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Displaying 326 - 350 of 607 The following is a list of ideas to help explore and understand how media literacy is different from other literacies and what are some of the basic elements of a more comprehensive media education.
Media 'bashing' is NOT media literacy, however media literacy sometimes involves criticizing the media.
Merely producing media is NOT media literacy, although media literacy should include media production.
Just teaching with videos or CDRoms or other mediated content is NOT media literacy; one must also teach about media.
Simply looking for political agendas, stereotypes or misrepresentations... Read More
Making Connections: Media's Role in our Culture of Violence
We must not overlook the powerful potential of media literacy skills to reduce the impact and challenge the influence of violence in our media and popular culture. by Elizabeth Thoman
When Deborah Prothrow-Stith, M.D., dean of Harvard University's School of Public Health, begins one of her eloquent speeches on the growing crisis of violence as a public health issue in society, she often recounts the story of a young gunshot victim being treated in a Boston hospital emergency room. He expressed surprise that his wound actually hurt.
"I thought, boy, he's really stupid, anybody knows that if you get shot, it's going to hurt. But it dawned on me that what he sees on television is that when the superhero... Read More
When students walked into my class on the first day of school this year, I gave them three books each - books I had published and bound myself. Those who have a computer at home can get lists, calendars, assignments and research help through the Internet via my home page. They can even pass notes to their teacher and get an answer - via email.
The point of this is not that I'm such a technically-advanced teacher. The point is that with the current media, we all can publish books, design an Internet site, or use the new... Read More
A few weeks ago I wrote to this list asking for ideas and suggestions about a 3-week "media" unit that I was asked to do with a group of "basic-level" high school seniors in their last three weeks of school.
There were a large number of kind responses which willingly shared ideas, approaches and thoughts -- and for those I'm most grateful. You folks asked me to let you know how it went, and this is it.
Let me re-cap briefly. I'm the "A/V" guy at a suburban high school in Billerica, Massachusetts. A teacher who had been... Read More
Frankly, it's both fun and rewarding to watch them work, these students who run the daily morning announcement TV program here at Billerica High.
The earliest ones arrive at 5:45 AM, an hour and a half before we go on the air. Wyatt and Pat put our one good camcorder on the tripod, slide the microphones into the desk stands, and then check everything. We have a motto here: "In God We Trust. Everything Else, We Check." Then they sit down at the keyboard and type in the names of students who have a birthday today. Wishing... Read More
Since the beginning of recorded history, the concept of "literacy" meant having the skill to interpret "squiggles" on a piece of paper as letters which, when put together, formed words that conveyed meaning. Teaching the young to put the words together to understand (and, in turn, express) ever more complex ideas became the goal of education as it evolved over the centuries.
Today information about the world around us comes to us not only by words printed on a piece of paper but more and more through the powerful images and sounds of our multi-media culture. Although mediated messages seem... Read More
China's Challenge: Modernize, not Westernize
A 4,000-year-old culture looks for its own way to use modern media. By Elizabeth Thoman, CHM
From the back of the crowded classroom, a young man raised his hand. "Tell us about Hol-lee-wood." he asked in halting English.
I smiled at his question but inside, I chuckled. Here I was, far from my desk in Los Angeles, spending a rare but exciting few days with the next generation of communications teachers and educational technologists at South China Normal University in Guangzhou (Canton), and I couldn't escape Hol-lee-wood.
I answered his question the best I could, emphasizing that the United States media industry operates on only one principle — and I put a "$" sign on the... Read More
How many two-year-olds do not know Big Bird or can't recognize the Golden Arches? Speaking, listening, writing! reading, and watching television have been said to be the three major forms of communication in Western societies. Of the three, most young children learn to watch television first.
The images of childhood television broadcasts remain with them as central parts of their childhood memories. In this way, television has been said to define generational subgroups in the culture, spanning socioeconomic status, geographic location or intellectual ability.
Although television is a... Read More
Keep up with what's on TV.
Watching and discussing television programs — movies, specials, even regular series — can be an excellent way to exercise personal values. Dialogues built around TV shows, however, cannot be as carefully planned and structured as other group activities in your school. church synagogue or youth program. The TV networks often do not schedule shows until two or three weeks before air dates. You will have to make a point of looking out for good programs in order to provide continuity for your group. Check a TV guide regularly and watch newspapers and magazines... Read More
Dating can be an exciting beginning to getting to know someone — but you'd never know it from The All New Dating Game. Although promising the latest ways to entice the opposite sex, the show instead teaches teens to base date selection on the most sexually exploitative answers to the most sexually exploitative questions.
Because participants select dates from three unseen candidates, word images instead of physical attraction are the basis for the decision (although appearance certainly plays a role when prospects are chosen initially). Suggestive dialogue and snappy answers are... Read More
The word is now out officially and it has been delivered by no less a source than priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley in the New York Times. Greeley reports that the most popular preacher in America is not John Cardinal O'Conner, nor Jim Bakker, nor Robert Schuller nor Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum. It is Bill Cosby.
Of course, we all kind of knew that already. The popularity of his television program has had its impact on our personal and organizational schedules. Beyond that, though, while watching Cosby and his family move through their TV lives, haven't we smiled with recognition at events and... Read More
"There's trouble right here in River City...why, the boys are out back of the corn crib reading Capt'n Billy's Whiz Bang." – a line from The Music Man
It is no longer enough to look with studied criticism at the content of media and ask questions about its effects.
The advent of each new technology in history has produced changes beyond the anticipation of its inventors, dreams of its investors or hopes of those who sought to possess it. The television set was brought into the home for entertainment. In the last 35 years it has come to displace, or accompany, seven hours a day of activity... Read More
For some organizations. ten years is the end of an era. For Media&Values. its only the beginning.
We've seen a lot in our first decade. We witnessed the explosion of new media and technology that brought calculators and computers, cable and videocassettes into our everyday lives.
We watched the break up of Ma Bell and the consolidation of media companies into multinational conglomerates.
We experienced the power of world events "live via satellite." And the influence of MTV not only on music but especially in the lives of our young people.
And we've learned a lot — about how we... Read More
Fiber versus fat. Running hard versus standing still. Lean but not mean. Elizabeth Thoman, CHM, executive editor of Media&Values, is conscious of her diet, but when she uses nutrition-centered language, she's almost certainly using it as a metaphor for what goes into the mind. And she's doing her energetic best to help consumers around the world be as concerned about the media they watch, hear and think about as the food they eat.
"Who would have thought 20 years ago that we would be concerned about fiber and fats? I hope by the time Media&Values celebrates its twentieth anniversary... Read More
The media analysts are right. Television may be "the major educating and socializing institution in America." So what does it teach about minorities?
TV news offers glimpses into minority life and spotlights selected minority figures. At the same time, through movies and weekly series, fictional television provides a national peep show into an imagined multiracial America.
Over the years, television has featured four main types of minority characters — criminals, crime fighters, hustlers and family members, often comical or even bumbling.
TV teaches that racially complex America,... Read More
Academic television critics have been discussing the content of dramatic television recently as "text," not recognizing the religious connotations implied by the word. Western fiction has always had a didactic as well as an entertainment function. The question is: What are the values or basic ideology being transmitted through television? Another question is: Whose values are being transmitted?
An estimated 350 million people in 85 countries tuned into the opening episode of Dallas in the fall of 1980 to find out who had shot JR. and whether he had "died." Although candidates for the role... Read More
Jail is a cold place. Walls of thick concrete block every intrusion by the sun. The cells, too, are made of concrete, and plexiglass and iron. Refrigerator-bright fluorescent lights announce the day at 5 am. and dim only at 11 p.m.. remaining on throughout the night. Gray, and its nauseous cousin, light green, color your bunk, your blanket, your one sheet, even the plate (a tray) from which you eat.
But in this lower depth, where men and women have been secreted away from society, there is one window through which the imprisoned can see the outside world — where they so desperately wish to... Read More
Ever since Newton Minow, then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, accused television of being a 'vast wasteland," media analysts have debated whether television indeed has any redeeming social value.
Television has changed considerably since Minow's statement, and many formerly taboo subjects are now treated openly, even on prime-time. Compared to the insipid content of the early days of television, today's programming is often bold and provocative, with society the better for millions of viewers having experienced the anguish of marriage to a man who is violently abusive (... Read More
Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, But the White Rabbit Does
A Glimpse behind the looking glass world of TV's nonfiction programming By Elayne Rapping
July 4, 1986 was more than just Independence Day, a time for picnics, fireworks, and waving Old Glory from the front porch. In celebration of the renovation of the Statue of Liberty, an entire weekend — Liberty Weekend — was set aside for TV merrymaking. The holiday actually swelled into a full week of publicity, anticipation and previews of events, most of them televised, with David Wolper, a producer of TV specials, overseeing the proceedings.
In the midst of the hoopla, this media event even generated its own reviews. "Is it News or Entertainment?" the headlines asked. The question was... Read More
We Are What We Watch: We Watch What We Are
New research study explores WHY we watch and WHAT we choose. By Robert H. Spier
Why do we watch television?
Perhaps in one sense, because it is there. But analysts have long speculated on the appeal of various program categories, and advertisers and programmers have invested millions of dollars in attempts to reach audience segments of a particular age, sex or income level.
Most of these efforts have focused on answering the question, "Who tunes in?" But a groundbreaking research effort by marketing experts Ronald Frank and Marshall Greenburg has gone beyond the demographic categories to focus on how television viewing fits in with other leisure time decisions including... Read More
Producer Sherwood Schwartz remembers receiving some strange telegrams shortly after his hit series Gilligan's Island began airing on network television in 1964.
Forwarded by the Coast Guard, the telegrams complained that, "For several weeks, now, we have seen American citizens stranded on some Pacific island. We spend millions in foreign aid. Why not send one U.S. destroyer to rescue those poor people before they starve to death?"
The mystified Schwartz notes; "There was even a laugh track on the show. Who did they think was laughing at the survivors of the wreck of the U.S.S. Minnow? It... Read More
Even those of us who remember it have forgotten how much the pictures on the small screen have molded and changed our world.
If the impact of TV on our culture is incalculable, it is not to be ignored or taken for granted. So for our issue #40 — celebrating our 10th Anniversary — we decided to put together a special double issue to closely examine the one medium that, in only 40 years, has revolutionized so much of our lives.
Incorporating a variety of perspectives — from Elayne Rapping's fresh look at television genres to George Gerbner's cultural critique and Les Brown's economic... Read More
In 1968, the musical Hair opened on Broadway. It was brazenly irreverent yet charmed many audiences with such ironic tunes as "I Got Life," an explicit celebration of the human body, and "What a Piece of Work is Man," a zinger critique based on the words of William Shakespeare.
Hair delivered messages of anger and confusion at a tine when this was more acceptable. Today's young people, in my opinion, are far less fortunate. Indeed, they are being made to bear the brunt of an assault on popular culture that stems from a glossing over of the complex, troubling circumstances of the 1980s.
... Read More
Ethnic segregation within rock music culture? Maybe yes, maybe no. But there certainly are ethnic musical neighborhoods. In current sales lingo, that's called market segmentation... in this case, along ethnic lines.
There is no one rock music audience or culture, but rather diverse rock audiences, fragmented by various factors. Ethnicity — including race and language — has influenced that fragmentation.
Black radio stations and TV cable networks play black rock music for mainly black audiences. The growing number of Spanish language radio stations (some 600 according to one recent estimate... Read More
Do you remember a lullaby or song from childhood?
What was your high school or college pep song? How do you feel about it today?
Who is your favorite singer and song - of all time?
Do you remember a time when the Star-Spangled Banner was especially meaningful?
Is there a love song that reminds you of a special person? or a special event?
What music do you listen to in the car? Where are your preset buttons?
What makes your favorite Christmas carol special?
What hymn might you want sung at your funeral?