5. Where Do We Stand?
“It takes a village,” so the saying goes, to support any meaningful change in the world. Frequently, individuals are elevated through media as catalysts for change (see Greta Thunberg). While individual narratives matter, we believe that it’s the collective power of the community that’s most important for media literacy practices to thrive.
So far in this guide, we’ve moved from thinking about our personal relationship to media and types of caring, to how to use media to imagine better futures, and connect communities. In this final portion of the guide, we ask “where do we stand” in support of the collective capacities we need to engage in the practical work of media literacy.
Harry Boyte, who writes about public engagement in democracy, writes that we need to reinvigorate civic education and engagement norms for our students:
"We live in a hyper-regulated world that constrains agency on every side, a world of hidden manipulations, standardized programs, mass mobilizations, and bureaucratic interventions. In a memorable turn of phrase, the South African writer Xolela Mangcu has termed the invisible virus spreading through modern societies that erodes agency ' technocratic creep.' Given this erosion, it is no wonder that our students feel powerless about changing institutions that seem to have a life of their own, even if institutional pathologies insult their basic values and standards."
How can media literacy push back against technocratic creep? We believe media literacy practices must enable the collective capacity of people to act together towards more equitable and just democratic futures.
This isn’t a perfect science, but it’s vital to media literacy’s connection to stronger democracy and civil society norms.
Questions to Consider For Enabling Media Literacy Practice:
How can we use media to take action?
How can we use media to identify problems and also proposed solutions?
Consider the specific ways in which your communities use media. For example, what kinds of media technologies are most prevalent? What language, symbols and social platforms are most used to express opinions and ideas?
Exploring Enabling Media Environments - Three Approaches
1. Enabling Environments
Harry Boyte writes that we need collective agency to cultivate enabling environments where people can come together, across differences, to work together to act on common challenges.
For this activity, sketch out what types of media skills are needed to build “enabling media environments” for collective public action.
Think about both individual and collective skills; by this, we mean think not only about what individuals might use but ways communities use media. The skills you come up with could be in the context of media use or ways to meaningfully identify problems, engage with others, and build spaces for open dialog across differences.
Create a visual chart of these skills, share them together, and then discuss how you can work with these skills to create an “enabling media environment” to address problems in your community.
2. The Capacity To Act
Public action taking is not only about how to take action, but who to take action with, and in what ways. Capacity is about the ability and efficacy to act. Media are conduits within which we can act together.
Building on our enabling environments activity above, for this activity learners will create user personas of the types of media literate action takers in the world, focusing on what resources they have, what capacities they have, and what skills they have. User personas are fictional biographies for people that represent the type of ideal character, in this case, a super media literate action taker!
Create two to three different personas, to help form a super team of media literate action takers. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your personas. Think about:
- What might their average day look like?
- Where do they encounter media messages most?
- How do they use media and who do they engage with?
C. From The Margins To The Middle
Lastly, Where We Stand is about [everybody] standing together. Even with the best of intentions we can leave individuals out who have challenges or identities we don’t often think about when we imagine our own community. Take a moment to look over the previous activities - your sketch of skills and your civic actor personas. Who do you see when you think of a skilled media user? Did you think of everyone in your community?
For this activity, we’re going to focus on including all voices in our enabling media environments. To do this you will create a mood board. Mood boards help visualize ideas and make connections across community spaces before you begin to organize others. To start, gather images, words, and ideas related to your community. Create a collage that reflects the spaces where you are taking action. Include the things many people have in common, but also some key differences. If it helps, begin to draw lines, use string to make connections, or develop other ways to visualize connections between individuals in your community.
Once you’ve created your mood board, revisit it with the other activities in mind. Begin to make connections across the different parts of your community. How can you bring in more voices? How can you include everyone you hope to reach? How are some still possibly being left out?
*MODIFICATION: This activity also works well for groups. Bring a group together to create a mood board. What kind of connections can be made when several people are using the board to develop a picture of the community?
Enabling Agency in Your Media Literacy Learning Environment [Template]
IT'S YOUR TURN!
Using the template here, create your own media literacy learning experiences around the following learning goals:
- How can enabling media environments support the capacity to act?
- How can enabling media approaches bring communities together?
- How can enabling media environments create positive community impact?
Template for Your Where We Stand Workshop
Time Needed:
Materials Needed:
Part One: Introducing Where We Stand Exercise
Part Two: Core Activities [use from above or create your own!]
Part Three: Debrief [what questions do you want your learners to reflect on after this experience]
Part Four: Educator Reflection