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Communication European Journal Of European Journal of Communication http://ejc.sagepub.com/ Arming the citizen-consumer: The invention of 'media literacy' within UK communications policy Richard Wallis and David Buckingham European Journal of Communication published online 10 June 2013 DOI: 10.1177/0267323113483605 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ejc.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/05/25/0267323113483605 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for European Journal of Communication can be found at: Email Alerts: http://ejc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://ejc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav >> OnlineFirst Version of Record - Jun 10, 2013 What is This? Downloaded from ejc.sagepub.com at Bournemouth University on July 1, 2013 EJC0010.1177/0267323113483605European Journal of CommunicationBuckingham 4836052013 Article European Journal of Communication 0(0) 1 –14 Arming the citizen- © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: consumer: The invention of sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0267323113483605 ‘media literacy’ within UK ejc.sagepub.com communications policy Richard Wallis Bournemouth University, UK David Buckingham Loughborough University, UK Abstract This article explores the emergence of the concept of ‘media literacy’ within UK communications policy, focusing particularly on the period leading up to the 2003 Communications Act. While broadly deregulatory in intention, the Act gave the new media regulator, Ofcom, a duty to ‘promote media literacy’. This article explores the origins of this theme, the different discourses and definitions in play, and the roles of the various agents involved. It argues that there were some significant strategic shifts in the debates around media literacy, which reflect broader tensions between neoliberal and social-democratic tendencies within New Labour’s communications policy. The article suggests that this resulted in a lack of clarity about the definition of media literacy, the scope and nature of Ofcom’s role, and the means by which the policy might be implemented – problems that partly account for the subsequent demise (or significant redefinition) of media literacy as a theme within communications policy towards the end of the decade. Keywords Communications policy, education, media literacy, Ofcom, regulation The appearance of the term ‘media literacy’ in the UK’s 2003 Communications Act was surprising, even puzzling, for many in the media education field – and indeed for many beyond it. The term itself had not been in common parlance in the UK prior to this time, although it was more prevalent in North America. Of course, the idea that people should be educated about the media has been around for decades (see Buckingham, 2003), but Corresponding author: David Buckingham, Loughborough University, Ashby Road, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK. Email: [email protected] Downloaded from ejc.sagepub.com at Bournemouth University on July 1, 2013 2 European Journal of Communication 0(0) it has rarely received much sympathetic attention within either educational or communi- cations policy. Yet under New Labour, the concept of media literacy was not simply adopted by policy-makers but also enshrined in law. While the main purpose of the Communications Act was to deregulate the communications industry and to combine five regulators into a single entity, it also required the new regulator, Ofcom, to ‘promote media literacy’. This article explores how this situation came about, the different dis- courses and definitions in play, and the roles of the various agents involved. In so doing, we hope to shed light on the roots of some of the tensions and uncertain- ties that continue to be evident with respect to media literacy almost a decade later, and to extrapolate some more general insights into the processes, complications and often unintended consequences of communications policy-making. As we shall argue, policy- makers’ usage of the concept of media literacy was characterised by a strategic lack of clarity almost from the outset; and while this enabled the concept to perform a variety of functions for a variety of potential stakeholders, it also allowed it to be redefined in ways that significantly reduce its scope and blunt its critical edge. In the closing years of New Labour, and now with the Coalition government, media literacy has fallen from grace as a preferred term within communications policy; and where it is used at all, the ways in which it is defined have become steadily narrower and more instrumental. Yet as we hope to show, the seeds of its demise were already prefigured in its invention and its early development as a policy theme. This analysis has a wider relevance to readers of the journal, as media literacy has become a key dimension of communications policy across a range of European countries – although only in rare instances (such as Hungary) has it become a mandatory aspect of education policy. At the pan-European level, media literacy featured briefly in the European Audiovisual Services Directive (2007); and over the past couple of years, the Commission has been moving steadily towards the formulation of a binding policy. There was an official ‘communication’ on media literacy in late 2007, followed in 2008 by a study of current trends in the field; while a ‘recommendation’ in summer 2009 has led to the funding of further small-scale scoping studies and networking activities. The move from a communication to a recommendation is a sign that progress is being made – and that pressure will eventually be exerted on national governments as well. Nevertheless, fundamental questions remain here too about the definition and the remit of media literacy, which can be traced both to broader political pressures and to strategic or pragmatic choices (for further discussion, see Buckingham, 2010). The key focus of our analysis here, therefore, is on the basic rationale for media lit- eracy as a dimension of communications policy. Why did media literacy appear on the policy agenda at this time? What functions did it perform for different potential stake- holders or interest groups? Why did it take the form that it did? And how can the study of its initial ‘invention’ as a policy theme help us to interpret some of the difficulties and obstacles that its advocates have subsequently encountered? Violence and the Viewer In December 1995, the murder by a teenager of the London headteacher Philip Lawrence reopened familiar debates about the effects of media portrayals of violence. The Downloaded from ejc.sagepub.com at Bournemouth University on July 1, 2013 Wallis and Buckingham 3 government needed to be seen to respond, and so Virginia Bottomley, the Secretary of State for National Heritage, requested that the BBC, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) should work together ‘to help educate viewers about the principles underpinning the BBC-ITC-BSC codes and guidelines and, in particular, policies on scheduling and the watershed, and to explore how broadcasters could improve advance programme information for viewers’ (BBC, 1998: 3). The Joint Working Party that resulted met between April 1997 and April of the following year; and Violence and the Viewer: Report of the Joint Working Party on Violence on Television was finally published in July 1998. If policy officials had been hoping for some quick-fix proposals and undertakings from the broadcasting industry, they may not have been altogether pleased with what came back to them. Whilst the report addresses the various specific areas it had been asked to explore, a significant section (Chapter 5) is devoted to the need for media education – ‘an idea whose time has come’ – for which it recommends a national strategy involving the industry, government, teachers and parents. The recommenda- tion is a surprising one in that it appears to be well beyond the brief given, and places a sizable slice of the responsibility back at the door of government: ‘there is a clear role for government to provide the lead in co-ordinating the proposed strategy with the many different parties involved, as well as ensuring that appropriate curricular initiatives are taken’ (BBC, 1998: 8). More particularly, the recommendation is nota- ble for the following features: first, it specifically adopts the phrase ‘media literacy’ (used three times in Chapter 5); second, the recommended strategy is implicitly cross- departmental, broad and long-term, in seeking to ensure ‘the development of appro- priate critical viewing skills from the earliest possible age’; and third, the strategy being recommended explicitly places an emphasis on the role of schools: ‘teachers at both primary and secondary levels should be involved in the design of the strategy at an early stage’ (BBC, 1998: 8). It is interesting to speculate whether the policy developments that followed might have been very different had the term media literacy not been employed within this report. The reason it was is to some extent fairly arbitrary. Although not a member of the Working Party itself, a major contributor to, and principal drafter of the report (and of Chapter 5 in particular), was the then ITC Head of Educational Broadcasting, Dr Robin Moss. Moss had begun his career as a schoolteacher and worked with colleagues in British universities on early developments in media education, which he said ‘at that time [was] generally regarded as very much an American subject’ (interview Robin Moss, 5 May 2011). However, this attribution of leadership to the US was by no means universally shared, as there was a strong current of thinking that media education in the USA had a great deal to learn from other countries. Indeed, US scholar and leading advocate of media education, Robert Kubey, wrote at the time: ‘The United States finds itself in the ironic position of being the world’s leading exporter of media products while lagging behind every other major English speaking country in the world in the formal delivery of media education in its schools’ (Kubey, 1998: 58).
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