Exploration of the media based on the discourse of externalization has traditionally served to discuss how we can deal with social problems using our understanding of the media. I argue that when we overcome the discourse of externalization, we can continue deepening our understanding of mediated communication in order to challenge the status quo. The difference is that this challenging will be done not by trying to change the media perceived as the Other, but by transforming the media as ourselves, that is by changing our own communication practices. I argue that media literacy education can serve as a space where this important self-inquiry and personal change can happen.
According to Hobbs[1], media literacy education should include not only media analysis, but also reflection on one’s role in the media-saturated environment, creation of media texts with the purpose of understanding their constuctedness, and discussions about strategies of social action. Apart from analyzing media messages, media literacy education offers people opportunities to practice self-reflection, and consider the importance of civic engagement. Media educators can also help students practice collaboration[2], and develop empathy[3], both of which are crucial for effective social action. In addition, research shows that principles of media literacy education, such as media analysis and inquiry-based pedagogy, can serve as a springboard for conversations about a variety of social issues, including controversial ones[4].
As a result, media literacy education provides useful strategies for helping people not only understand the media as themselves, but also substitute blame directed towards the media as the Other with the acknowledgement of common responsibility. I argue that empathy, self-awareness and collaboration practiced in media literacy classes can help people engage in meaningful action aimed towards hacking the status quo.
If we acknowledge that we all are implicated in the social system, this can help us move past blame and towards empathy, which can be defined as willingness and ability to understand others within their frame of reference. Empathy allows us to look for common values and opens up opportunities for collaboration. We should stop pointing fingers and admit that we all are in one way or the other implicated in the flawed social system; moreover, we need to be able to entertain the idea that we do not really know yet how this system can be fixed. Changing the social system is a tremendous enterprise, and collaboration is a necessary prerequisite of its success, same as individual attitude change achieved through self-awareness, and the conscious effort to empathize with the Other.
Empathy and collaboration are good in theory but not easy to exercise in practice. They are not something people necessarily learn about through the educational system. Indeed, schools have been criticized for failing to develop both. For a long time schools have not been a place where collaboration skills are acquired, and many of them still put the accent on individual achievement. The need to help young people develop empathy is also still not entirely understood by educators and policy-makers, although research shows that empathy can be enhanced[5]. Same as awareness, empathy and collaboration can be effectively developed through media literacy education—in particular, through media production[6]. Research shows that group media production based on principles of media literacy[7] helps students learn how to articulate their ideas, listen to others, and engage in effective decision-making and problem-solving together[8]. As for empathy, Friesem[9] argues that by working in groups on video production students can make important steps towards enhancing it. Media production is not the only strategy that can be used for this purpose. For example, empathy can be enhanced through classroom discussions about controversial issues where students learn the importance of the dialogue, even as they disagree with each other.
Media literacy education has been criticized for misplacing efforts from changing the flawed system to changing individuals by encouraging them to become more critical, reflective, empathic, etc.[10]. Gill notes that in the context of media literacy education “we are made responsible for our own engagement with media,”[11] an approach that “espouses a kind of defeatism, for it suggests that media cannot be changed”[12] (note the manifestations of the externalization discourse in these quotes). In this respect I would like to second Madva’s[13] claim that acknowledging our responsibility to change ourselves and working on achieving structural changes do not have to be prioritized one over the other. These two strategies of dealing with inequalities are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they support each other, not the least because the social system exists through individuals, while individuals are influenced by the social system that they are a part of. In addition, the approach to media literacy education that I have discussed in this section resolves the binary of individual vs. structural change by emphasizing the importance of engaging in social action with the aim to challenge the status quo.
Rather than demonizing the media we should see it/them as an essential form of communication and transmission of human-made meanings in the modern world. The discourse about the media used within and outside of academia contributes to maintaining the status quo by diverting our attention from deeper roots of social problems. It is easy to blame them (the media and media producers) for things that we think are wrong with society, and much more difficult to start dissecting frameworks of meanings underlying our own actions.
Foucault’s notion of power (which discourses uphold and reveal) combined with theories of hegemony and social justification allows us to discuss how we can participate in maintaining the status quo even when we are actively fighting against it. Our implication becomes possible through the multitude of communicative acts that uphold frameworks of understanding (ideologies) our culture is based upon. This is not something we should be blamed for; however, we are responsible for becoming more aware of our implication, for instance, by exploring our implicit biases and their role in reproducing inequalities. We cannot bail out of the social system but we can change it by changing ourselves.
Combining Foucault’s conceptualization of power with the theories of hegemony and system justification allows us to see the media neither as the “main offender” and corruptor of growing generations, nor as an entirely neutral phenomenon that we use to fulfill our needs for connection, information, and self-realization. Mediated communication can be a problem, but it can also offer tools for resistance. It also serves as a litmus test revealing ideologies that our society rests upon. Thus, we should use discussions about the media, and our involvement with different forms of mediated communication, to raise awareness about the way the social system works.
This can be done in media literacy education classrooms, where students learn not only to deconstruct media texts, but also practice reflection and introspection, ultimately engaging in social action with the aim to make the world a better place. There is hope that upon understanding our common implication, we will be able to exercise more empathy towards each other and find ways to collaborate on tackling the system’s flaws together. By combining the individual change based on reflexivity and introspection with structural changes we will get closer to challenging inequalities and injustices that are so abundant in societies of the modern world.
[1] Hobbs, Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Course and Classroom.
[2] Steven Goodman, Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, and Social Change (New York, Teachers College Press, 2003).
[3] Yonty Friesem, “Empathy for the Digital Age: Using Video Production to Enhance Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Skills,” in Emotions, Technology, and Behaviors, ed. Sharon Y. Tettegah and Dorothy L. Espelage (San Diego, Academic Press, 2016), 21-45.
[4] Tracy Marie Scull, Christina V. Malik, & Janis Beth Kupersmidt, “A Media Literacy Education Approach to Teaching Adolescents Comprehensive Sexual Health Education,” Journal of Media Literacy Education 6, no. 1) (2014): 1–14.
[5] Mary Gordon, Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child (New York, The Experiment, 2009).
[6] Friesem, “Empathy for the Digital Age: Using Video Production to Enhance Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Skills.”
[7] “Core Principles of Media Literacy Education,” accessed on April 04, 2017, http://namle.net/publications/core-principles
[8] Goodman, Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, and Social Change
[9] Friesem, “Empathy for the Digital Age: Using Video Production to Enhance Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Skills.”
[10] Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Sexual Culture,” in The Routledge Companion to Media & Gender, ed. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner & Lisa McLaughlin (New York, Routledge, 2015), 589-599.
[11] Ibid, p. 595.
[12] Ibid, p. 596.
[13] Madva, “A Plea for Anti-Anti-Individualism: How Oversimple Psychology Misleads Social Policy.”
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
According to Hobbs[1], media literacy education should include not only media analysis, but also reflection on one’s role in the media-saturated environment, creation of media texts with the purpose of understanding their constuctedness, and discussions about strategies of social action. Apart from analyzing media messages, media literacy education offers people opportunities to practice self-reflection, and consider the importance of civic engagement. Media educators can also help students practice collaboration[2], and develop empathy[3], both of which are crucial for effective social action. In addition, research shows that principles of media literacy education, such as media analysis and inquiry-based pedagogy, can serve as a springboard for conversations about a variety of social issues, including controversial ones[4].
As a result, media literacy education provides useful strategies for helping people not only understand the media as themselves, but also substitute blame directed towards the media as the Other with the acknowledgement of common responsibility. I argue that empathy, self-awareness and collaboration practiced in media literacy classes can help people engage in meaningful action aimed towards hacking the status quo.
If we acknowledge that we all are implicated in the social system, this can help us move past blame and towards empathy, which can be defined as willingness and ability to understand others within their frame of reference. Empathy allows us to look for common values and opens up opportunities for collaboration. We should stop pointing fingers and admit that we all are in one way or the other implicated in the flawed social system; moreover, we need to be able to entertain the idea that we do not really know yet how this system can be fixed. Changing the social system is a tremendous enterprise, and collaboration is a necessary prerequisite of its success, same as individual attitude change achieved through self-awareness, and the conscious effort to empathize with the Other.
Empathy and collaboration are good in theory but not easy to exercise in practice. They are not something people necessarily learn about through the educational system. Indeed, schools have been criticized for failing to develop both. For a long time schools have not been a place where collaboration skills are acquired, and many of them still put the accent on individual achievement. The need to help young people develop empathy is also still not entirely understood by educators and policy-makers, although research shows that empathy can be enhanced[5]. Same as awareness, empathy and collaboration can be effectively developed through media literacy education—in particular, through media production[6]. Research shows that group media production based on principles of media literacy[7] helps students learn how to articulate their ideas, listen to others, and engage in effective decision-making and problem-solving together[8]. As for empathy, Friesem[9] argues that by working in groups on video production students can make important steps towards enhancing it. Media production is not the only strategy that can be used for this purpose. For example, empathy can be enhanced through classroom discussions about controversial issues where students learn the importance of the dialogue, even as they disagree with each other.
Media literacy education has been criticized for misplacing efforts from changing the flawed system to changing individuals by encouraging them to become more critical, reflective, empathic, etc.[10]. Gill notes that in the context of media literacy education “we are made responsible for our own engagement with media,”[11] an approach that “espouses a kind of defeatism, for it suggests that media cannot be changed”[12] (note the manifestations of the externalization discourse in these quotes). In this respect I would like to second Madva’s[13] claim that acknowledging our responsibility to change ourselves and working on achieving structural changes do not have to be prioritized one over the other. These two strategies of dealing with inequalities are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they support each other, not the least because the social system exists through individuals, while individuals are influenced by the social system that they are a part of. In addition, the approach to media literacy education that I have discussed in this section resolves the binary of individual vs. structural change by emphasizing the importance of engaging in social action with the aim to challenge the status quo.
Rather than demonizing the media we should see it/them as an essential form of communication and transmission of human-made meanings in the modern world. The discourse about the media used within and outside of academia contributes to maintaining the status quo by diverting our attention from deeper roots of social problems. It is easy to blame them (the media and media producers) for things that we think are wrong with society, and much more difficult to start dissecting frameworks of meanings underlying our own actions.
Foucault’s notion of power (which discourses uphold and reveal) combined with theories of hegemony and social justification allows us to discuss how we can participate in maintaining the status quo even when we are actively fighting against it. Our implication becomes possible through the multitude of communicative acts that uphold frameworks of understanding (ideologies) our culture is based upon. This is not something we should be blamed for; however, we are responsible for becoming more aware of our implication, for instance, by exploring our implicit biases and their role in reproducing inequalities. We cannot bail out of the social system but we can change it by changing ourselves.
Combining Foucault’s conceptualization of power with the theories of hegemony and system justification allows us to see the media neither as the “main offender” and corruptor of growing generations, nor as an entirely neutral phenomenon that we use to fulfill our needs for connection, information, and self-realization. Mediated communication can be a problem, but it can also offer tools for resistance. It also serves as a litmus test revealing ideologies that our society rests upon. Thus, we should use discussions about the media, and our involvement with different forms of mediated communication, to raise awareness about the way the social system works.
This can be done in media literacy education classrooms, where students learn not only to deconstruct media texts, but also practice reflection and introspection, ultimately engaging in social action with the aim to make the world a better place. There is hope that upon understanding our common implication, we will be able to exercise more empathy towards each other and find ways to collaborate on tackling the system’s flaws together. By combining the individual change based on reflexivity and introspection with structural changes we will get closer to challenging inequalities and injustices that are so abundant in societies of the modern world.
[1] Hobbs, Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Course and Classroom.
[2] Steven Goodman, Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, and Social Change (New York, Teachers College Press, 2003).
[3] Yonty Friesem, “Empathy for the Digital Age: Using Video Production to Enhance Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Skills,” in Emotions, Technology, and Behaviors, ed. Sharon Y. Tettegah and Dorothy L. Espelage (San Diego, Academic Press, 2016), 21-45.
[4] Tracy Marie Scull, Christina V. Malik, & Janis Beth Kupersmidt, “A Media Literacy Education Approach to Teaching Adolescents Comprehensive Sexual Health Education,” Journal of Media Literacy Education 6, no. 1) (2014): 1–14.
[5] Mary Gordon, Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child (New York, The Experiment, 2009).
[6] Friesem, “Empathy for the Digital Age: Using Video Production to Enhance Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Skills.”
[7] “Core Principles of Media Literacy Education,” accessed on April 04, 2017, http://namle.net/publications/core-principles
[8] Goodman, Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, and Social Change
[9] Friesem, “Empathy for the Digital Age: Using Video Production to Enhance Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Skills.”
[10] Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Sexual Culture,” in The Routledge Companion to Media & Gender, ed. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner & Lisa McLaughlin (New York, Routledge, 2015), 589-599.
[11] Ibid, p. 595.
[12] Ibid, p. 596.
[13] Madva, “A Plea for Anti-Anti-Individualism: How Oversimple Psychology Misleads Social Policy.”
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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