Reflection
Essays
Critical essay 1 September 20th 2017
As technology continues to increase in our 21st century, so too are the media platforms that grant people access to information, communication, and modes of expression. This has given rise to numerous debates in education concerning the value that new media literacies can bring to the teaching and learning experience. In Popular Culture in Traditional and New Literacies Donna Alverman takes a look at some of the perspectives/arguments that are involved in these debates. In the following short essay, I look to explain what new literacy studies is comprised of and what imports it can provide to the teaching/learning experience.
In the autonomous model, interaction with literacies such as printed texts are assumed to be “neutral processes” in which people interact, interpret, and mediate information in the same way. However, as increasing studies have suggested, interactions with forms of literacy are never neutral because they “occur within larger social structures of power that position people in different ways” (5). This has given rise to arguments that favor the need to communicate using multiple modes of representation (5). This has subsequently led to the contemporary notion of ‘literacies’ and the emerging field of new literacy studies. In a pedagogical setting it is argued that new forms of literacy are beneficial because they have the power to connect diverse students to new forms of expression and representation through media and popular culture. This can have the effect of connecting diverse students to different forms of meaning that, in turn, connect them furthermore to each other and to what they are learning. In this sense, new literacies can provide opportunities – spaces – for students to express, negotiate, and form meaning in relation to contemporary topics/issues that are relevant to them. It also offers access to a diversity of perspectives and social narratives/stories that can expand students knowledge of racial/cultural/social difference, which works towards creating a more equitable learning environment by connecting students to each other and to their studies.
While I believe that new literacies can be indeed benefit the learning/teaching experience, I question the degree to which students are capable of creating authentic meaning from the messages and semiotics they interact with. At one point in the essay Alverman points to a study by Moje and Helden in which four young women are purported to have “negotiated the meanings of “mainstream” popular culture to produce texts that were more compatible with their backgrounds” (12) I find this to be a highly contentious argument proving agency because to formulate meaning with words should not be the standard by which we measure agency. Behavior and action should be. In my opinion there is more evidence to suggest that popular culture is a political tool used to advance hegemonic powers by homogenizing perception and social behavior.
References
Alvermann, D. E. (2011). Popular culture and literacy practices: Traditional and New Literacies. In M. L. Kamil, P. D. Pearson, E. B. Moje, & P. P. Afflerbach (Eds.),
Critical essay 2
September 27th 2017
Some benefits and considerations regarding Media studies pedagogy
In Popular Media, Education, and Resistance authors Michelle Stack and Deirdre Kelly state early on why they believe educators should be engaging students in more pop media studies and production in their classrooms. As they see it, youth are increasingly engaging with more and more forms of media literacies. Because media literacies are never politically or socially neutral, they have the power to influence people’s perception of others and the world around them. In this way media literacies have both the power to perpetuate and/or to resist socially, politically, and racially oppressive views and narratives that are present in society. This is why Stack and Kelly see a deeper need to incorporate more pop media studies/production in the curriculum: it is an important site/opportunity for advancing dialogue/pedagogy regarding questions of equity and social justice. In the following short essay, I look to explain some of the ways in which media literacies can be used to resist damaging political/social representations, while at the same time considering some of the issues that are connected to using media as a tool for resistance and representation.
For Stack and Kelly, education should focus a little more attention on pop media studies and production because they provide students with spaces in which to resist, critique, and transform mainstream representations/perceptions of culture, race, and identity. In this way, media literacies can provide students with a channel, with a voice, that enables them to be agents in a participatory democracy; in discussing and negotiating the perceptions and conditions of life that are appropriate for all. This is exemplified through the proliferation of alternative publics in which “marginalized groups invent and circulate oppositional interpretations of their needs and interests, in strategic resistance to the power of dominant groups and institutions” (10) For Stack and Kelly the belief is that “if students begin from a theoretically grounded understanding that inequalities and oppressive discourses (including mass cultural texts) are always socially constructed, then they will have the analytic tools to reconstruct in their own productions more inclusive, less denigrating meaning systems.”(14).
While I do see the benefit that Media studies pedagogy can have for students, some of the issues I have with its use take shape in the philosophical realm. One of my concerns is mirrored in sociologist Jean Baudrillard’s The system of Objects in which he states that “ mechanical organization is often a substitute for an effective social organization”…and that “machines, far from being a sign in our present society of human power and order, is often an indication of ineptitude and social paralysis” (Badrillard, 126). The more that I observe different viewpoints –different narratives/representation of resistance – shared across various media texts without effecting much social change, the more I think about Baudrillard’s statement. Is something more (socially) human lost in the transmission of virtual representations and dialogue? Are students/people really interacting with popular representations and negotiating meaning, or are they simply reproducing the system of meanings they encounter? Remember that the more we empower people to share their viewpoints, the more viewpoints we will have, and the more difficult it will be to discern authentic meaning from virtual representation.
References
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. Trans. James Benedict. Verso, New York, 2005.
Stack, M., & Kelley, D.M. (2006). Popular media, education, and resistance. Canadian Journal of Education, 29(1), 5-26.
Production 5
Newly emerging perspectives in education have focused on the need/desire to make pedagogy, and pedagogical literacies, more socially, culturally, and politically relevant to students. What this means is that next to learning students need to be given the tools (knowledge) necessary to participate in society and to have a say in matters of social and political importance. For writers like Ernest Morrell, popular culture presents us with avenues for achieving this. According to Morrell, a pedagogy of popular culture “can be used to facilitate the development of academic and critical literacies” (Morrell, 237) that - I will add- contain the power to challenge and offset social, racial, and institutional inequality. In the following paragraphs I look to show how a pedagogy of popular culture can be used to cultivate deeper learning in students and to help in the development of ‘advanced literacies’ for political action and social change.
Critical literacies are important to a pedagogy of popular culture because it is precisely what is involved, or taken up, by such a practice. Critical literacies refer to the consumption, production and distribution of media texts (print, virtual) by, or for, marginalized people for the purpose of destabilizing power relations and promoting social equity. As Morrell puts it in Critical Literacy and Popular Culture in Urban Education, “Critical literacy is a reading and re-writing of the world… it can illuminate power relationships in society and teach those who are critically literate to participate in and use literacy to change dominant power structures in order to liberate those who are oppressed by them”.(Morrell, 241). As captured by the quote, what is imperative to critical literacies is developing people/students that are critically literate. This is where popular culture can be used to cultivate deeper learning. For Morrell, popular culture documents the human experience via music, film, and mass media. As such, it captures the everyday experiences of marginalized people as they “confront, make sense of, and contend against social institutions”(Morrell, 240) In this sense, popular culture also captures the ongoing struggles between subordinate groups and dominant forces. This makes it a good site for students to engage with, and learn about, social and political realities/issues that are relevant to them. It also provides students with an opportunity to produce their own literacies in order to engage in socio-political action. Paramount to critical literacies, and a pedagogy of popular culture, is the need for educators to fashion curricula in a way that not only teaches them what they need to learn but connects them to the important social and political realities of everyday life. This can be done by integrating culturally diverse narratives (found in popular culture) into the pedagogy, or engaging in activities/assignments that, while cultivating critical thinking skills, connect student learning, and interest, to social and political topics of importance. As Morrell states “When placed in these positions, youth were far more motivated to read and write in powerful ways than they would have been were they only completing assignments for their teachers” (Morrell, 248). As Morrell observed, allowing students to engage in research of popular culture has the power to change the relationship one has to dominant society. Many of the students who were given opportunities to do so eventually became writers for their school newspaper; started clubs at their schools, and lobbied legislators at the state level (246). This is the power that a pedagogy of popular culture can have for students. On one level, it can help students find a deeper connection to what they are learning – which helps to motivate them – and on another level, it can act as a tool to prompt social and political action.
References
Morell. E. (2007). Critical Literacy and Popular Culture in Urban Education: Toward a Pedagogy of Access and Dissent.
Production 6 (critical essay 4)
Objects of Consumption: The toy
Just as technology has evolved in the last century, so too have our interactions and relationship to objects of production. Consuming objects is no longer a neutral activity; it involves interacting with a host of messages, signs, and associations that are imputed into objects. As such, the consumption of objects has a secondary role to play in our age: to normalize within the public beliefs/views about life that align with, and maintain, the overarching political power/system. In order to elucidate the role that objects of consumption have in this process, in the following short essay I will look at, and analyze, the relationship a toy car has to certain modes of perception and development in a child/person.
As Rowland Barthes explains in Mythologies “toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely socialized and constituted by the myths or the techniques of modern adult life” (Barthes, 53). This is the reason why many toys imitate adult life: they are designed for the purpose of familiarizing children to the values and ways of life that are important to adults and the socio-political system to which they belong. For this reason, I take the view espoused by Jean Baudrillard that “the first aim of all modern objects is manipulability” (Baudrillard, 53). This manipulability refers to an object’s ability to condition and influence a subject’s perception of reality, thereby manipulating them to internalize, and value, certain modes of perception over others. Take a toy car for instance; on a conscious level, it appears to be a neutral object, a child’s plaything, but on an unconscious level it is a symbolic representation of values and modes/perceptions that are endorsed by the overarching political powers/system. While the toy car is, in its physical sense, a neutral object, its representational value as an object signifying money, class, and opportunity for mobility (freedom) denotes, or rather emphasizes (conditions) certain beliefs/relatinos about the world. While a toy car may familiarize a child to certain relationships in the world, such as money and freedom, material ownership and class, I am much more concerned with the unconscious psychological effects of this representation; this process. As Barthes explains, in interacting with a toy, “, the child can only identify himself as owner, as user, never as creator; he does not invent the world, but rather, uses it.” (Barthes, 55). This predisposes the child to certain beliefs about his/her relationship to the world and to life. As Baudrillard puts it, the goal directedness of objects (toys) turns them into “actors in a global process in which man is merely the role, or the spectator “(Baudrillard, 59). What the child learns is ways of life that are intrinsic to capitalist industrial societies; the world/nature is to be used for the purpose of production and this is just the way that it is. Nothing can done. Indeed, as Baudrillard put it “If the simulacrum is so well designed that it becomes an effective organizer of reality, then surely it is man, not the simulacrum, who is turned into an abstraction” Baudrillard, 60). This is what concerns me most about objects of consumption: that, through their conditioning process, they turn people, users, into mere automatons incapable of discerning the ‘real’ from the virtually implied. At the most concerning level is the fear that technology will reach a mimesis, which replaces the natural world with an intelligibly artificial one.
References
Barthes, Roland (1957). Toys. In, Mythologies.
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. Trans. James Benedict. Verso, New York, 2005.
Critical Media Analysis
Framing the politically normative: Conditioning the public through media representations
In reflecting on the socio-political nature of toys, Rowland Barthes remarks that “toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely socialized and constituted by the myths or the techniques of modern adult life” (Barthes, 53). I believe the same holds true of media representations; they are entirely constituted and influenced by the values of adult life and the political system(s) to which they belong. For this reason, I argue, alongside thinkers like Noam Chomsky, that mass media operates as a political propaganda system designed to condition and normalize in the public, values that align with the overarching political power/ideology. In the following essay I look to show how political values/propaganda are socialized/conditioned into the public through the framing of news headlines by media corporations. I also intend to use this insight to advance an argument for the increased incorporation of media/pop culture studies and production in the educational curriculum.
According to Chomsky “a propaganda system will always portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, while those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients as unworthy.” (Chomsky, 3). For Chomsky, the term worthy refers to victims that serve a political interest in being represented by mass media. This can be exemplified in the news headlines that western media choose to broadcast, as well as the way in which the headlines/stories are framed. To elucidate, take the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks that occurred in France on January 7 2015. The attack, orchestrated by two Islamist gunmen, left twelve people dead. In the weeks to follow western media covered the story heavily and expounding a discourse revolving around outrage and the need to address the issue of terrorism. What is interesting to note, however, is that 9 months prior to this incident there was another incident that happened on April 15th 2014 in Nigeria in which 276 school girls were kidnapped by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. While the story garnered Media attention, it paled in comparison with the coverage and attention the Charlie Hebdo attacks acquired. The reason for this imbalance is simple: coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attacks was, and served, a western political interest; they represented an attack on the very ideals/values of Western civilization. This provided western media corporations with an opportunity to promote and advance views/beliefs that aligned with western political ideology. These mainly concerned the political imperative to ‘eliminate’ any threat to western democratic society and its values. This demonstrates the way in which mass media’s “practical definition of ‘worth’ are political in the extreme” (Chomsky, 5). The Boko Haram kidnappings may have also received less media attention because it involved a country, Nigeria, which is a “federal republic modeled after the United States” (Mwalimu, 6). In this sense western media would not want to present too much information to the public that might make its political system/ideology look bad. This is how mass media conditions and directs public perception. For Michelle Stack & Deirdre M. Kelly this is precisely why educators need to find more ways of integrating media literacy studies and media production into their curriculum. As they see it, media are the ways that people “imagine themselves to be connected to the social world”(Stack & Kelly, 9). If we are to prepare students to participate in a democratic public sphere, we need to provide them with opportunities to inquire, critique, and debate who controls the media and whether images, symbols, and representations that are found in advertising and mass media are compatible with our democratic ideals.
References
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. 1957
Charles Mwalimu. The Nigerian Legal System: Public Law. Peter Lang. 2005.
Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books; 1988
Stack, M., & Kelley, D.M. Popular media, education, and resistance. Canadian Journal of Education, 29(1), 5-26; 2006
Production 8
As is described in the paper Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design, connected learning is “learning that is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity”(4). It is realized “when a young person pursues a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career possibilities, or civic engagement”(4) As such the connected learning model attempts to address issues of growing social inequality by offering young adolescents with opportunities to further connect to what they are learning through the use of different mediums such as art and media technologies. As the paper describes “the reality for too many youth is that they see a shrinking set of options and little guidance towards new kinds of learning opportunity, community contribution, and diverse careers” (14) The connected learning model seeks to remedy this. Some of the features, aims, and opportunities of connected learning are to be found in the use of digital media and communications to: “1) offer engaging formats for interactivity and self-expression, 2) lower barriers to access for knowledge and information, 3) provide social supports for learning through social media and online af nity groups, and 4) link a broader and more diverse range of culture, knowledge, and expertise to educational opportunity.” (12)
For me personally, I can see the value of the connected learning model when I reflect on the final assignment we did in our Popular Culture class in which we had to design a graphic text. I was not initially excited about the assignment because I generally don’t like computers (programs). However, once I realized that I could integrate my personal sketches/art work into the assignment, I became more motivated to do the work, and through that motivation, learned about things –say on the computer – that I would have never known about. The opportunity also gave me the ability to see opportunities in life (hypothetical) that I may not have realized – such as different career paths (not that I am thinking about that, just that I can see how it could happen). The truth is that the connected learning model is great because it is helping to expand the realm of opportunity for youth by allowing them to connect to what they are learning on a more personal level.
References
Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone S., Salen, K., Schor S., Sefton-Green, Watkins, C. (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub