Mediacology

An alternate take on media literacy that goes beyond the standard anti-media rant. It’s from Henry “Convergence Media” Jenkins’ program at MIT. They run through a mouthful of terms at the end, but I find them useful because they acknowledge that these days the line between consumer and producer is bleeding the old definitions of [...]

One of my most favorite human beings and a media lit colleague, Kathleen Tyner, organized a really cutting edge media literacy conference at the University of Texas at Austin in June. Thanks to the new tools available to us, we can all be digital flies on the wall. We can be there now by [...]

Produced by Anybody

The Dumbing Of America – washingtonpost.com:
Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); [...]

Sometimes you have to thank the media gods for providing free resources to deconstruct their world. So welcome to Super Bowl Monday Planet: Firebrand, a ridiculously conceived Website that can be likened to a content-free television network, i.e. all ads, now shows. But if you are like me and are infinitely curious and attracted to [...]

Periodically I get requests to review material to see if it’s relevant for media literacy. I was asked to view the above clip, which I found instructive in terms of how not to think about media. What follows is my reading:
Upon reviewing the video I would not recommend it for media literacy. While it is [...]

Ha! Got you to look. Here are some clips by the great deconstructionist, Jean Kilbourne, who critically examines images of women in advertising.

Technorati Tags: advertising, Jean Kilbourne

A preview for a cool little documentary based on a great book that dissects Hollywood stereptypes of Arabs, Reel Bad Arabs. The author, Dr. Jack Shaheen, is a really nice guy. I met him at the Taos Talking Pictures Film festival and saw the talk that this film is based on. It’s powerful stuff and [...]

Panel from Understanding Comics
If it’s true that graphic novels are subversive, it’s probably why I love them so much. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics makes a very convincing argument that graphic novels are indeed a high form of art. My absolute favorite is The Invisibles, but there’s too much drugs and sex to make it usable [...]

According to CURT HOLMAN, the seven deadly sins of kid culture are:
1) INSIPIDNESS
2) BRATTINESS
3) “PRINCESS-NESS”
4) “STEREO-TYPING”
5) VIOLENCE
6) VULGARITY
7) SLUTTINESS
While I agree that seeing these attitudes expressed in media for youth is troubling, I’d like to argue that kids have their own culture independent of media (this is not to say it is influenced by media). [...]

H/T to Will for passing on this great post from the Center for Citizen Media. It’s an excellent review of recent trends and has a nice little section on media literacy that focuses on principles rather than techniques. Here is a snip:
Center for Citizen Media: Blog » Blog Archive » Citizen Media: A Progress Report:
* [...]

MediaShift, a decent online column by Mark Glaser about new media hosted by PBS, features a nice article about a youth media conference in NYC that has been going on for a few years, The Overseas Conversation Series, created by filmmaker Jordi Torrent. I was fortunate to be on its panel a few years [...]