Media Studies for K-12: Theory and Practice in Action

Adriana Boffa, Jay Procktor, and Cathryn van Kessel

Concerns about media exposure Image from: http://wearelovely.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/CB-Zombies1.png

Consumerism and media “For a market economy to grow, it needs to increase sales. That means encouraging us to buy, and consume, more than we already do. Advertising plays a key role in stimulating consumption, and increasingly children are targeted as a way of boosting each household’s appetite for goods. Estimates suggest that the average American child watches between 25 000 and 40 000 television commercials a year. In the United Kingdom, it is about 10 000. As we grow up, we learn by watching others. Our views about what’s normal and necessary are shaped by what we see” (Macy & Johnstone, 2012, p. 15).

The global village?

Reality vs. Fantasy

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT4ikdAS-P0

“helping students develop a framework to understand that all media messages… are created for specific purposes [with] ideological and political implications… how different audiences might understand the same media text differently, and should develop the capacity to evaluate the credibility as well as the partiality of any media message… to ‘detransparentize’ media in order to look beneath what might otherwise be self-evident aspects of messages to see how and why they ‘work’.” (Garrett & Schmeichel, 2012, p. 211-212 )

Students should ask:

- What social, cultural, historical, and political contexts are shaping the message and the meaning I am making of it? - How and why was the message constructed? - How could different people understand this information differently? - Whose perspective, values and ideology are represented and whose are missing? - Who or what group benefits and/or is hurt by this message?

- Individuals can be grouped and categorized by ethnicity, gender, (dis)ability, etc. - Grand narratives/metanarratives/single stories - False binaries - “common sense”, stereotypes, and discrimination - Open up space by troubling this common sense!

what can a representation do?

“When you’re living in the middle of this story, it’s easy to think of it as just the way things are. Young people may be told there is no alternative but to find their place in this scheme of things” (Macy & Johnstone, 2012, p. 15).

This trailer available at: http://vimeo.com/18985647 Longer (swears bleeped) trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pM1fW6hNs

Talk with students about the power of media

we are subconsciously affected and influenced by the various forces (social, economic, capitalist, familial) that exist in our world and that we come into direct or indirect contact with (cf. Guattari, 1992/2006)

Case study: Latino/a representations

http://latinosbeyondreel.com/

Flipping representation and ‘common sense’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHO1a1kvZGo

Interrupting representation through “guerrilla” art

Seeing what was

unseen creates a force of change

http://ramirogomezjr.blogspot.ca/ http://fusion.net/story/4600/artist-shakes-up-luxury-ads/

Beyond representation: the power of media to affect us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nr_tqkMsJs

What might we learn from Grade 1s about representations? A case study in changing perceptions

Comparing perspectives on the image of Jim Wolf:

What happens to a child’s perception between age 6 (Gr 1) and age 12 (Gr 6)? ! Grade 1: scary, wolf like, wild, nice,

happy, doctor, piano player, fire fighter, pilot

! Grade 6: dirty, filthy, lazy, disgusting, worthless, needs to get a job

Grade 1: more likely that this is a man that Mom and Dad would invite over for dinner

Grade 6: nice, polite, educated, hard-working & more like someone who would visit for dinner

The Jim Wolf Makeover video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a6VVncgHcY

http://researchdesignreview.com/2014/05/23/resisting-stereotypes-in-qualitative-research/

“Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.” – Marshall McLuhan

Selected reading/resources Adbusters (2015). Adbusters: Journal of the mental environment. www.adbusters.org

Anthony, R. (2014, Sept. 26). These portraits of powerful men and women as societal stereotypes are shocking. Elite Daily. Retrieved from: http://elitedaily.com/envision/these-portraits-of-powerful-men-and-women-as-societal-stereotypes-are-shocking/775560/

Garrett, H.J. & Schmeichel, M. (2012). Using “The Daily Show” to promote media literacy. Social Education, 76(4), 211-215.

Macy, J. & Johnstone, C. (2012) Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. Novato, CA: New World Library.

McLuhan, M. (1963). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: NY: McGraw-Hill.

Additional Reading Guattari, F. (2006). Chaosmosis: An ethico-aesthetic paradigm. (P. Bains & J. Pafanis, Trans.). Sydney, AUS: Power publications. (Original work published in 1992)

jagodzinski, j. (2014). Pedagogy in the public realm: Affective diagrams of thinking feeling in the X- Men and beyond. In J. Burdick, J. A. Sandlin, & M. P. O'Malley (Eds.), Problematizing public pedagogy (pp. 65-75). New York, NY: Routledge.

Kumashiro, K. (2004). Introduction and Chapter 6. In Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice (pp. xvii-xxviii, 51-60). New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

Rivas, J. (2014, January 9). Artist Ramiro Gomez Shakes Up Luxury Ads with a Dose of Reality. Retrieved from http://fusion.net/culture/story/artist-ramiro-gomez-interrupts-luxury-ads-dose-reality-366873

Roberts, P. (2011). Signatures of the invisible: On schizoanalysis and visual culture. Deleuze Studies, 5(2), 151-162. doi: 10.3366/dls.2011.0015

Semetsky, I. (2012). Living, learning, loving: Constructing a new ethics of integration in education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 33(1), 47-59. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2012.632163

Wallin, J. (2014). Education needs to get a grip on life. In M. Carlin, & J. Wallin (Eds.), Deleuze & Guattari, Politics and Education: For a people yet to come (pp 117-139). New York, NY: Bloomsbury

Adriana Boffa boffa@ualberta.ca

Jay Procktor j@jprocktor.com

Cathryn van Kessel vankesse@ualberta.ca