Critical media analysis (chapter 6 activities)


 The importance of critical media literacy. UCLA

 

Schools Must Include Digital Literacy in their Syllabi to Tackle the Menace of Fake News

Biased News Media or Biased Readers? An Experiment on Trust. The New York Times

 

Making Curriculum Pop: Critical media literacy resources

 

Richard Beach: Languaging and Gender Relations as Portrayed in Battle of the Sexes

 

Mind Over Media: Analyzing Contemporary Propaganda

 

Kapwing: Create videos

 

All Sides: Critical Media Analysis toolkit

 

News Literacy Project

 

These Students Are Learning About Fake News and How to Spot It: Application of The News Literacy Project. The New York Times

 

 

        ANALYZE MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS

 

Select a certain phenomena or type as portrayed in the media: teachers, men, women, nature, “the city,” the elderly, crime, adolescents, “vacations,” schools, love, religion, sex, sports, etc., and describe how that phenomena is portrayed in some television shows, films, magazines, or newspapers. Describe the value assumptions underlying these portrayals. 

 

Then, working in small groups, select a specific phenomena or topic, for example, “suburban life,” “Whiteness,” “masculinity,” “exotic travel destinations,” and tear out magazine ads from magazines representing these phenomena or topic and attach them to poster boards for display to the class.

 

APPLY A FEMINIST LENS TO MEDIA TEXTS

 

Students could apply a feminist lens to examine discourses of romance/beauty in magazines for adolescent females on creating and establishing heterosexual relationships through fashions, cosmetics, flirtation, tips for attracting males, romance, marriage, etc. as well analysis of representations of masculinity in the media in terms of physical aggression, toughness, competitiveness, and domination as portrayed in ads and stories, for example, as explored in the video, Tough Guise

 

 

APPLY A MARXIST (CLASS) LENS TO MEDIA TEXTS

 

Students could apply a Marxist lens to examine portrayals of discourses of class in film/media texts.  For example, different people have different notions as to what it means to be "middle class" or "working class."  In the PBS documentary program, People Like Us, http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/ different theorists propose different models for class differences.  

 

Students could example how certain artifacts-clothes, possessions (cars, houses, etc.,), viewing/reading habits, food, etc., serve as class markers, and the extent to which the media portray the actual lives and experiences of working-class people.

 

          ANALYZE POSTMODERN MEDIA TEXTS

 

Students could analyze postmodern films/media texts that parody or interrogate "modernist" "master narratives" and familiar notions of time as is in Pulp Fiction, Mulholland Drive, Run Lola Run, or Memento.  For example, Run Lola Run portrays three different versions of the same event and Memento shows events occurring in reverse, dealing with issues of memory and time.

 

          ANALYZE PORTRAYALS OF RACE IN THE MEDIA 

 

Students could examine how people of color are portrayed on prime-time television programs or films, particularly in terms of the roles to which they are assigned.  They could also apply postcolonial theory to examine that ways in which colonial or imperialist conceptions of the world are portrayed in film/media media texts.  For example, Asians, Middle-Easterns, Africans, or Muslins in Hollywood films continue to be portrayed in ways that reflect European/American stereotypes of these regions and their cultural practices.

 

          CONDUCT A MEDIA ETHNOGRAPHY 

 

Observe a person or group of persons who are viewing television, a video, films, etc., or playing a computer game, or attending a music event/concert.  You may also “lurk” on an online fan-club chat site associated with a television program or film. Interview these audiences about their viewing or game playing, asking them to describe their level of interest in and reasons for viewing a certain TV program or film or playing a certain game or some of the practices they employ in group viewing or playing.  Discuss the specific viewing/game participation practices that you observed; what was their shared social agendas; how were their social purposes for responding shaping their responses; what were the shared stances; what was the relationship between their own stances and the stance invited by the text or context; how do these shared stances reflect their attitudes or certain discourses?