Freire’s conception of disruptive literacy has taken root in cultural studies, which shares a critical focus on reading and writing texts that embody or challenge wider structural inequalities. Cultural studies also stresses the potential agency afforded to active audiences (Hall, 2001), whose media literacy enables them to negotiate meaning within a global media culture. Kellner (2011) contends that cultural studies scholars see the potential for media culture to provide the, “materials for constructing views of the world, behaviour, and even identities” (8)
Critical media literacy scholar-practitioners have rearticulated Freire’s pedagogy in an age of participatory media, by seeking to harness its wider range of tools for cultural production. A critical media pedagogy addresses not only the dominant ideology that is channelled through conventional education, but also the encoded messages that are pervasive in mass media. Intervening in this cycle of cultural reproduction involves laying bare the ideology underlying media representations of race, class, gender and sexuality (Edgar & Sedgwick, 2007). The literacy resources that critical learners draw upon in a global media culture might differ in form from Freire’s pre-digital cultural context, but the ideological and epistemological thrust is the same. By moving from cultural critique to cultural production, critical media pedagogy retains Freire’s concept of praxis: that literacy should motivate critical reflection and social action.
In the twenty-first century, critical literacy theories have expanded to acknowledge that our global media culture increasingly provides the, “materials out of which we forge our own sense of selfhood” (Kellner and Share, 2019: xi). While the injustices faced by Freire’s learners, such as class, gender and racial oppression, persist; learners today might confront further challenges, including issues around gender diversity and environmental justice. Critical media literacy practitioners have responded to the need to provide opportunities for learners to engage in active and robust citizenship, even in the face of schooling systems that are increasingly fixated on high-stakes testing (Nichols & Berliner, 2007). Such interventions invariably draw on a combination of new technologies and popular cultural forms to enact Freire’s pedagogy, and demonstrate the democratic potential of this framework to encourage learners to, “create alternative representations that question hierarchies of power, social norms and injustices, and to become agents of change” (Funk et al., 2016: 319). The flexibility this praxis offers also means that it can be developed and adjusted to accommodate the social movements of our age, which share Freire’s emancipatory goals. Black Lives Matter, for example, adds to Freire’s project a historical dimension (Lebron, 2017): an imperative to remember examples of past racial injustice, while retaining Freire’s political philosophy that agency and recognition emerges from, “the strivings of the disadvantaged and oppressed” (Hansson, 2020: 541).
Media education in schools tends to focus on building strategies of resistance to mass media messaging, rather than preparing learners to engage in public discourse using the tools of participatory media. Consequently, media literacy interventions that seek value in critical media production often occupy educational spaces constructed outside of mainstream learning. Empirical work in these contexts often stress their ability to promote informed, engaged and responsible citizenship: Goodman’s (2010) grassroots work with at-risk young people emphasises the power of media production to confront conflict in their lives and help them make positive contributions to their communities; Chavez and Soep (2005) found in their study that media production in communities was a powerful avenue for young people to advocate for social change.
Another pitfall for the critical educator attempting to shoehorn critical media practices into an already packed curriculum is a tendency to oversimplify social justice issues, overlooking the significance and complexity of personal experience. Establishing a learner’s critical identity outside of the dominant culture requires a nuanced approach that acknowledges the cultural, social, political and historical underpinnings of their outsider status (Pandya & Aukerman, 2014). Bolt-on curricular initiatives cannot provide the necessary scope to fully enact this praxis, as a result these interventions are orientated more towards critical consumption than critical media production (Morrell, 2008: 115).
Learners’ cultural productions might also fall in to the trap of the reproductive theorists, who highlight the crushing inevitability of the cycle of domination and submission. Instead, the critical productions of learners should offer emancipatory alternatives: raising consciousness of social injustice and exploring possible solutions. Facilitating this process requires a formulation of a critical media pedagogy that allows space and structures for this complex and challenging process of identity formation and social action. In response to this dilemma, this study proposes that the production of documentaries in community settings might provide an accessible and effective framework for personal reflection, social critique and engaged citizenship. That is not to discount the possibility of implementing such interventions in mainstream education, but by clearing a pedagogical space to explore the efficacy of critical media literacy practice, it might speak back to the curriculum with clarity and eloquence. In this way, I am inviting mainstream educators and policy makers to consider building new spaces for such practices, rather than trying to force them onto an already packed school day.
References
Chávez, V., & Soep, E. (2005). Youth radio and the pedagogy of collegiality
Edgar, A., & Sedgwick, P. (Eds.). (2007). Cultural theory: The key concepts. Routledge.
Funk, S., Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2016). Critical media literacy as transformative pedagogy. In Handbook of research on media literacy in the digital age (pp. 1-30). IGI Global.
Goodman,S. (2010). Towards 21st-century literacy and civic education: Facilitating student documentary projects. In J.G. Silin (Ed.), High-needs schools: Preparing teachers for today's world (pp.44-54). New York,NY: Bank Street College of Education.
Hall, S. (2001). Encoding/decoding. Media and cultural studies: Keyworks, 2, 163-174.
Hansson, S. O. (2020). The Philosophy of Black Lives Matter.
Kellner, D. (2011). Cultural studies, multiculturalism, and media culture. Gender, race, and class in media: A critical reader, 3, 7-18.
Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2007). Critical media literacy, democracy, and the reconstruction of education. Media literacy: A reader, 3-23.
Morrell, E. (2008). Critical literacy and urban youth: Pedagogies of access, dissent, and liberation. New York: Routledge.
Nichols, S. L., & Berliner, D. C. (2007). Collateral damage: How high-stakes testing corrupts America's schools. Harvard Education Press.
Pandya, J. Z., & Aukerman, M. (2014). A four resources analysis of technology in the CCSS. Language Arts, 91(6), 429.