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58
the mall food court, where they were faced with limited options, made their choices
based on their own personal tastes, and spent a lot of time just hanging out.
The first part of each student’s documentary was a slide show consisting of
images taken from various Internet sites and text slides with blocks of text
communicating the student’s argument about junk food. When we began the internet
research portion of the project, it became very apparent that the physical access
students had in the classroom was not enough to compensate for their lack
experience doing research and critically evaluating information they find online.
Students searched to find pictures of obese people that emphasized the health
impacts of obesity and frequently shared the ones they found the most grotesque with
the rest of the class. Similarly, they searched for images of healthier foods and
happy, thin people eating healthy foods to provide a visual counterpoint. Although
most students had an idea of what they wanted in terms of images, many struggled
with thinking of and spelling the correct keywords to pull up the images. For
example, one student I assisted with the research started her image search with the
phrase “fat lady eating a greasy hamburger.” Although this phrase accurately
described the image she wished to find, the search produced few usable results. I
tried to explain to the student that using a specific and carefully chosen keyword
would likely yield better search results than the phrase she had used. She listed
keywords that she thought might work: “hamburger,” “fast food,” and “obese
woman.” When we tried the first two keywords, we waded through images from
corporate websites (which, obviously were not a “fat lady eating a greasy
Object Description
| Title | Kids as cultural producers: consumption, literacy, and participation |
| Author | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Author email | rherr@usc.edu; bhs@hri.uci.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Communication |
| School | Annenberg School for Communication |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-25 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-17 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Banet-Weiser, Sarah |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gross, Larry Seiter, Ellen |
| Abstract | This dissertation looks closely at the practice of digital media production within a group of special education students and their teachers. Using ethnographic methods of extended participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and parents, along with textual analysis of students' media projects, this work examines the types of learning that emerge from making media at school and the ways in which that learning relates to media and technology use in everyday life. Over the course of one school year (2005-2006), the students who are the focus of this dissertation undertook eight different multimedia production projects, ranging from designing PowerPoint presentations to digital video production and stop-motion animation. Through media production, the students found opportunities to practice traditional and digital literacy skills as well as to explore issues of identity and self-expression.; This dissertation provides empirical support for recommendations made by several media literacy scholars to include media production as part of critical media literacy curricula and contributes a unique case study -- one situated in special education -- to a growing body of work on digital literacy. Three interdisciplinary themes--consumption, literacy, and participation -- are used to organize the description and analysis of the students' media production activities. These themes connect the specific production that took place in the classroom to larger discourses about youth, media, technology, education, and access, working to complicate existing constructions of young people as either helpless victims of manipulative media or naturally savvy media and technology users. Instead, this research emphasizes that the relationships kids have with media and technology are complex, dynamic, intrinsically linked to their identities as consumers and participants in society. Media literacy is thus theorized as a tool for understanding and controlling consumption, participation, and the construction of young people as both current and future citizens. |
| Keyword | media literacy; media production; special education; middle school; digital media |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Los Angeles |
| Coverage date | 2005/2006 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1674 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Stephenson-2393 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Stephenson-2393.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 63 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 58 the mall food court, where they were faced with limited options, made their choices based on their own personal tastes, and spent a lot of time just hanging out. The first part of each student’s documentary was a slide show consisting of images taken from various Internet sites and text slides with blocks of text communicating the student’s argument about junk food. When we began the internet research portion of the project, it became very apparent that the physical access students had in the classroom was not enough to compensate for their lack experience doing research and critically evaluating information they find online. Students searched to find pictures of obese people that emphasized the health impacts of obesity and frequently shared the ones they found the most grotesque with the rest of the class. Similarly, they searched for images of healthier foods and happy, thin people eating healthy foods to provide a visual counterpoint. Although most students had an idea of what they wanted in terms of images, many struggled with thinking of and spelling the correct keywords to pull up the images. For example, one student I assisted with the research started her image search with the phrase “fat lady eating a greasy hamburger.” Although this phrase accurately described the image she wished to find, the search produced few usable results. I tried to explain to the student that using a specific and carefully chosen keyword would likely yield better search results than the phrase she had used. She listed keywords that she thought might work: “hamburger,” “fast food,” and “obese woman.” When we tried the first two keywords, we waded through images from corporate websites (which, obviously were not a “fat lady eating a greasy |
