sharing power with students as they join together in the process of unveiling myths, challenging hegemony, and searching for methods of producing their own alternative media.
Teachers sharing power with students is democratic but often runs afoul as most do not live democratically. Democracy as a lifestyle is atypical.
teachers ought to be guiding students in an inquiry process
socratic
immersed
Hermeneutics is concerned with the meaning of a text, and with the ways in which meaning is constructed through interpretation. It explores the relationships between the text, the reader, and the context in which the text was created and is being read. It also investigates the ways in which culture, history, language, and power shape the interpretation and understanding of texts.
Technologies that could help produce the end of participatory democracy, by transforming politics into media spectacles and the battle of images, and by turning spectators into passive consumers, could also be used to help invigorate democratic debate and participation.
double edged sword. Can the master's tools dismantle the master's house?
texts are not ideologically natural or neutral.
Giroux quote
This framing of literacy as a family of practices in which multiple practices are crucial and none alone are enough, fits well into our multiperspectival approach to critical media literacy.
So while critical media literacy is desirable, it is still part of a family of practices.
people who are most often marginalized or misrepresented in the mainstream media receive the opportunity to use these tools to tell their stories and express their concerns. For members of the dominant group, critical media literacy offers an opportunity to engage with the social realities that the majority of the world is experiencing.
By listening to the voices of the marginalized and the misrepresented, those of the dominant group can better understand the realities of the lives of the others and othered.
critique of mainstream approaches to literacy and a political project for democratic social change.
Democratic social change that recognizes, interrupts, and destroys structures of oppression.
audience as active in the process of making meaning,
As opposed to the first approach.
only improve the social reproductive function of education.
How can this say to EVALUATE without being a socio-political-economic basis?
intertextuality
the relationship between texts, especially literary ones.
semiotics
the study of signs and symbols and their use and interpretation
“The notion that theory, facts, and inquiry can be objectively determined and used falls prey to a set of values that are both conservative and mystifying in their political orientation”
Subjective beings cannot see objectively
white supremacy, capitalist patriarchy, classism, homophobia, and other oppressive myths.
a la bell hooks. Missing imperialism and more expansive views on gender, e.g. transgender. Also 2007.
“media literacy is seen to consist of a series of communication competencies, including the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and COMMUNICATE.
Authors consider this to be too superficial.
democratic reconstruction of education and society
The goal and desire of the authors.
When this approach moves beyond technical production skills or relativist art appreciation and is steeped in cultural studies and critical pedagogy that address issues of gender, race, class, sexuality, and power, it holds dramatic potential for transformative critical media literacy.
Using critical pedagogy and cultural studies with media arts to be subversive.
Many of these programs tend to unproblematically teach students the technical skills to merely reproduce hegemonic representations with little awareness of ideological implications or any type of social critique.
Teach students to become a part of and reproduce hegemony instead of critiquing it.
Spaces must be opened up and opportunities created so that people in marginalized positions have the opportunity to collectively struggle against oppression, to voice their concerns, and create their own representations.
Don't want marginalized groups to gain their voice only to reproduce the hegemony. Gramsci Cultural Hegemony.
Critical analysis that explores and exposes the structures of oppression is essential because merely coming to voice is something any racist or sexist group of people can also claim.
Not just about having a voice but using that voice to be actively anti-oppression
over-simplifies the complexity of our relationship with media and takes away the potential for empowerment that critical pedagogy and alternative media production offer
doesn't like the idea of passive victim narrative as it takes away agency.
“the media are deemed most powerful by those working and living in situations of relative privilege; in the poorest center the media are seen as only one factor—less significant than the part played by poverty, by parental absence, and by violence” (pp. 59–60).
Structural violence is a bigger issue than the influence of TV media.
For most students in the United States, critical media literacy is not an option because it is not available; it is not even on the radar.
This was written in 2007. How much has changed in 16 years?
Collaborates with apercentage teachers
A percentage of teachers?