Media Studies

According to the Ontario curriculum for language , media studies looks at the art and messaging of various forms of media texts.  The curriculum describes media texts as any work, object or event that communicates meaning to an audience. So why should we take media studies seriously?

In an increasingly digital, commercial and mass communication era we are all agents in one way or another and are bombarded with messages, subtly or not, that influence us. It is only to our benefit and the benefit of our students that we and they are educated about how to recognize, question and interpret those messages intelligently and responsibly.  

I think this blog post by Mark Phillips at Edutopia would be a resources to use for teaching students about media studies because it offers them opportunities to view, understand, critically interpret and create media texts in progressive stages and in line with their developing knowledge of media literacy.  As a result and with teacher guidance, students can develop an important base of media literacy skills as outlined in the curriculum. Here, in more depth, is how I might specifically go about it:

 The Plan

Magritte, Renee. (1929). Ceci n'est pas une pipe.  [Online Image].
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MagrittePipe.jpg

I think the presentation of and discussion about Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
would be a great introduction and lead-off discussion to have in order to wrap students' heads around the concept of media studies. With teacher guidance, the main idea of the discussion would be that what we see in the media, on TV, in movies, etc. is not reality but rather a representation of reality. I would ask them to think about and give examples of situations or products they've seen on TV or in movies that is inconsistent with their experience in real life. 

Next, I would show some video clips that we would deconstruct as a class drawing attention to any music used, narration or dialogue, images and associations.  We would identify the media texts used and discuss what students thought the intended message of the clip was, how it made students feel and what they thought those media texts added to the overall message. Any type of commercial where athletes or celebrities are endorsing a product would be great material.  Sportswear products (Nike, Underarmour, Adidas) would be good for this purpose, as they try to communicate a certain attitude about their product.  Often times their position is that using their brand of sportswear will make you a better athlete.

I'm specifically reminded of Nike's "It's Gotta be the Shoes" commercial that begins with Spike Lee asking Michael Jordan what makes him the greatest player in the universe before going on insisting that "it's gotta be the shoes" with the implied message being that to be a better basketball player or to be like Michael Jordan it's as simple as going out and buying the Nike Air Jordan's.

 

This commercial from Rogers uses the emotion of the disappointing end to the 2015 playoff run to illicit feelings of hope and possibility for the upcoming 2016 season.

This political campaign commercial for Justin Trudeau uses a multitude of imagery, associations, narration, music, upwards camera angles to sell him to voters.

And of course any Rocky training montage would be a good example to deconstruct and show the transformation of Rocky into a ready for battle warrior.




A good thing to make students aware of as well would be product placement.

Following this portion of the lesson I would have the students create a written reflection of how they think they are or are not influenced by advertising.

As a final project for this unit, I would have the students create their own media product in groups.  It could be a commercial for an already existing product (eg. Gatorade), a scene, news report, print advertisement or web page with the intent to communicate a specific message. They are to use any combination of the following media texts to create their piece and communicate their message:  imagery, music/sound, narration/dialogue. They would provide a written report of what message they were trying to communicate, media texts they used and how they thought those media texts would contribute to their message.  The media products would be presented to the class and the rest of the class would individually need to deconstruct the product of one group that was not their own.

The Learning Outcome

This strategy would introduce and educate students about media studies.  It would give them opportunities to view, question, interpret professional media products, create their own media products as well as interpret  products created by other students as per the curriculum.  There are both collaborative and individual opportunities in this strategy. On the whole, it would provide students with theoretical and applied media literacy skills in an engaging way.