We all play an active role in media literacy. If you have ever posted on social media, used it to influence someone’s opinion or to express yourself creatively, you are actively involved in media literacy. In the article, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century written by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison and Margaret Weigel, he writes that A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).
When I think of the first part of this quote, a participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices, “how to” youtube videos come to mind. These videos are a perfect platform for experts in many different fields to teach the rest of us how to perform a new task efficiently. For example, people might access videos on cooking, gardening, knitting or drawing to further their knowledge of such topics. As a kindergarten teacher, I often use a art videos as extensions of our literacy units to complete our “writing” tasks.
The second part of this quote, a participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created), reminds me of social media posts. Personal posts/opinion pieces often connect people of similar political/social views and give them a platform where they can be heard and their opinions validated by peers.
Of course with the power of participatory media literacy also comes great responsibility. In his article, Jenkins cites examples of young media content creators and writes that the ethical implications of these emerging practices are fuzzy and ill-defined. Young people are discovering that information they put online to share with their friends can bring unwelcome attention from strangers. This quote makes me think of situations where people have written opinions on socially charged subjects that have come back to “bite them” later in life. https://scispeak.com/social-media-kept-getting-job/
Questions that come to mind are:
- How much “policing” of social media is too much without infringing on freedom of speech?
- How much damage is the dissemination of false news doing to our society and how can we counter it with facts so that people can access both equitably?
- How can we make sure that all students receive equitable access to all forms of digital and media literacy?
Digital and Media Literacy 