We are happy to participating in a panel discussion entitled "Raising Marginalized Voices via Media literacy: Six Global Case Studies," at the 68th Annual ICA conference to be held in Prague, Czech Republic, May 24-28 2018.
Raising Marginalized Voices via Media literacy: Six Global Case Studies Instructional & Developmental Communication
One of the major aspects of practicing media literacy is the idea that children and youth can learn to take control of their media use and create their own messages (Buckingham, 2003). By doing so, they explore their agency and voice their opinion as well as create a more accurate media representation if their community. Based on critical pedagogies practices (Freire, 1970), media literacy provides a path to gaining literacy skills including self advocacy. And yet, the use of media literacy education with marginalized groups is under researched. Many of the ethnographic studies of media literacy with underprivileged groups showcase best practices, few are describing the challenges and complex context in which it is practiced. If we want marginalized groups to raise their voices and have better media representation, we must better understand the challenges we face as media educators. The panel offers six ethnographic case studies on media literacy in contexts of marginalized populations.
Orgainzer: Dr. Yonty Friesem, Columbia College Chicago
Chair: Renee Hobbs, hobbs@uri.edu, U of Rhode Island
Dr. Markéta Zezulková, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Roma Children’s Media Life and Learning: Voice from Cultural and Children’s Rights Perspective
Although Roma people represent the largest ethnic minority group in Europe, the role of their cultural beliefs, attitudes and behaviours in their media life and learning continues to be considerably under-researched and mostly neglected or misunderstood in education as well as practice. While drawing upon an ethnographic field research conducted with seven Czech Roma families and their preschool children, this contribution will question ‘voice’ from the perspective of cultural and children’s rights. Photographs as well as parents and children’s quotes will be used to illustrate the talk, while provoking a discussion about potential violation of minority children and youth’s cultural rights through one-fits-all approach to media education hoping to empower the child’s voice.
Dr. Yonty Friesem, Columbia College Chicago. Challenging Disability via Media Literacy
GiveMe5 is a youth media organization in the state of Rhode Island that brings teenagers who are interested in filmmaking to learn how to create a short video as a collaborative work. In 2017, the organization added a group of seven adolescents from the RI School of Deaf. This case study describes how the teenagers with hearing disabilities worked together and created an advocacy video that showcase their view on their disability. At the same time, they struggled to create the video and needed constant support from four adults. In one of the focus groups, the youth acknowledge that it was easier for them to be with people that had similar disability and in their own school rather than outside with strangers. The presentation will showcase two videos that they made and some footage from the ethnographic study to portray the challenges and affordances of media production with deaf students.
Dr. Sait Tuzel, Media Education Lab, Turkey  Opportunities and Limitations of Media Literacy Education for Disadvantaged Students in Turkey
Educators have a variety of beliefs and attitudes about the best ways to support students’ critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills by connecting the classroom to contemporary society, mass media and popular culture. There are different levels of availability and use of media, computer-based resources and media production tools by elementary and secondary teachers in Turkey. These beliefs, attitudes, and technological device availability is based on socio-cultural and socio economic contexts. This case study will give a systematic overview between low and high socio-economic school districts' teachers who use media and technology. The analysis is based on data from teacher’s opinion about why use media and technology in their classroom and observation that their classroom performance. The research shows opportunities and limitations of media and digital literacy education for disadvantaged groups in Turkey.
Dr. Sahana Sarkar St. Joseph College Autonomous, Bengaluru, india. Exploring Empowerment and Agency through Participatory Video Making among Sex Workers
Sex Workers from Parbhani & Solapur in the state of Maharashtra, a western region of India were a part of the Participatory Video (PV) making. PV is a participatory media in which a group or community creates their own short film. This is a bottom-up approach where they use video making to explore issues and voice concerns. Participatory video is one of the approaches used to overcome social barriers. In this study, 10 sex workers from Parbhani & Solapur participated in PV. This platform was used to make a small video dealing with issues of AIDS, family, and police brutality. This video was sent as an evidence to the concerned authorities in order to facilitate a dialogue between the sex workers and other stakeholders. PV was used as a medium to explore the building of agency to participants during the process of making the PV and post PV.
Dr. Evanna Ratner Gordon Academic College, Israel Media Literacy Education as a Minority Preservice Teachers
The Arab minority in Israel contain about 20% of the population. At Gordon College of Education, less than 20% of our preservice teachers are Arabs. They study and are expected to teach media literacy in Hebrew, which is not their native language. When Arab students prepare their media literacy units, they avoid political contexts, concerning freedom of speech or uses of social media, because it contains critique of Israeli government or Israeli occupation. Rather, they choose popular culture texts from Lebanese TV or Arab YouTube, or hip-hop clips from Israel. Furthermore, the Arab preservice teachers prefer to focus on gender representation rather than national identity while it challenges the values of their own community. It showcases the confusing experience of Arab minority preservice teachers - from one side they are dominated by their conservative community and on the other side having Israeli-western instructors who expect them to use critical perspective.
Zoey Wang University of Rhode Island/Rhode Island College Addressing Media Representations of Marginalized Migrant Workers in China
As urbanization expands, an increasing population of migrant workers have become a significant group in China’s major metropolitan cities. Meanwhile, the marginalization of migrant workers and their children have brought many issues in the development of China’s economic, society and culture. In recent literatures, attentions have been paid to this group of population addressing multi-dimensional dilemma. Education of migrant workers’ children, for one, entails public policy, legislation, urban-rural disparity, as well as inequality issues within socio-economic transformation in China. Yet, this specific population and its related social and cultural issues are underrepresented in China. Furthermore, coverage and representation of this group can be controversial under the government's regulations and media controls, this session provides a general background of the issues the marginalized migrant workers and their children were facing in terms of education, insights of media representations on this group, and generate a discussion of focal issues.