Global Shifts in Media Education: Where are we now?

Conference Description

Since the 1980s, media education has emerged as a complex field of practices that operate across a range of school and non-school settings. The scope of the field has undergone significant change, as multiple and varied new literacies, practices, technologies, sites and institutions have become linked to the project, due in part to shifts in academic paradigms, the emergence of new global actors, and changes to social, cultural, political and economic conditions. In this pre-conference, we assess the field and chart a path for media literacy that supports the development of equity, education, and critical citizenry around the world.

Call for Proposal

Given the epochal changes underway globally, is it time to rethink communication and relocate it, with all of its nuances, within a new understanding of politics and culture that speaks to the times we now live in?

The Global Shifts in Media Education pre-conference will be held in Cartagena, Columbia as part of the Media Education Research Section at IAMCR 2017. The aim of this pre-conference is to take stock of media literacy education in 2017, 35 years after the Grunwald Declaration, at a time when media education has become a global phenomenon. Since Grunwald, media education has emerged as a complex field of practices that operate across a range of school and non-school settings. Over nearly four decades, new concepts and theories have been applied to the field – partially as the result of a radical transformation in media technologies, aesthetic forms, ownership models, and practices of audience participation – but also due to shifts in media education as it has developed as a field and spread around the world.

While debates about the rationale and strategies of media literacy education are fraught, the scope of the field has undergone significant change, as multiple and varied new literacies (i.e., digital literacy, media and informationliteracy, visual literacy, information literacy, transmedia literacy, etc.), practices, technologies and institutions have become linked to the project. These enriched debates are on the one hand the result of shifts in thinking within academic disciplines, especially as media production and consumption have radically changed, and on the other, the result of the emergence of non-traditional and non-Western actors within the field. In this pre-conference, we aim to assess the field 35 years after the Grunwald Declaration and chart a path for media literacy that supports the development of equity, education, and critical citizenry around the world.

Taking stock is both an exploratory exercise and a pedagogical one, particularly for junior colleagues who are still new to media education. The structure of the day will include ample time for listening and sharing. We envision a dynamic pre-conference that collaboratively develops a vision of media education for the contemporary period, one that is historically informed, future oriented, conceptually based and culturally diverse.

Some themes to be explored include:

• What are the distinctions between multi-, digital, new, information and media “literacies”?
• Are there various approaches to digital literacy? How do they intersect with media education?
• What is the role for critical reading, or deconstruction, of media in digital media including video games, popular social media sites, etc.?
• To what degree is the critical evaluation of advertising texts still a key site for media education?
• What is the position of media production in contemporary media education?
• How can we put the “critical” into media production?
• How is digital literacy transforming pedagogy and learning? What, if any, is the role of the “flipped classroom”?
• What is ‘educomunicación’ and how does that Spanish and Latin American tradition differ from and compare with Anglo-American traditions? How can ‘educomunicación’ help to inform Anglo-American traditions of media education?
• What is MIL, what is its role, and how do we build bridges to MIL from work in other traditions?
• Is media education inevitably Eurocentric, north-focused or otherwise myopic?
• What are the particular challenges and opportunities in participating members home countries and regions?

Proposals should be 300-500 words in length and should address pre-conference themes.

All proposals must be sent by e-mail: meriamcr2017@gmail.com before March 15, 2017

Contact

Dr. Michael Hoechsmann. Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada

Telephone: 1-(705)330-4008 x2640

E-mail: meriamcr2017@gmail.com

Organizer

 Media Education Research Section