A Value-Driven Approach to Transformative Media Pedagogy, Practice & Inquiry

This past summer, at the 11th Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, a group of activist scholars, media makers, and experimental educators convened a series of meetings around the values of transformative media literacy pedagogy and practice. These meetings were framed by a common idea that as new media structures and systems further define and disrupt the core relationship between media, citizens, and society, media literacy’s civic relevance is at risk.

Media literacy’s long-standing approach to critical inquiry through reasoned deconstruction and the creation of media texts seems less and less relevant to the current media ecosystem. Media literacy interventions, in schools and communities often focus on skill-building: a necessary component of media critique and creation. Through a focus on skill building, however, many initiatives necessarily promote critical distance from media, transactional approaches to media deconstruction, deficit-focused analyses of media texts, and the prioritization of individual responsibility over collective action taking in media engagement.

These approaches, while valuable in imparting didactic knowledge, often avoid the process of transformation through pedagogy and practice. As media entities, both mainstream and grassroots, continue to build and deploy tools and platforms intent on perpetuating distrust of basic institutions, trading truth for ideology, and normalizing spectacle above reasoned nuance and meaningful dialog, media literacy’s didactic approach seems less and less relevant as a meaningful intervention.

Over two weeks of dialog, debate and discussion, our group began to reimagine how transformative pedagogy, practice and research can meaningfully respond to the new norms of digital culture. We also considered the values we thought most important to anchor our collective approach. Ultimately, the values that we articulated reflect a school of thought that advocate for transformative pedagogies and practices that support civic impact.

To articulate our call for a re-imagining of media literacies as transformative and aimed at action-taking, we put together the following set of values that guide our work. These values are not prescriptive, but guide work in media literacies that is transformative, radical, and intentional about civic impact. Our brainstorm in Salzburg this past summer produced the following value-propositions for transformative civic media pedagogy, practice, and research, that…

• Approach research not through the production of knowledge cut off from the world, but applied and situated in the communities it studies.
• Situate pedagogy from a point of critical consciousness and as a mode of intervention in social problems.
• Embrace a methodology of cooperation, where practice, research and teaching support immersion in our community and support of equity and solidarity.
• Focus inquiry through co-design, iteration, and situated action taking.
• Promote creative media interventions into traditional models of storytelling that desperately need to be re-imagined for the present day.
• Appreciate global diversity and interdependence as necessary prerequisites to designing media pedagogy, practice and scholarship premised on positive social change.
• Leverage scholars, teachers and activists from around the world to share ideas, build networks, and engage in critique and dialog towards media’s role in the common good.
• Emphasize the civic aspects of media, news, and journalism by intentionally pursuing methods that bring citizens directly into the critique and creation of media.
• Create mechanisms that build and sustain worldwide systems of tolerance and justice.

These values are perhaps not unique in and of themselves, but collectively provide a cohesive approach to civic media interventions that teachers, scholars and practitioners can map onto wherever they are engaged in the work of civic media.

These ideas were part of the dialog and framework for the 2017 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, a 3-week summer project that gathers over 100 students, faculty and practitioners from around the world to explore how media can respond to the most pressing problems of our time. Since our founding in 2007, the Salzburg Media Academy is where new pedagogies are tested, collaborations are born, and capacity is built. We welcome practitioners, educators, and scholars to map onto this articulation of values in support of media practice and pedagogy that embraces civic forms of power, hope, and good.