Media Moment

So I shared an interesting media text today in class. Rick Genest is a model from Montreal who was discovered by Lady Gaga’s Creative Director less than a year ago. He’s spent over 17,ooo over the years to cover himself in tattoos. My reasons for sharing this commercial spot are rooted in one of the first things we discussed in media lit: Everything is a media text.

If decisions have been made to construct an image, a song, a film or a body covered in ink (!), then we can safely say that it’s a media text. Whatever it is has a message attached to it. It contains the producer’s values, beliefs, biases, etc.

So here are questions to you:

1)  What do you think Rick’s living, breathing media text says about him? How do his choices in body art reflect his values, beliefs, etc? (You may have to do some research). Stated another way, what message(s) is Rick Genest communicating to the world via his tattoos?

2) Do you agree with the messages, values, beliefs that underlie Rick’s choices? How are your views similar? How do they differ from his?

3) How do you feel personally about tattoos? Do you think a person should be allowed or even encouraged to mark their bodies with permanent ink? Why or why not?

1. Why would a corporation like Coca-Cola want to develop such a wide variety of products and brands?

2. Do you see any benefit to having similar products (but many different brands) under one corporate umbrella?

3. Why isn’t a brand’s corporate identity always clearly stated? Does a corporation have anything to gain by being a “silent/invisible parent”?

#1. List 3 advantages (for the sender) of one-way communication, especially as they relate to mass media.

#2. List 3 disadvantages (for the receiver) of one-way communication.

#3. Are there any advantages for the receiver in one-way communication?

#4. Are there any disadvantages for the sender in one-way communication?

#5. When do media claim to offer two-way communication yet only offer a few more one-way options?

#6. Are letters to the editor in a newspaper two-way communication if the paper edits the letters and chooses which letters to publish?

#7. Are talk shows two-way if phone calls are screened (meaning someone is deciding which calls to send through to the host)?

When you evaluate a media text, you are using reading and thinking strategies to understand the messages. Some messages are very obvious (in your face!). These are what we call explicit messages.

Some messages are less obvious because the producers of the media text have provided only clues…

Take a second (or third or fourth…) look at the media text we viewed in class. It’s a poster produced jointly by the government of British Columbia, the Lung Association and the Ministry of Health.

Please respond to these questions below:

1. What are the explicit messages contained in this media text?

2. What are the implicit messages contained in this media text?

3. What questions did you ask yourself as you viewed this poster?

4. In your opinion, how effective were the producers in communicating their message?

My media AQ inquiry began before Christmas 2010.  With a few weeks until the holiday break, I was asked by one of my school’s Chairs to do an in-service for the teachers who make up the Language Arts PLC (professional learning circle).  One of the challenges of presenting to a group is getting a sense of who they are as media educators (teaching approach, ideologies, beliefs) and where they are in terms of their comfort level with the Media Literacy expectations.  I had none of this information going into my lesson, and Ididn’t want to make too many assumptions.  So I used a simple introductory activity that served as a diagnostic of sorts.

The diagnostic activity (which I was introduced to during media Part 1) prompted the 7 or 8 teachers in attendance to label a variety of forms as either “media text” or “non-media text”.  The list included items such as, graffiti, art in a gallery, an empty notebook, unviewed surveillance camera footage, and surveillance camera footage uploaded to Youtube.  This brief activity lead to some rich discussion among all the teachers about what constitutes a media text.  It became clear to me through this dialogue that several of my colleagues were comfortable with the language of media literacy and had a good understanding of the breadth and reach of media texts in today’s society.  Those who were perhaps a little less informed, were comfortable sharing what for several teachers was not a revelation: that “pretty much everything is a media text”.

The rest of the time with my colleagues was spent introducing the media triangle and providing pairs the opportunity to deconstruct the ‘gendered’ media texts I had provided.  I was very pleased with the level of participation and ensuing dialogue.  Finally, I shared some of the resources, such as Scanning Television, long with a brief lesson outline. My hope was that having a few introductory lessons would provide my colleagues with a solid basis on which to build rich media literacy programs.

This tension is most evident in the classroom when you see a student’s response to a popular media text that has been been dragged through the mud.  Kids will sometimes give you that, “You’ve ruined it for me” face when presented with the reality of the trickery used to create so much of the media they consume.  As a teacher I know that I’m doing my students a service by helping them develop a critical eye, but I also know that I  (as a consumer, patron, target audience member, etc.) have developed the ability to turn down the volume on the critical voice, especially when I’m choosing to enjoy a guilty pleasure like American Idol, for example.  Don’t get me wrong, the inner critic is always there, but I’ve acquired a degree of control over the voice that allows me to reduce it to a faint whisper when I so desire.  I don’t know how or exactly when I learned to manipulate the inner critic.  No one ever explicitly taught this skill to me.  I don’t know if it’s something one can teach…

I think that at the end of the day, I just recognize that the cost of not developing a critical eye in my students is way too dear.  If my students can’t bear to watch another episode of Jersey Shore because of something we’ve uncovered through media education, I will somehow feel as though I’ve made the world a slightly better (read: “blissfully critical”) place.

Is that wrong?

Something, I didn’t get the chance to say during our talk last week, is that the rationale for locating media literacy is something we should always keep in mind. Buckingham warns (perhaps too strong a word) that the “aims and methods of media education” depend on “pragmatic considerations of educational policy”.  If media education is not strategically located within the curriculum, the very purpose of media education may suffer. So where within the curriculum does media education fit in? The short answer: EVERYWHERE.  Yet, this is what makes it such a unique (and at times targeted) area of study. Unlike mathematics, the applied sciences, or English, media education is still seen as a “new” curriculum area. As such it does not enjoy the protection these other subjects seem to have when academic types start to talk about reform or budget cuts.  Traditional subjects along with their traditional methodologies and firm footholds in academia, rarely come under scrutiny for the reasons media education has in the past.  Buckingham goes into some detail about the perils and pitfalls media education has seen over the past 50 years.  By the end of the chapter it seems clear that an integrated approach to media education provides the most appropriate teaching opportunities; enabling teacher to impart hard skills as well as critical literacy skills to their students.

To be continued…

So you have this really interesting Valentines Day media text! 

Please record your half-page analysis below.

Be sure to answer some of the Media Triangle questions in your analysis.

I attende d a Social Media Week event at The Spoke Club tonight. A friend of mine, photographer Nathaniel Anderson, made arrangements at my suggestion that it would be a timely and exciting talk.  I had picked up a calender of Spoke Club events following a meeting Nathaniel and I had had two weeks ago. Bob Logan’s “Understanding New Media: Extending Marshall McLuhan” had jumped from the February grid – this in my mind was a ‘can’t-miss event’.  Bob Logan was a complete flop.  This Professor Emeritus of Physics (U of T) and Chief Scientist of  OCAD’s  Strategic Innovation Lab was dry textbook verbiage personified. In between shameless plugs for his book, he shared sketchy anecdotes of the years he collaborated with the Marshall McLuhan on papers and such.  The audience, comprised of students, Spoke Club members, invited guests, as well as McLuhan’s grandsons Andrew and Arthur, shared polite smiles and chuckles as Logan insisted on telling media-related jokes like this: “I am a McLuhan medium.  I speak with him everyday”.

It didn’t take very long for me, Nathaniel and our mutual friend Mark Stoddart (who had also decided to join us for the McLuhan event) to make our way upstairs to a lounge area.  This is where the fun really began.  Mark Stoddart is a painter, graphic designer and all-round renaissance man.  He happened to have with him a dvd presentation he had told me about a few weeks ago; a media literacy presentation for middle school students. During previous discussions with Mark, I learned that he had developed a talk around historic and contemporary symbols as well brand identities.  As Mark walked Nathaniel and I through his presentation, I took notes and gazed, awestruck at some of the images and sophisticated concepts he’d managed to incorporate into his slideshow; everything from ancient African symbols of royalty to Pepsi’s slightly altered 2008 logo meant to resemble Obama’s campaign logo.  Mark’s premise is that we all have a story (see above quote): Fortune 500 companies have a story, car manufacturers have  story, politicians, musicians, and graphic artists have stories and Mark sets out to tell his story using the images he’s found, co-opted and created over the years.

I don’t have the time or the permission to go into greater detail, but I can assure readers (particularly fellow teachers) that this presentation when refined and aligned with Ministry expectations will hold such relevance and meaning for our students who are not always equipped to uncover the stories behind the many complex media texts they encounter.

LT