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CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY IN ACTION: UNITING THEORY, PRACTICE AND POLITICS IN MEDIA EDUCATION by BENJAMIN JOSEPH THEVENIN BA, Brigham Young University, 2006 MA, Florida State University, 2008 A dissertation prepared for: Dr. Stewart Hoover (chair) Dr. Shu-Ling Chen Berggreen Dr. Lynn Schofield Clark Dr. Chad Kautzer Dr. Janice Peck Dr. Pete Simonson Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Journalism and Mass Communication 2012 ! This dissertation entitled: Critical Media Literacy in Action: Uniting Theory, Practice and Politics in Media Education Written by Benjamin Thevenin has been approved by Journalism and Mass Communication Dr. Stewart Hoover Dr. Shu-Ling Berggreen Date __________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. IRB protocol # 11-0691 ! Thevenin, Benjamin Joseph (Ph.D., Communications, Journalism and Mass Communication) Critical Media Literacy in Action: Uniting Theory, Practice and Politics in Media Education Dissertation directed by Professor Stewart Hoover As media literacy is a growing field, there exist a number of distinct approaches to media education with varied political significance. Approaches such as protectionism, media arts education, and critical media literacy draw upon diverse theoretical traditions. Often overlooked in these traditions is the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. By implementing some key theoretical concepts from the work of the Frankfurt School into the design of a media education program, this project intends to test an approach to media literacy education that encourages critical political participation among young people. This program was conducted at an high school in Denver. Students engaged in Youth Participatory Action Research-oriented media education project in which they used media analysis activities to gather information on issues facing their community. They then worked in groups to create alternative media that somehow addressed these issues. The project—including the pedagogical methods and student praxis—were documented using participant observation, in-depth interviews, and journals. These materials were then analyzed to determine the relative effectiveness of the program in encouraging the development of students’ critical consciousness and civic engagement. iii ! To Emily, Damon and Cade for your amazing love and support. ! Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 – Media Literacy and Civic Engagement: The State of the Field…….7 The Protectionist Approach…………………………………………………..11 Media Arts Education………………………………………………………...17 The Media Literacy Movement……………………………………………….22 Critical Media Literacy……………………………………………………….28 Addressing the Civic………………………………………………………….34 Research Questions…………………………………………………………...39 Chapter 2 – Restoring the Political to Media Literacy Education……………….40 Critical (with a Capital ‘C’) Media Literacy………………………………….40 A Preface………………………………………………………...........40 The Dialectic………………………………………………………….44 The Culture Industry………………………………………………….47 Praxis………………………………………………………………….50 The Repoliticization of Media Literacy Education…………………………...53 Plato…………………………………………………………………...53 John Dewey…………………………………………………………...61 Chapter 3 – A Multi-Layered Methodological Approach………………………...67 Conceptual Foundations of Research…………………………………………68 The Experimenting Society…………………………………………...68 Critical Theory………………………………………………………..70 Philosophical Pragmatism…………………………………………….72 Action Research……………………………………………………….73 Practical Methods of Research………………………………………………..75 Evaluative Research…………………………………………………..75 A Multi-Layered Methodological Approach…………………………77 Layer 1 – Methods of Praxis………………………………….77 Layer 2 – Pedagogical Methods………………………………80 Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)……….80 Critical Media Literacy (CML)……………………….83 Layer 3 – Evaluative Methods………………………………..87 Critical Ethnographic Research………………………88 Practical Ethnographic Fieldwork……………………91 v ! Chapter 4 – The ‘Media Literacy and Civic Engagement’ Project: A Description...97 South High School……………………………………………………………….97 Digital Media Club……………………………………………………………..100 ‘Media Literacy and Civic Engagement’ Project: An Introduction…………….102 The Dialectic……………………………………………………………106 The Culture Industry……………………………………………………118 Praxis……………………………………………………………………140 Chapter 5 – The ‘Media Literacy and Civic Engagement’ Project: Findings & Discussion……………………………………………………………………………...156 Layer 1 – Student Praxis……………………………………………………….158 Critical Consciousness…………………………………………………158 Discussion……………………………………………………………...170 Civic Engagement……………………………………………………...180 Discussion………………………………………………………………185 Layer 2 – Pedagogy…………………………………………………………….196 Implications for Theory………………………………………………...196 Implications for Teaching………………………………………………203 Layer 3 – Evaluation……………………………………………………………208 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..212 Appendix A. Promotional Flyer…………………………………………………………...216 B. Weekly Lesson Plans………………………………………………………..217 C. Unity/Uniformity Cheat Sheet………………………………………………237 D. Is vs. Ought Worksheet……………………………………………………..238 E. Pre-Production Worksheet…………………………………………………..239 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...240 vi ! Figures 1. NCLB 2011 Annual Report for SHS – Performance Indicators……………………..111 2. NCLB 2011 Annual Report for SHS – Trends, Needs, Causes……………………...111 3. Is & Ought Diagram………………………………………………………………….131 4. Inception stills………………………………………………………………………..134 5. Particular representations of peace…………………………………………………..135 6. Particular representations of femininity……………………………………………..136 7. Ezana’s image of the ‘school to jail track’…………………………………………..137 8. Abel’s image of the east African drought……………………………………………138 9. Jennifer’s posters…………………………………………………………………….143 10. Stills from students’ restorative justice video……………………………………....147 11. Facebook page for the South chapter of Padres y Jovenes Unidos…………………148 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! vii ! INTRODUCTION INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM – DAY A STUDENT sits at his desk, head down, and intently saws at an action figure’s plastic limbs with a dull pair of scissors—perhaps representative of his own feeling of being tortured by the teacher’s lecture on media effects. This scene introduced my first attempt to address the effectiveness of media literacy education—a short film documenting my experience as an instructor for Brigham Young University’s Hands on a Camera Project. In 2004, as an undergraduate student majoring in Media Arts, I helped develop and implement a media education program in a local alternative high school. The students involved—a group of about fifteen, mostly tenth and eleventh graders who had been unsuccessful, for whatever reason, attending public school—engaged in a number of media analysis activities and then worked in groups to produce short documentary films on aspects of their community. I worked with one group students who chose to focus their lens on the work engaged in by the school’s cafeteria staff, and along the way, I used my own camera to document the students’ (and my own) experience. As the short description of the opening scene from my documentary may suggest, the relative interest and engagement of the students involved in the project varied quite a bit. Many students lost interest before the program’s close and failed to produce a final film, and the group with whom I worked walked a fine line between giving voice to and making fun of the school’s lunch ladies. After the conclusion of the project, I recall sharing my own finished film with an administrator in BYU’s Media Arts department, and his response to my work has stayed with me ever since: ! "! “So, are you saying that this project is working or not?” he asked, somewhat sternly, probably due to his concern that department funds and the time and effort of a number of students and faculty might have been wasted in creating an ineffective project. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I guess I’m trying to say that it’s complicated.” “Hmmph,” he sighed. His apparent dissatisfaction with my response perturbed me. My film was not— and was not intended to be—a ‘puff piece’ promoting the department’s new media education initiative. It was instead my attempt at an earnest cinematic depiction of the messy reality of running a media literacy project in a high school. And in many ways, this dissertation is my re-engagement with this issue—What constitutes effective media literacy education? And then, how can effective media literacy education be implemented and evaluated? Now, it is no wonder that I struggled with these questions in my own scholarship for nearly the last decade. The objectives, pedagogical methods and effects of media education have been the subject of a discourse engaged in by scholars and educators that long predates my own interest and involvement in media literacy education. As Chapter 1 illustrates, within the field of media education there exists a number of competing approaches drawing upon theoretical traditions as varied as Greek philosophy or Marxist political economy. However, there is a perspective gradually emerging from the mix of voices that constitute the field that now is a critical moment in the evolution of media education. Scholars Gianna Capello, Damiano Felini and Renee Hobbs describe this
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