Critical social literacy: Media engagement as an exercise of power

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Notes

1 This claim does not overlook non-profit organizations like MediaSmarts or professional associations, such as Canadian Media Educators (CME) in Canada and the National Association of Media Literacy Educators (NAMLE) in the USA which launched the Journal of Media Literacy Education in 2009.

2 Included in these participants were four graduate research assistants who worked with the authors as well as the teachers. These assistants were: Amy Clausen, Paulina Semenec, LJ Slovin and Zavi Swain. We are indebted to their hard work.

3 The four cases employed board games (for Grade 4/5), film (for Grade 6/7), music videos (for a Grade 11/12 Marketing class), and advertisements (with teenager girls in an out-of-school setting); Disney media, which we discuss below, were not employed in Pop Culture and Power.

4 “Critical” is widely accepted as an overarching educational goal as well as a goal for media literacy. In general, “critical thinking” refers to analysis and evaluation of knowledge claims in order to make reasoned judgments about their veracity. Emphasis is given to logic and evidence applied in an objective manner (see Hitchcock, 2018). In contrast, when teaching for social justice, “criticality” attends to power relations that enable specific claims to be made, in order to assess whether knowledge claims work to reconstitute—or to challenge—existing social inequities (see Kellner & Share, 2009). Our notion of “critical” media literacy implies a necessary connection between critical judgment and practices that work toward a more equitable future.

5 In more recent years, scholars use digital remix as a metaphor for new literacy. Gainer and Lapp (2010) draw an explicit link between remix and redesign: “Much like the New London Group’s concept of literacy as redesign, literacy as remix positions readers as active meaning-makers who blend understandings based in prior knowledge and experience with new information as they construct new understandings from textual transactions” (p. 58).

6 Buckingham (2008) finds “fundamental continuities and interdependencies between new media and ‘old’ media (such as television)—continuities that exist at the level of form and content, as well as in terms of economics” (p. 14). In essence, while engagement with “old” and “new” media differs dramatically in practice, he argues that because new media build on established tropes of old media, distinguishing between the two does not make analytical sense. We share this sentiment.

7 This study included 316 U.S. public educational institutions that provide teacher training and graduate studies.

8 The province of Ontario introduced the first media literacy program in North America (see Rennie, 2015).

9 Writing this paper during the COVID pandemic, and observing political debate among especially U.S. politicians about the virus’s origins and impact, we emphasize that, of course, content matters.

10 To our knowledge, Davies first used the term critical social literacy in 1997. Across several classroom projects, she encouraged young students to question the constructed nature of gender. Her pedagogical goal was in keeping with the idea of youth as redesigning their futures; she wanted them to open new possibilities for the way they thought about, hence enacted, their social identities (see Davies, 1993). Her strategy was to give students the ability to catch “language in the act of formation” of their identities in order to critically renegotiate their language use once aware of its social effects (1997, p. 29). “With critical social literacy oneself becomes a shifting, multiple text to be read. The construction of that self through discourse, through positioning within particular contexts and moments and through relations of power, is both recognised and made revisable. Critical social literacy involves the development of a playful ability to move between and amongst discourses, to move in and out of them, to mix them, to break their spell when necessary. It involves the capacity reflexively to critique text and context and to act on that reflection” (p. 29, italics in original).

11 We have in mind approaches based on the political economy of media production. While we consider political economy a useful “tool” for media analysis (discussed later in this paper), it is often not connected to actual specific media content.

12 For further examples see Williamson (1978).

13 For extended discussions of ideology critique see Kellner (1995/2011) and Kellner and Share (2019). For discussion of the challenges encountered in our study see Currie and Kelly (2021) and Kelly and Currie (2020).

14 In Currie and Kelly (2021) we point out that some power-over relationships can be authoritative and legitimate (e.g., those of parenting), assuming they do not involve abuse (see Lukes, 2005). The relationship between teachers and their students is another example; if teachers conflate their power-over students with domination, teachable moments can be lost.

15 For an example of how this complication played out in our study, see Kelly and Currie (2020).

16 Our list of tools is suggestive, not exhaustive.

17 In Currie and Kelly (2021) we explore how CSL promotes ethical principles of student redesign supporting social justice.

18 Bryman (1999) introduced the term “Disneyization” to describe a process by which the principles of Disney theme parks (not included in our discussion) dominate more and more sectors of society through theming, differentiation of consumption, merchandising, and emotional labor.

19 Sandlin and Garlen (2017) discuss how Disney media has been variously used in classrooms “as a tool for instructional engagement, as a source for multicultural education, and as a medium for critical literacy” (p. 192).

20 Our focus on Disney culture and marketing practices does not include Mickey Mouse Clubs and Disney Theme Parks, two topics that also invite critical analysis. We have limited our discussion to media accessible to most students, especially Canadian students.

21 Doherty (2006) provides an accessible overview of Disney Studies.

22 As noted by Sunder (2019), everyday redesign by youth—an activity frequently employed when teaching CML—can be subject to “cease and desist” action by media corporation lawyers. The Recording Industry Association of America, in particular, has been on the front lines of the fight against copyright infringement, which the industry calls “piracy.”

23 Also see McKinley’s (1978) retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In her version, Beauty is an intelligent young woman with unfeminine aspirations to attend university. By her own admission, Beauty is not beautiful, nor is she conventionally “feminine.”

24 Hulu is owned by Disney, which also owns ABC Family, which produced Pretty Little Liars.

25 A useful teaching resource is Woolley and Airton (2020), Teaching about gender diversity: Teacher-tested lesson plans for K-12 classrooms.

26 Mollet (2019, p. 223) also discusses Disney’s Silly Symphony, The Three Little Pigs, released in 1933, as promising success and better times to hardworking and honest Americans.

27 Of course, teachers maintain their authority to “guide” students; as Alvermann et al. (1999, p. 35) argue, it is not the case that “anything goes” (see also Rymes, 2011).

28 While Disney is typically thought of as “children’s media,” through their network of holdings Disney also produces adult entertainment, such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, which cannot be described as “children’s” entertainment.

29 The sale of Disney Princess items was initiated in the mid-1990s. It is reported to be a huge success: while the sale of Disney Consumer Products was 300 million dollars in 2001, by 2006 it had climbed to 3 billion dollars (https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Princess).

30 For descriptions of practices that produce Disneyland theme park experiences, see Wallace (1985), Bryman (1999), Villmoare and Stillman (2002), and Knight (2014). Sanders (2018) describes the fight for a living wage among Disneyland workers in the USA.

31 Students could explore how the Canadian government has responded to media stereotyping in the past, and compare to current standards as a context to discussing the regulation of contemporary media. How effective has government regulation been? Why? Sources include documents from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC): 1982. Images of women: Report on the Task Force on Sex-Roles Stereotyping in the Broadcast Media; 1985. The portrayal of sex roles in programming and advertising in Canadian television and radio: Summary report; 2008. Broadcasting Public Notice 2008–2023; 2021. Ad Standards: Gender Portrayal Guidelines. These documents can be downloaded from Government of Canada websites.

32 In comparing recent Disney films to older productions, Purtill (2016) reports research showing that “female characters speak 50–70% of the lines in the vintage movies Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

33 See the 2019 Special Issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, Volume 41, Issues 4–5.

34 As theorized by Marx, the products of human labor can have practical value to users (what he called “use-value”), as well as economic value realized through exchange (in which case, products become “commodities”). We use the term commercial culture to refer to media produced through economic relations for purposes of its exchange-value, the income it can generate for those owning and controlling the means of its production. This value can only be realized, of course, because commercial culture has use-value for its audiences. Commercial media entertain and inform us, for example, but we also use the categories and meanings of commercial culture to make our own meaning.

35 This problem is only partially addressed by treating media as “discourse” (see Currie & Kelly, 2021, on Smith’s notion of “textually-mediated discourse”). While we have been inspired by much critical discourse analysis, we worry about the analytical disappearance of power fostered by some approaches to literacy based on poststructuralist discourse analysis (see Luke, 2013; Morley, 2009, 2017; Fraser, 2014; Fleetwood, 2005). Moreover, we agree with Ross (2018, p. 381), who quotes Carl Boggs (1997): “a postmodern fascination with indeterminacy, ambiguity, and chaos easily supports a drift toward cynicism and passivity; the subject becomes powerless to change either itself or society” (p. 767). For alternative views on the political efficacy of Foucault’s work, see Heller (1996), Al-Amoudi (2007), and Allen (2002). In a feminist reading, Amy Allen (2002) argues: “And although I would agree that the account of subjectivity and agency that Foucault offers is not fully adequate (for reasons I shall discuss below), I would nonetheless insist that the claim that Foucault embraces the death of the subject and a denial of agency is incorrect and based on an over-reaction to things he actually said” (p. 136).

36 Schafer (2011) identifies four misunderstandings. Two not mentioned in this paper are thinking that progress is inherent to user participation and assuming that [media] participation is community-based and primarily intrinsically motivated (p. 45).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 410-2010-0052).

Notes on contributors

Dawn H. Currie

Dawn H. Currie is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She is also past Chair of the Undergraduate Program in Women’s Studies and past Graduate Advisor for the Center for Research in Women and Gender Studies. In her department of sociology, she taught qualitative research methods and feminist theorizing, as well as International Service Learning. Her interest in media studies/literacy for youth reflects her ongoing research on girls’ engagement with popular culture (Girl Talk, 1999; “Girl Power,” 2009 with Deirdre Kelly and Shauna Pomerantz; Pop Culture and Power: Teaching Media Literacy for Social Justice, Forthcoming, also with Deirdre Kelly).

Deirdre M. Kelly

Deirdre M. Kelly is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Last Chance High: How Girls and Boys Drop In and Out of Alternative Schools and Pregnant with Meaning: Teen Mothers and the Politics of Inclusive Schooling and coauthor of “Girl Power”: Girls Reinventing Girlhood. Kelly’s research interests include teaching for social justice and democracy, gender and youth studies, critical media literacy, and news and entertainment media as public policy pedagogy. Her work has appeared in journals, such as Teachers College Record, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Girlhood Studies, and Equity & Excellence in Education.