Since I will be teaching youth studies at the undergraduate level rather than English at the high school level I decided to broaden out the film adaptation assignment and do some thinking about critical media literacy.
Critical Media Literacy
The critical media literacy approach sees the audience as active in the process of meaning-making and promotes the production of counter-hegemonic media (Kellner & Share, 2007). In this case we can see our students as a potential audience. Kellner (2004) suggested that new technologies of communication are powerful tools that can liberate or dominate harkening back to Dewey’s moral measure of, “Does it liberate or suppress, ossify or render flexible, divide or unify interest?” (Dewey, 1922, p.326). Kellner (2004) has also suggested that educators must teach their students to use and critically analyze these media if students are to embrace civic participation and radical democracy. Critical media literacy enables people to evaluate, dissect, and investigate media content and forms and to cultivate skills in analyzing ideologies and the multiple meanings and messages embedded in media texts (Kellner & Share, 2005).
Youth, Credibility & Digital Media
The topic of how youth asses the objective and subjective components of messages on the internet has garnered much attention recently. Young people have access through digital technology to more available information than any other time in history. Metzger & Flanagin (2008) have suggested that teaching youth how to navigate the “ocean of information” available through digital technologies is important and necessary to critically assessing credibility. Flanagin and Metzger (2008) have also argued that youth are more likely than their parents or grandparents to turn to digital media when researching a topic for school or personal use. They have argued that the impact of “growing up digital” is that more information that ever is filtered through largely unknown sources and that “although youth are talented and comfortable users of technology, they may lack crucial tools and abilities that enable them to seek and consume information effectively”(p.7). One of the difficulties of assessing credible sources on the internet is that conventional methods may not work because of the fast pace, link structure, and lack of referencing (Metzger & Flanagin, 2008). However, these authors have suggested that it would be simplistic to say youth are inherently lacking compared to adults when it comes to credibility assessment. Although many educational efforts have taken the more “protectionist” approach towards shielding students from potentially incorrect information online, others have argued this type of sheltering inhibits the ability to think critically about digital information. Metzger and Flanagin (2008) have argued that collaborative filtering processes like Wikipedia with its unprecedented peer review can have the potential to solve many credibility issues raised by digital media. Encouraging youth to examine Wikipedia pages where collaborators discuss contested information, encouraging youth to become providers of information themselves, and making direct comparisons between competing news accounts may all be ways to gain skills in assessing credibility (Metzger & Flanagin, 2008).
Considering the incredible immersion of youth in digital technologies, more research to fill this void is needed. Most of the research exploring information people obtain through digital media has focused mainly on websites. More research could be done looking at different information resources like blogs, wikis, email and text messaging and although research on credibility and media is growing, very little is today is dedicated specifically to youth with the exception of college students. Metzger and Flanagin (2008) have argued that “credibility is a cornerstone of people’s interactions, personal representation, academic and professional performance, and democratic expression and choice” (p. 20). Understanding better how youth asses credibility is therefore of significant interest.
Some Conclusions
The research suggests that in this unprecedented time of media consumption, it is vitally important that parents, youth workers, teachers and all those who work with and on behalf of youth pay closer attention to how media informs and educates young people. Many authors have suggested that media messages are generally for profit and are constructed using their own special language. These authors have argued it is important to question the images portrayed by media and not take them for granted. Each person brings their own context and life history to interpret media messages and not everyone will interpret messages in the same way. Many may not be able to see positive representations of themselves in the popular media because of embedded values of the corporations that produce these messages. However, the literature also suggests that embracing critical thinking around these issues can bring us towards more informed communities and a more enlightened democracy.
Brown, Schaffer, Vargas, LaHoma & Romocki (2004) have noted that there is a growing body of case study evidence suggesting critical media literacy can positively impact the lives of young people. The goal of incorporating critical media literacy into the everyday lives of youth is about creating more aware, engaged, civically-minded youth who can make more informed choices not only as consumers (as we know vast amounts of energy and resources are spent on marketing to youth) but also as advocates for positive representations of themselves in media. Brown et. al. also wrote, “Our vision is that in the future, the media world would be a more diverse and civically engaged place in which young people could find and produce positive images of themselves. Raising a generation of media-literate citizens may help realize that vision”(p. 264).
Directions for Future Research
The body of literature connecting youth development and critical media literacy is growing. Hopefully projects like the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning spanning research, educational reforms and technology development will continue to be funded. Topics like youth, digital media and credibility have started to emerge and capture the public’s attention, but further research is needed. Other important research focusing on media, consumer, and digital culture is happening as well. The anthology Media/Cultural Studies: Critical Approaches came out in 2009 and dedicated 644 pages to a vast array of media–related topics many of which focused on youth and media usage. I would argue that there are many exciting places where youth development research and critical media research can intersect. Hopefully further research exploring these connections will support youth, their families, and communities by giving them tools to interpret and deconstruct media messages, challenge these messages and create new messages that better represent themselves.
I agree with almost everything you say here. I only take issue with your statement that "not everyone will interpret messages in the same way." If everyone isn't interpreting the message in more or less the same way, the advertising agency put out a poor ad. It looks like you take a reader response approach to dissecting media, but I'd argue that saying someone takes away what they themselves bring to media analysis makes the production of ideologies far more audience centered than what it actually is.
ReplyDeleteJack, huh? You don't think people of different color, class, gender etc. interpret messages diffrerently? Read Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding piece, very foundational in which he wrote (1994) about how those wanting to control preferred readings of texts (which can be films or television etc.) cannot predict how others will read them. He noted that “…they cannot contain every possible reading of the text. The very text which they encode slips from their grasp. You can always read it another way”(p. 262)
ReplyDeleteSo essentially a corporation may want everyone to read an ad the same way, but they cannot control the reading people take away. It's not a matter of how "good" a job they did. All they can hope for is that most people end up interepreting their "preferred" reading - make sense?