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20. Implications of Dewey's Pragmatism for Digital LANCE E. MASON 20. IMPLICATIONS OF DEWEY’S PRAGMATISM FOR DIGITAL MEDIA PEDAGOGY INTRODUCTION The push for ubiquitous digital media technologies in K-12 classrooms has continued unabated for the last generation, with tens of billions of dollars spent in each of the last few years (NCES, 2016). The argument is often made that schools must adjust to the pervasive digitalization of culture, with enthusiastic support from the U.S. Department of Education, along with the Gates Foundation and other powerful (and often self-serving) advocates. In the broader society, the social problems associated with a move to a digital society have become daunting. The 2016 U.S. Presidential election victory of Donald Trump, a savvy media user with no political experience and little coherent ideology, demonstrates the power of new media environments to shape opinions and attitudes, and challenges scholars to reconsider how media alter experiential meaning-making in ways that affect the quality and viability of democracy. While it has been argued that media education (sometimes called media literacy) should be connected to democratic education (see Mason, 2012, 2015; Stoddard, 2014), there is no clear or agreed upon approach to addressing challenges such as fake news and citizen apathy in ways that could bolster participatory democracy enough to challenge to reigning forces of neoliberal capitalism, whose proponents envision the market as the measure of all social value. At present, media presents two broad challenges to citizenship and democratic education. First, the expansion of digital mobile devices has brought media-based entertainment into every corner of contemporary culture. The ready availability of entertainment has affected citizens’ political attitudes, how much time and attention is devoted to political matters and has also contributed to diminished time spent with voluntary associations and other community affairs (Putnam, 2001) that have indirect but profound consequences for democracy in an increasingly image- driven culture. New media has also influenced print and television journalism, which increasingly adopt entertainment-centric formats in order to retain readers and viewers. The second challenge presented by media concerns what have been called “filter bubbles” (Parisier, 2012), or the self-selection of politically like-minded citizens into separate enclaves. Social media sites like Facebook allow users to block unwanted information at will. This caters to users’ interests, but also decreases crosscutting © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004405325_020 L. E. MASON political interaction that is essential for challenging one’s assumptions and developing more nuanced understandings regarding issues, politicians, and policies. Research shows that citizens have become more polarized in recent years (Pew, 2014), with filter bubbles in addition to a greater variety of media options, including television news choices that reflect pre-constructed ideologies, and a simultaneous trend of people moving to areas composed of like-minded others (Bishop, 2008) all as contributing factors. The recent concerns regarding “fake news” are at least partially due to citizens’ limited time and interest for scrutinizing media sources, a phenomenon which likely contributes to the proliferation of stereotypes, other forms of misinformation, and to political polarization. Although John Dewey’s (1927/1946) disagreements with the often-acknowledged father of media studies, Walter Lippmann, afford him a secure place in media history, he is rarely included among lists of philosophers who influence media studies or media education. In this chapter, I will argue that Dewey’s pragmatism has much to offer contemporary media education by challenging some of the dominant claims in the field, while helping democratic educators consider how media education can respond to current societal challenges presented by digitally mediated social environments. MEDIA AND AGENCY One way to conceptualize what Dewey can offer media pedagogy is to compare his idea of agency to prevailing conceptions in media literacy. Media researcher David Buckingham (2017) describes agency as involving “factors such as individual choice, autonomy, self-determination, and creativity. It implies activity, but it also implies power – the power to produce an effect, to have influence, to make a difference” (p. 12). In media studies, debates have raged for decades about the extent of agency exercised by individuals in the face of mass media. Positions tend to assume either that media purveyors have nearly total power to impose their ideologies upon hapless, helpless viewers and listeners; or conversely that the same viewers and listeners are readily able to resist or reinterpret messages to suit their own purposes regardless of the intentions of media creators. In recent years, arguments for viewer agency have gained an upper hand among scholars. One influential example is Henry Jenkins’ (2006) notion of participatory culture, which envisions new media as a catalyst for both individual agency and social progress by emphasizing the productive user capacities of new media. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allow users to essentially become their own media outlets. While Jenkins acknowledges the difficulties with online action oriented toward democracy, he argues that such matters will be resolved after our culture has surpassed the “apprenticeship phase” of Internet use, a term he appropriates from French media scholar Pierre Levy. This idea is central to Jenkins’ rationale and is indicative of much of the thinking regarding the possibilities of democracy through digital media: 316.
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