Rethinking Media Literacy

Rethinking Media Literacy

rethinking media literacy
Ross Ransom works with media students at RETN, a community media center in Burlington, Vermont.

AUGUST 3, 2015 | BY BILL SIMMON
reprinted from Medium, medium.com

The NAMAC Creative Leadership Lab at the Sundance Resort not only helped to recharge my creative batteries and to connect with some amazing change agents in the media and arts worlds, it also allowed me to articulate some pretty fundamental ideas about what we in the field of community media are really doing. These are thoughts that have been banging around in my brain for a while but being with all these other amazing people really helped me focus in and identify the thing that matters about the work that my colleagues and I do. So often our discussions about the importance of community media devolve into the deep weeds of telecom regulatory structures and franchise fees. What matters, though, is the impact we have on our culture and on the lives of people living in our communities. Eyes on the prize, people. Eyes on the prize.

*

In the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections, my friend Steve approached me with an idea for a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) video he had in mind. We met and discussed his idea, spent a few hours in front of some editing software, and when we finished, we had a one-minute, eleven-second piece, which we posted online about a month prior to the election.

Traditionally when we talk about “media literacy,” what we’re talking about is the effort to create sophisticated consumers of media. I’d like to discuss media literacy in the sense of media creation.

In the 30 days leading up to Election Day, the video was viewed more than a quarter of a million times, Roger Ebert blogged about it, it was posted on The Huffington Post and Daily Kos, it made the front page of Reddit — it was a success by pretty much every metric (except, perhaps, the actual 2010 midterm election results).

But here’s the thing: My friend Steve is currently the lead blogger at The Rachel Maddow Show. He has a daily readership in the tens of thousands. He is technically a producer on that show, and yet when he wanted to make this GOTV video, he came to me because he didn’t have the first clue about how to make a video.*

It’s actually not all that weird that Steve would not know how to make a video. The fact is, few people do.

I tell my filmmaking students that the constituent elements of film can be likened to corresponding elements in language. A shot is like a word. A sequence of shots is like a sentence. A scene is like a paragraph, and so on. Like my friend Steve, the vast majority of us cannot construct a simple sentence in the language of video — we are functionally illiterate — despite being nearly constant consumers of video and despite having ready access to all the necessary tools required to create video.

Traditionally when we talk about “media literacy,” what we’re talking about is the effort to create sophisticated consumers of media. I’d like to discuss media literacy in the sense of media creation.

Exactly zero data was used to create this chart.
Exactly zero data was used to create this chart.

Think of it in terms of the English language. There are professional writers on one end of the bell curve and functionally illiterate people on the other end, but the majority of people can read and write to some degree without doing it at a professional level. In media, the reverse is true. There are the pros — the “filmmakers” — and then there is everyone else.

Our culture is already being transformed (or at least informed) by shaky cell phone videos taken by regular citizens showing atrocities perpetrated by those who are supposed to be protecting us. These single-shot videos can be compared to single words in language. They are mostly saying, “Stop.” “Stop that.” Imagine the power and shape of that cultural transformation if regular citizens could actually construct complete sentences in video; if they could compose paragraphs, essays and poems; if they could master metaphor and the art of the reveal; if they could utilize montage and dialectic and all that Eisenstein stuff we filmmakers learn about in film school. What would our culture be like then?

At present there are precious few resources available for teaching regular folks — i.e., people who are not on a specific, intentional path to becoming media makers — how to communicate effectively in the language of video. Community media centers and public access TV channels are probably the closest thing in the U.S. to a program of media creation literacy outlets, but the funding of these centers is under constant threat and they vary so wildly from center to center that what’s available at one center may not exist at another.

These community media centers have never been more important than they are right now. This is a critical time in media creation. Technology has shifted in such a way that barriers to media creation have all but disappeared, but almost no one knows how to speak in the language of video. Now is the time to insist that media literacy — including both media consumption and media creation elements — is an essential part of basic education.

Technology has shifted in such a way that barriers to media creation have all but disappeared, but almost no one knows how to speak in the language of video. Now is the time to insist that media literacy — including both media consumption and media creation elements — is an essential part of basic education.

Code.org has a simple mission statement: “Every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science.” Yes.

I would argue that learning how to communicate effectively with media tools is even more essential to our culture than a universal computer science curriculum, but I know of no corresponding media literacy organization agitating for media education at that level. There are many small organizations and efforts doing this in part (individual community media centers, the Alliance for Community Media, the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, etc.), but there is no cohesive national movement with any sort of momentum.

Imagine a world of articulate citizen media-makers expressing their subjective experiences with grace and power through the most powerful storytelling medium ever created. We’re so close. The tools are right there. The education centers already exist. We lack only the will to make it happen.

*Steve was technically at The Washington Monthly at the time we made the video. He was hired by the Maddow show a short time later, but as of this writing, he still lacks any proficiency at media creation.

Bill Simmon is the Director of Media Servies at VCAM (Vermont Community Access Media) and was a participant in NAMAC’s 2015 Creative Leadership Lab.

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