Useful Lessons and Classroom Ideas

See Media Awareness Network, for lessons by Neil Andersen, Chris Worsnop, Barry Duncan, and others: www.media-awareness.ca/eng/med/class/

There was an article on the front page of the Entertainment section of the Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2001 Toronto Star that prompts some interesting discussion:

The article is not online.

The article describes songs that have been removed from Toronto radio station playlists as a result of the attacks.

Some areas of discussion might be:

• Should the programmers have removed these titles without consultation with their listeners, or should they have consulted with them before modifying their playlists?
• Are the titles they have chosen truly problematic for listeners, or have they chosen titles that don't really relate to war?
• Are there songs which should be added to the list of 'retired' songs? Why?
• What songs might be highlighted on their playlists so as to help listeners cope with war?
• Should MuchMusic comb through its video list and remove selected videos? Why? Which ones?
• Should MuchMusic resurrect some older videos that might help viewers deal with war? Why? Which ones?
• Should MuchMusic produce a special program that examines the issue of removing and adding specific videos to protect and/or help its viewers? Why? Which videos would you include in such a show?

Here is one teacher's adaptation of five Key Concepts to the Sept. 11 attack:

Principles of Media Literacy applied to this week's events: a guide to discussion

1. All media messages are constructions
   • Who is constructing the messages? To whom do the constructors answer?
   • Employers? Stockholders? The public? Their own professional standards?
   • What is included and what is excluded in the messages?
   • What about censorship? What might be being censored under these circumstances? Have the parameters of censorship been made clear? Is censorship being treated as an event? Is it being reported on?
   • What labels are being constructed and attached to events? "Attack on America" etc.
   • What music is being used?
   • What symbols are being selected? The flag; the burning, collapsing WTC etc.
   • What stories are being chosen to be produced and aired?
   • Is there bias? In the selection of stories, in the reporting, in the selection of images?
   • What "experts" are being interviewed? Who is missing?
2. Messages are representations
   • What about stereotypes? Stereotypes about Islamic people, Arabs etc.
   • Stereotypes about Americans and elected officials? About rescuers? About heroism? How is this heroism different from "sports heroism"? Do we make a distinction? Do we have to?
   • Are the representations informative, enlightening, emotion-laden, misleading? If so, how?
   • How is America (the society, the country, the government?) being represented in the media? Is the representation accurate?
   • How is the distinction between government policy and American public
   • opinion being represented. What about polls? What about those with minority opinions?
   • How is the rest of the world being represented? The Islamic world?
   • Is the international context adequately and accurately being presented?
   • What about "good" and "evil"? Is this a "battle between good and evil" as the President has described it? What are the consequences of using these labels?
3. Messages have economic purpose
   • To what extent is the coverage intended to "preserve a way of life"?
   • To what extent is the "American way of life" an economic concept? To what extent is it something else? Personal freedom etc?
   • Who has the most at stake economically in this "way of life" and the portrayal of the messages?
   • Is there an economic link between our "way of life" and the medium's economic interests?
   • Are the media (radio, TV, newspapers etc) competing?
   • Are competitors within a medium (like television) competing? Are the ratings important when there is no advertising? What is the basis of the competition? Are television outlets segmenting the audience? By ideology?
   • The networks have been said to be losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of their commercial free coverage. Why can they justify or afford to take such losses?
   • To what extent is there pandering to perceived or real public opinion? Is such pandering, if it exists, economically motivated?
   • Who is shaping public opinion and to what purpose? Have they been successful? Is it an economic purpose?
4. Each of us interpret messages differently
   • What shapes our interpretation? Experience? Greed? Compassion? Reason?
   • Is there something that approaches a consensus interpretation?
   • How might displaying the flag be interpreted differently?
   • What might affect how we interpret this simple act? How accurate are symbols in conveying messages?
   • How much of our interpretation of events depends on the messages selected and their juxtaposition?
   • Public relations practitioners know they can "manufacture consensus"
   • through the construction or manipulation of images. Is that being done now?
   • If so, what seems to be the consensus being manufactured? Does it simply reflect a "natural" consensus? How is a "natural" (as opposed to a manufactured) consensus formed? How is any consensus accurately measured?
   • Are polls accurate? To what extent does the wording of questions, prompt particular responses? Pose a question that you believe is unbiased. Is it?
   • Examples: "Is America under attack?" "Is this a battle between good and evil?"
5. Media have unique Characteristics

• Which of the major media have your found to be most informative?
• Enlightening? Biased?
• Which medium respects and calls upon your intellect the most?
• Which medium stimulates the most visceral response?
• Which medium gives you the opportunity to reflect?
• Which medium best allows you to communicate with others?
• Which medium is "the most powerful"?
• What do we mean by "powerful"?
• Consider:
  • Radio
  • Print
  • Personal conversation
  • Television visual symbols
  • Internet

Lesson for a Senior Media Class

The Discourse of War

Carol Arcus

My Grade 12A English Media students are doing a continuous study of the "discourse of war". In a departure from what might be considered 'best practice', I decided I would leave all the assessment to the students. I felt that this particular project required unconditional engagement with the topic, and was important enough to their 'real' lives, that teacher assessment might put an artificial gloss on the activity. (I also made the project a part of their Independent Study unit.) It has been very successful, in terms of student engagement and learning.

With the help of Barry Duncan's October Bulletin on the Media Awareness Network (), I devised an extended activity that the students worked on over a period of about 2 weeks. Some of them continue to gather and tape because they have become very interested in the topic.

The project breaks down into 3 basic components: sharing, discussing, and making notes on gathered material; constructing a collage (print visuals or video); examining and responding to an essay. These three components allow students to fulfill a full range of media inquiry from analysis to reconstruction.

1. Sharing and note-making.
   • Students bring print and video clips to share and discuss according to the appropriateness of the material. I encourage them to use a wide variety of 'voices' on the political spectrum.
   • They have a list of options, which include:
     • comparing 2 different treatments of the same story (eg, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail)
     • comparing coverage by different media
     • choosing an idea and tracing its construction through media (eg, patriotism, resistance, gender and race responses, terrorism, religion, justice, democracy)
     • following narrative threads and examining their construction: US bombing, tracking Bin Laden, Afghan victims and refugees, New York victims, the trail of the hijackers, anthrax scare, Middle Eastern politics and events, the response of the American entertainment industry; economic impact in US and worldwide
     • examining specific language - metaphors and archetypes which emerge, how terms are being re-invented and re-defined (racism, patriotism, fanaticism, etc).
   • Each student keeps a media log in which they record daily responses to material and group interaction.
2. Sharing and comparing differences in opinion and perception among group members.
• from time to time, students explore and note the reasons for differences amongst themselves: can they be attributed to gender, race, culture, family, or other factors? How and why? How much influence has the media had on perceptions of the war?
3. Collage project.
• each group constructs a creative collage of printed words and images. The group's objective is to create a significant representation of the ways that the printed word and image have been used to construct the meanings of current events. The collage reflects the group's collective perspective on the media study, and attempts to create new meaning.

Results: The challenge was to remind students that they were not constructing a collage of war events, but a collage of representations of war (with a perspective). One video collage was constructed, using a wide variety of sources, including animated entertainment for a satirical theme. One group chose only political cartoons, examining the ways that various individuals and groups have been rendered through drawings. Another group represented the dichotomy of euphemisms and jingoism (eg, "terrorist" vs "freedom fighter") through a collage of words only. A group split the collage in half - mainstream and alternative voices on opposite sides. Another collage divided their board into 'victims' and 'aggressors'. And finally, one group painstakingly gathered and cut out comic book hero images that represent 'good' and 'evil'. They juxtaposed these images with typical media images of Bin Laden and Bush.

4. Essay study.
   • the group chooses a journalist's essay of substantial length (at least 1200 words) on the media's take on current events. The group makes notes on thesis, method of development, tone, diction, rhetorical devices, and position of the essay on the political spectrum.
   • each student writes a personal response to the essay.

I gave students a substantial list of local and national newspapers, magazines, and Internet sources.

Assessment: simple - they devised a rubric for themselves and used it critically and responsibly, with awareness of each others' differences in learning styles and cultural backgrounds.