The AML is pleased to publish an edited and abridged version of Robert Ferguson's address to the International Congress on Communication and Education in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 16-23, 1998. We invite responses from our readers this important statement about the direction of media education.
We are constantly faced with dilemmas in our thinking about the development of education with regard to the media. This is not made any easier by the speed of technological change (or is it progress?) and the impact which such change is having upon the global economy and global lifestyles. If we then put this together with a reminder of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it makes a very strong mixture. But I do not say this as a criticism as much as an appreciation of the complexity of the issues before us. There is always a danger, when one speaks of lofty matters, that there appears to be more rhetoric than substance in what follows. That is the unfortunate price that we sometimes have to pay for thinking. But it may not be such a high price if we manage to prioritise a few issues and clarify some of our shared strategies and aims. I will be specifically considering just what we might mean by interculturalism, and why the concept of universalism haunts our thinking about our identities in what many call a postmodern world. My comments will be offered in relation to the development of viable and relevant approaches to media education.
[Dr. Ferguson outlines a broad picture of various educational approaches. He dismisses the first three as "not education". A summary of his assessments follows.]
The first is that of the teacher as protector. This has meant that the mass media is likely to corrupt the innocent minds of children, and that the media encourage the innocent or unaware young person to copy what the media say and what they represent. This approach becomes a pedagogy of policing, sometimes effective, never educational.
The second approach suggests that the media 'place' all audiences in very particular ways. The audience is seen as the relatively helpless victim of ideology in media. Individuals are often constituted or reconstituted as 'subjects' by the media. This kind of theorising has led to some unproductive forms of teaching about the media: teachers bestow their privileged perspectives upon students, so taste is legislated in the classroom, as well as an awareness of "unacceptable" and hidden, political, racist and gender-biased agendas.
In the third approach, the media are seen as sites for ironic decoding, for postmodern plays of the signifier, for parodic encounters. This celebratory approach conceptualises the student and the media audience more widely, as well aware of, as consuming, and as enjoying what is going on in the world of media representations. The ideas of theorists such as de Certeau, and Bakhtin often come into the curriculum.
The fourth approach, which has developed in the United Kingdom, is one that seeks to develop or create more active and critical media users. It considers key conceptual questions: who makes a media message,
whom is it aimed at, to which genre does it belong, how is it structured, etc. It is educational and useful, but weakened by a consumerist outlook.
The fifth approach is concerned with the development of 'critical autonomy', drawing upon such important educators as Paulo Freire. It offers some of the most productive possibilities for a media education that will be relevant for the next century.
The question of identity dominates our age, whether it be national, religious, moral, or 'image'-related . . . and most of the time, we only know that we have an identity problem because of the media. The complexity of this process is considerable. It has to be studied as the business of all those who receive an education, not only those who see themselves as media experts and researchers.
Personal identity may be mediated at the level of what is fashionable, for example, it has become de rigueur in some circles to watch, take part in, or expose yourself on chatshows . . . Identity has become a commodity, which sells well. National identity, on the other hand, is peddled by the media at times of crisis. These may include the threat of war or the threat of a football match . . . The assertion of national identity becomes a carnival of vindictiveness in some media representations. The question of identity can also be linked with certain elements of uncertainty which accompany postmodern existence (see Zygmunt Bauman). One thinks of identity whenever one is not sure of where one belongs, how to place oneself among the evident variety of behavioural styles and patterns, and how to make sure that people around you would accept this placement as right and proper. 'Identity' is a name given to the escape sought from that uncertainty.
We have moved, however, from the militancy of some forms of identity politics to the linkage of identity with style. This phenomenon . . . is pursued mainly in order to identify our roles as consumers. But if we are constantly being urged to adopt an identity that we cannot afford nor have any hope of achieving in the immediate future, then it is just possible that we may become dysfunctional. . . . We may be tempted to take what we cannot 'earn.' If we do that the media will be on hand to provide us with another identity. . . There is no end to the accommodation which the media can demonstrate in order to find an identity for everyone.
Media Education must study the ways in which the media offer us our identities, the ways in which we are or are not complicit in the relationship, whether the identities include 'us', whether the way we are represented is accurate or credible, and why we may not be represented.
We also have to ask questions about the extent to which we all share in this building of identity. What does the media tell we citizens of the world that we have in common? Is it our humanity or our shampoo? More complexly, is it humanity that our shampoo or some other consumer goods are supposed to give us? Is it creativity and potential for productive work that we share as fellow humans, or is it our need to buy something as virtual humans? How can we relate the act of consumption to the act of creation? These questions need to be constantly addressed through media education.
The question of a global culture is, paradoxically, one that has become more and more central at a time when there is more and more emphasis on the concept of difference. Also paradoxically, the celebration of difference is something that has occurred along with the breaking down of difference by cultural hybridity. The cultural hybrid is a form that retains something which might be recognised as indigenous or 'authentic', but has somehow been modified to encompass a wider frame of reference - it has been progressive inasmuch as it has challenged ideas of purity (racial or other), but it has been problematic inasmuch as it has sometimes been used as a means of covering up the cracks in the social order. All of this has, of course, been brought to us through the very media which we so importantly need to study.
The 'difference', which is brought out through cultural hybrids, has to be set alongside the sameness that the commodification of difference is also bringing about. For example, Benetton sells the world its products with the promise of a spurious unity. It is, however, reaching further and further into the trough of media credibility as it seeks for acceptance of its sincerity. What needs careful study and analysis is the way in which issues of human rights are being progressively commodified with sweaters and brightly coloured shirts. Politics is thus becoming part of the act of consumption. Interculturalism is thus mediated and a part of the world trade in images and commodities. It is, also, something that needs to be studied in schools and colleges.
Globalisation and the new technologies
Interculturalism and questions of identity are, of course, facilitated to a large extent by the existence of the new technologies and the trend towards globalisation. The Internet and the new, multi-media technologies undoubtedly offer the possibility of radically transforming the way we communicate. This transformation is the subject of much discussion and analysis amongst a small number of people. It needs to become the subject of discussion and analysis for teachers and their students around the globe. There is much that they may be excited about. Before being transposed into the realms of techno-lyricism, however, we might also consider some other kinds of data for the information age. It has been calculated that one particular financial 'wizard' on Wall Street was able to acquire in a year the same amount of money as would be paid to 78,000 American workers . . . . Think also of the figures which suggest that in India, 120 million people now enjoy middle-class incomes, but 70% of the population are mired in poverty. Or take the example of Columbia, where the number of people living below the poverty line has increased by about one million since 1990 to include half the population of Columbia. One could move from continent to continent and the picture would be similar. This is at a time when we celebrate the coming of multimedia technologies and our government in the UK promises our young people 'training'. Training in what, for what purpose and to what end we may ask. What I am arguing is that we should ask this as part of our teaching about the media. I am not arguing for Luddite approaches to the new technologies. I am asking that we put these contradictions before our teachers and our students in order that they may be explored in the spirit of open, democratic enquiry.
It is true that the new technologies can bring us information in quantities heretofore undreamed of - if we have access to the necessary hardware and someone to pay the bills for the telephone lines. But it is also essential that there will be some kind of democratic access to these forms of communication. How will this occur in some of the countries, or parts of countries that I have just described? These are questions for the media educator, and for the future citizens who will occupy the world of globalised communications. Some students will be able, through the information superhighway, to share their material wealth. Others will be able to share their material poverty. Both will be able to explore their common humanity, but it will not be an easy education ride. And the majority will remain outside this feast for quite a while to come.
One of the most important arguments in favour of the concept of difference is that which celebrates the demise of modernism. According to the argument it was modernism, with its emphasis on planning and technological mastery over nature which has led, we are reminded, to the concentration camps and the gulag. It is difficult to speak of difference in a postmodern world without referring to the concept of otherness . . . The almost entirely negative discursive construction of the Rest (Other) is seen as rooted in the arrogant certainties of Enlightenment thinking. Enlightenment discourse had attempted to establish universal norms. These norms, according to critics, were not so much universal, as Eurocentric. It was then only a small step, analytically, to argue that Eurocentric thinking was likely to be racist thinking. There is much to substantiate this line of reasoning in the representations of issues of 'race' which abound in the mass media. These would include the ways in which popular histories are constructed, the numerous adventure stories which tell of daring deeds in distant places (distant from Europe or the USA), or the Euro-North American emphasis which still predominates in news broadcasts and reporting. These matters are of crucial importance for the media educator. They do not, however, tell the whole story. They do not allow for the complexities and contradictions which are a structured part of many media representations, nor do they allow for the problematisation of the subject or 'self' which is posited in opposition to the Other. This self or subject is a reader of media messages and/or part of a media audience. Another problem with the concept of Otherness when invoked in relation to cultural issues and media representations, is that it often tends to essentialise its object. Characteristics are thus attributed to certain groups which are, apparently, timeless and frequently demeaning . . . The extent to which media representation of difference facilitates either social understanding or hostile social fragmentation is very much the business of the media educator and her students.
Second, individual identity needs to be conceptualised more dynamically as formed through a process which involves the recognition and confirmation of relative 'sameness', plus the negotiation of multiple and often contradictory positions on a range of issues, and, from time to time, the external imposition of undesired or unacceptable norms. It also needs to incorporate an awareness that difference is possibly more relevant, in relation to ideology and the media, when identified in terms of (changeable) material conditions, of general social conditions, of territorial claims, of wealth and poverty, of issues of power and subordination. We have to learn to differentiate when we consider questions of difference! We need to recognise those shared potentialities which precisely make difference possible. John Frow has raised some pertinent questions here which are relevant to any media educator and which can be addressed to media representations and the world which they purport to represent. These questions are ethical and political: who speaks? Who speaks for whom? Whose voice is listened to, whose voice is spoken over, who has no voice? Whose claim to be powerless works as a ruse of power? Under what circumstances is it right or wrong, effective or ineffective, to speak for others? And how can relations of enunciative power - which by definition are shifting and situational - adequately be described?
Frow mentions the importance of finding a language of description to analyse power relations. This is crucially important for the future of media education. Such power relations may be studied in relation to momentous events on the world political stage, and they may be studied in the media's representations of normality. It is in the study of media representations of normality that we may find the key to a last, productive and open-minded educational activity . . .. The central issue, however, is the question of universalism - of that potential for shared growth to which humanity might still lay claim . . . I would only say that, for me, universalism does not imply that one has abolished either contradiction or dilemmas of choice. Nor does it mean that one expects to find media which unremittingly remind us that we are just one big global family. Nor does it mean that one is seeking any kind of abolition of difference in a global imposition of shared pseudo-identities. In fact, that sounds nearer to the status quo than what I have in mind. We need to develop a pedagogy for media education which is rooted in a recognition of contradictions. This is never more richly illustrated than when we begin to study media representations which give us pleasure. Pleasure, we discover, is an ideological category. This does not mean that it has to be abolished! I would rather say that pleasure, in relation to media education needs to be problematised. The media educator has to recognise, respect, and sometimes celebrate the pleasures which the media offer as part of their overall remit.
I would argue that the media educator has to become part of a necessary process which makes education an invigorating, difficult, often dangerous but always productive way of life. It does not seem inappropriate, in this context, to return to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship amongst all nations, races or religious groups." We may now wish to modify the language in which some of these sentiments are expressed. But we may also ask ourselves, in Europe at least, why such sentiments are often so embarrassing to an educator. It may be because educators are just as wary as anyone else about their (intellectual) street credibility. The 'full development of the human personality' is part of a discourse which is, for many, part of a modernism which has had its day. It is time, however, to reopen that discussion. An addition to the Declaration, if one may be allowed to dream such things, might include some different points of reference. It might include the need to argue, to doubt without fear, to analyse as a pluralist and act as a part of a single, diverse, fraught but unshakeable humanity. We need to move through Len Masterman's concept of critical autonomy to an immodest, insecure, but determined global and local goal of critical solidarity.