Liquid subjects: news media and public political pedagogy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between news media and political education within consumer society. We argue that political education today needs to be understood as part of consumerism and media culture, in which individuals selectively expose themselves to and scrutinize various media representations not only of political issues, but also of political subjectivity and action. Individuals learn about how they might become political and act politically through their engagements with the news, in the context of the characteristics of liquid modernity, namely consumer culture, individualization, and choice. When examined through a lens of public pedagogy, political education becomes intertwined with consumer culture and the role of media in the education and socialization of political subjectivity. In this paper, we look at one example of the relationship between news and the education of political subjectivity by drawing from a larger research study, which examined the role of mainstream and alternative media in citizens’ political mobilization on climate change. We argue that news consumption is part of a public political pedagogy through which individuals negotiate becoming liquid subjects, that is, citizens who take a critical, monitorial, and individualistic consumer approach to becoming political and taking part in social change.

Keywords:

• cultural and media studies
• political education
• poststructural/postmodern/critical theory
• public pedagogy
• subjectivity
• Zygmunt Bauman

Notes

1. We use the term ‘news reading’ broadly to include also the viewing and interpretation of images that accompany a news article.

2. There are, of course, no fixed criteria to determine what counts as an issue of public concern. We use this phrase here to indicate issues that exceed the private interests of an individual person.

Additional information

Funding

The research study on which our article builds was designed and conducted by Kathleen Cross, Shane Gunster, Shannon Daub and Robert Hackett as part of the Climate Justice Project. The CJP was a 6-year research alliance led by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the University of British Columbia, and was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Additional financial assistance was provided by the Dean of Graduate Studies at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. Marcelina Piotrowski was a graduate student research assistant working on the study. The study’s primary findings were published as: Cross, K., Gunster, S., Piotrowski, M., & Daub, S. (2015). News media and climate politics: Civic engagement and political efficacy in a climate of reluctant cynicism. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/27lnBgUle1LMSA” \t “_blank” https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/news-media-and-climate-politics

Notes on contributors

Marcelina Piotrowski

Marcelina Piotrowski is a PhD candidate in Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education at the University of British Columbia. Her research area is in political education, subjectivity, critical media and cultural studies, and post-qualitative methodologies. Her current research examines how adults’ political education and subjectification operates within the mediated conditions of the environmental movement. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy and the Canadian Journal of Communication.

Claudia Ruitenberg

Claudia Ruitenberg is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Unlocking the World: Education in an Ethic of Hospitality (Paradigm, 2015), editor of Philosophy of Education 2012 (Philosophy of Education Society, 2012) and What Do Philosophers of Education Do? (And How Do They Do It?) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and co-editor (with D. C. Phillips) of Education, Culture and Epistemological Diversity: Mapping a Disputed Terrain (Springer, 2012). Her research interests include political education, ethics, discursive performativity, art education, translation, and epistemological diversity in research. Her work has appeared in (i.a.) the Journal of Philosophy of Education, Studies in Philosophy and Education, and Educational Philosophy and Theory.