BMET 22A09 - Applied Media Literacy

In the 1974 political thriller by Alan J. Pakula The Parallax View, a journalist undertakes an aptitude test by a secret recruitment agency. Part of the test requires that he is exposed to a series of captioned images projected at increasing speed. One image displays a mother breastfeeding her baby with the caption “love” while another of a father holding the child bears the caption “father”. These are juxtaposed by images of Adolph Hitler and brutal images of war and death with the said captions alternating. The aforementioned sequence is indicative of a growing crisis of meaning in contemporary societies, especially in the postmodern Western world. At the same time, it highlights the fluidity of meaning and the power of the image and language in an age of ever-changing platforms of visibility (digital multimedia) and global interconnectedness (globalization). The proposed workshop takes this reality as its departure point in an effort to equip students with the knowledge and skills to comprehend the function and power of digital multimedia and images in contemporary capitalist societies. The students will be asked to look at and deliberate on a multitude of images – including moving images – ranging from popular TV entertainment (sitcoms, soap operas, wrestling, game shows) to news footage covering the “War on Terror” and ongoing sociopolitical crises and conflicts. At the same time, students will be asked to question and discuss the staggering presence of screens (computers, mobile phones, tablets) in their daily lives and their content, ranging from social and digital media (Facebook, Twitter, online news) to multi-platform TV viewing (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon TV). Considering the wide scope of the workshop, I aim to provide a hoslistic understanding of the power that images and media have in our daily lives, rather than a very specialized point of view. The class will thus be divided in four comprehensive categories: TV, cinema, journalism and digital media. Meetings will be divided into two parts. Classes will begin with a one-hour lecture that will provide students with theoretical background to foster a critical approach to images and media discourse. In particular, the lecture will draw on various works that students will be expected to read for the class. In the second hour, we will resort to a hands-on approach so as to directlty involve students in the production of meaning. To do so, they will be asked to display material that they have created (posters, short film scripts, ‘fake news’, communication plans for governments and organizations), drawing on the weekly theme and reading. The students will utilize theory in their effort to produce material that showcases how images and the media are powerful tools in conveying an intended meaning to an audience. For optimal use of time in this second part, students will first be divided into small groups. Each student will briefly present their work, the objectives they had and the strategy they resorted to to convey a message. Comparison between the various artifacts and peer reviewing between students will help them highlight how 'efficient' a strategy was and to unpack the theory(ies) underlying message-building. Finally, each group will recap to the entire class the conclusions they drew during their group work. This will allow the whole student cohort, with my help, to formulate an informed summary of the strategies used by the media to achieve their given goals. By the end of the semester, students will have obtained not only a solid understanding of the political and ideological implications of images and media in society, but also a measure of distance that allows them to go from passive spectators to critical thinkers of media. At the end of the course, the student is expected to:

• Distinguish the various media and their sources in his/her daily and scholarly life.
• Develop critical and analytical skills towards deciphering media and mediatized images.
• Transition from passive receptor to advanced critic of multimedia.

The chosen pedagogical format is a workshop which means that students will gain hands-on experience with various forms of media. The class will be divided into groups of 2-4 assigned with a brief presentation of weekly subjects and designated reading. For their mid-term assignment students will be asked to team-up and create a short video using appropriate hardware and software (cameras, editing software). Videos could be inspired by so-called “fake news”, propaganda akin to WWII media or the “war on terror”. It could also imitate the format and subject matter of TV advertisements, TV news and foreign correspondence (Aljazeera, BBC). The aim of this exercise is for students to gain practical experience and to apply what they have learned. They will be marked for their group effort level of creativity in making the video.

• Weekly group presentations (40% of the final mark)
• Final exam (50% of the final mark)
• Class participation (10% of the final mark)