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187
Understanding the media environment not only means having experience
with various tools and spaces; it also means sifting through a wealth of discourses
about the spaces themselves and about the young people who use them. For example
discourses that construct digital media production as leisure or play, or discourses
that place informal and formal learning in opposition to one another influence may
influence teachers’ perceptions of the place of media production in the classroom.
Further, as Sonia Livingstone has indicated, it may not be a feature of young people
that makes it seem that they do not need to be taught how to use media and
technology, but rather a characteristic of adults:
Indeed, the very difficulty of accessing and using the internet beguiles many
adults into believing that if only they could master “clicking” on links with
the mouse, then they—like their children—would be internet “experts.” This
is not a belief that we hold for the pen, else we’d stop teaching pupils English
once they had learned to read and write, but the child who “whizzes” around
the screen seems so skilled that, we conclude comfortably, they know all they
need to know already.4
However, as Livingstone notes and as my research in the CMS classrooms
demonstrate, there are a number of ways in which students may benefit from
instruction in media and technology use.
Len Masterman has highlighted “non-hierarchical teaching” as a key
component of teaching with and about media. He writes:
The nature of the media themselves encourage non-hierarchical teaching
modes. Not only, at their best, do they spread information and knowledge
laterally, speaking across rather than down to their audiences. They also
generally speak with the same voice to an audience divided by class, race,
gender and so on. In media lessons, teacher and students alike are equally and
equal objects of address. Breaking with this equality by establishing a more
hierarchical mode can have unfortunate consequences. It is likely to be seen
by students (though it would never be expressed in these terms) as a form of
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 192 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 187 Understanding the media environment not only means having experience with various tools and spaces; it also means sifting through a wealth of discourses about the spaces themselves and about the young people who use them. For example discourses that construct digital media production as leisure or play, or discourses that place informal and formal learning in opposition to one another influence may influence teachers’ perceptions of the place of media production in the classroom. Further, as Sonia Livingstone has indicated, it may not be a feature of young people that makes it seem that they do not need to be taught how to use media and technology, but rather a characteristic of adults: Indeed, the very difficulty of accessing and using the internet beguiles many adults into believing that if only they could master “clicking” on links with the mouse, then they—like their children—would be internet “experts.” This is not a belief that we hold for the pen, else we’d stop teaching pupils English once they had learned to read and write, but the child who “whizzes” around the screen seems so skilled that, we conclude comfortably, they know all they need to know already.4 However, as Livingstone notes and as my research in the CMS classrooms demonstrate, there are a number of ways in which students may benefit from instruction in media and technology use. Len Masterman has highlighted “non-hierarchical teaching” as a key component of teaching with and about media. He writes: The nature of the media themselves encourage non-hierarchical teaching modes. Not only, at their best, do they spread information and knowledge laterally, speaking across rather than down to their audiences. They also generally speak with the same voice to an audience divided by class, race, gender and so on. In media lessons, teacher and students alike are equally and equal objects of address. Breaking with this equality by establishing a more hierarchical mode can have unfortunate consequences. It is likely to be seen by students (though it would never be expressed in these terms) as a form of |
