TEACHING MEDIA LITERACY THROUGH THE TEEN-SCREEN.

Since so much media literacy work is based upon concerns regarding the effects of media on impressionable children and adolescents, studying the relationship between media and youth offers us an important insight into this relationship and has the added advantage for those of us working with young people, in providing us with a subject matter that our students are curious about. By utilizing key principles of media literacy we can begin to construct a conceptual framework that facilitates our understanding of media and youth.

What are some of these principles and what questions do they raise about this relationship?

#1. MEDIA ARE REPRESENTATIONS.

Media messages are actually depictions of people, places, issues, institutions and so on. Within the realms of our investigation the central question becomes, what is the nature of the way the media depict and construct young people? This can be divided into several important categories. 1. How are young people represented in distinct media such as motion pictures, television, advertising, journalism, popular music? What characteristics do these representations have in common and how do these depictions differ in different media formats? 2. How do the media perceive, address and target young people as the consumers of , and audiences for , their products? In short, we attempt to ascertain how the media TALK TO and ABOUT young people.

1 way that the mainstream media frame or construct youth for example, can be summarized as kids in crisis. From this perspective, young people are seen principally, as at-risk and as problems to be solved. The publication, FATEFUL CHOICES by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development[ 1992] opened its first chapter with the following statement: 'In the 1990s, the state of adolescent health in America reached crisis proportions: large numbers of ten-to-fifteen year olds suffer from depression that may lead to suicide;they jeopardize their future by abusing illegal drugs and alcohol,and by smoking;they engage in premature,unprotected sexual activity;they are victims or perpetrators of violence....By age 15, about a quarter of all young adolescents are engaged in behaviors that are harmful to themselves and others".[p 21].

Though the media could and sometimes did contain positive messages, Fateful Choices said the messages were too often negative and too little was being done to help young people detect and reject such values. 'Though teenagers are constantly under a barrage of messages delivered daily by television, radio, and pop music-usually in isolation from adults-schools have hardly begun to teach them how to view and listen critically. Such a capacity for critical analysis ought to be a major component of life skills education."

Three years later , in Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century, they supported media literacy, saying that such knowledge "may help counter the development of social or peer norms that reinforce and maintain unhealthy behaviors"[ p 118]. Media literacy initiatives in North Carolina and other states, they said, "deserve widespread consideration in schools and community organizations as an essential part of becoming a well-educated citizen".

This representation of youth as kids in crisis, explains why so much funding for media literacy in this nation has come from the protectionist approach, which has been widely criticized and challenged outside the U.S. Identifying and addressing the concerns of the at-risk population is of course important work. One needs to be reminded however, that according to the Carnegie report, some 75% of young people cannot be described this way. Where are their stories being told? Why is the news media and entertainment media so focused on young people in trouble and how might this in turn shape perceptions and policy-making?

Two excellent reports that document the way the news media shape teens in crisis are In Between The Lines: How the New York Times Frames Youth [ 2000] and Off Balance: Youth, Race and Crime in the News [ 2001].

 

"Demonized or trivialized , young people are increasingly portrayed in Hollywood films either as a social menace or groveling nitwits....American society increasingly produces and spreads through the media, a hyped-up rhetoric of moral panic about the state of youth culture". Giroux. 1997 P2.	In FRAMING YOUTH, Mike Males identifies institutionalized criticism of teenagers in the 1990's as "the most anti-youth period in American history"[1999 p10] . He condemns the construction of teens as scapegoats and rejects the stereotype of today's youth as "America's worst generation ever". In the words of the old WHO song, "the kids are alright".

#2. MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS MAY HAVE SOCIAL EFFECTS.

As we have noted earlier, one of the underlying beliefs about media literacy is the concept that media messages rather than simply reporting or reflecting the world, may actually have some form of impact upon that world. In the case of children and teens, these effects have typically been classified in 2 broad ways: 1. Cognitive and 2. Behavioral. At its most naive and simplistic, this approach has taken on something of a 'monkey see, monkey do' or copycat dimension. A more complex set of questions begins to ask what effects might be likely with what audiences under what circumstances , in response to which media? Asking such questions enables us to distinguish and discriminate for example between media CONTENT and the CONTEXT of consumption. There is some evidence for example that co-viewing with adults, especially when adults raise questions about the program, actually effects or dilutes the power of the program, providing a distancing effect, with young audiences less likely to accept the media message at face value. It is also important to know that the question of effects can be addressed to audiences other than the youthful targets of these productions. How might adults for example perceive the young , based upon the way they are depicted in say local and national news? What effects might these perceptions have upon adult attitudes about youth? How might these perceptions shape public policy in the way adult institutions like school and the legal system react to them?

#3. AUDIENCES NEGOTIATE MEANING.

This is one of the most significant , central and legitimate principles of media literacy but it is frequently ignored, especially when operating from a PROTECTIONIST perspective, which largely focuses upon what the media DOES TO young people, when in fact, there are important questions to be asked about what young people DO WITH media. At the heart of this is what is generally known as uses or gratification theory.

Some of the best work with audience readings and responses to media has been done by David Buckingham with children and teens in both the U.S. and the U.K. In Children Talking Television he says: "What is often ignored here is the question of why children might choose to watch television in the first place, and the pleasure they might experience in doing so ...The relationship between children and television has largely been defined as a psychological phenomenon...To all intents and purposes, children appear to be regarded as not fully social- or indeed as pre-social beings".[11]

Buckingham's work investigates how children and teens make-meaning of the media. It looks at gender, class and socio-economic differences as active variables shaping the way these young people interact with , talk about and think about a variety of media. It goes beyond the belief that meaning is fixed and contained within the distributed media message. He positions these young people as "active constructors of meaning".

In the last chapter of The Cinema of Adolescence, I wrote that , 'this work rejects the notion of movies as deliberately manipulative, equally as much as it rejects the belief that young people are passive pawns surrendering to the images and ideology of the screen".[1985 p 276]. While young people may well be affected by media messages, anyone who has ever interviewed a group of teens or simply listened while they discussed movies, music, TV or video games, knows that they react to it and process it in quite different ways. To appreciate this, we need to learn to listen to them.

#4. MEDIA HAVE DISTINCT CHARACTERISTICS AND LANGUAGES.

 In the same way that we need to distinguish between the nature and needs of various audiences, we also need to differentiate between various media formats and within various media formats. One understands for example that while network and cable programs are both broadcast in the medium known as television, there are distinct differences between them. FCC regulation of networks for example means that language used and depictions of sexuality, will employ a considerably more conservative standard than that heard and seen in cable broadcasts such as Sex in the City, Queer as Folks and The Sopranos. In the case of teen audiences, one can also differentiate between the emphasis upon youth in major network programming, compared to the youth-centric, teen-dominated casts and storylines for example on the WB network.[Popular, Roswell, Dawson's Creek].

The result of this work, means that rather than simply talking about TEENS & TELEVISION or TEENS ON TELEVISION, we must distinguish what we mean by television. Within the study of media characteristics and language, we also consider elements such as media codes, conventions and genres. Teen television for example might be broken down into several different genres such as:

*FANTASY/ SCI FI.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Charmed, Roswell.

Within these programs various codes and conventions are at work that actively shape representations of teens and various aspects of their lifestyle. Buffy and Angel both have their origins in a long history of vampire movies. These stories inevitably address innocence , evil, virginity. It is hardly surprising therefore to find a strong sexual component in these storylines.

*FAMILY DRAMAS & SITCOMS.

The Gilmore Girls, Malcolm in the Middle, 7th Heaven, Popular, Dawson's Creek.

Teen dramas, dramedies and sitcoms are frequently located within the context of 2 basic social institutions, the family and the school. Hence in studying teens on television, we move into the wider realm of studying their interaction and relationships with both parents and teachers. What codes and conventions are operative and why? Does the formula include the absent or ineffectual parent? Within the school context, is learning presented as meaningful? Are teachers depicted as the enemy? How do the archetypes, stereotypes, conflicts and resolutions relate to these representations in other media such as the young adult novel and movies? One relatively new development in terms of the language and style of these programs, is the emphasis upon mood music , integrated throughout many of these shows[ Dawson's Creek, Popular] and promoted at the conclusion of each episode.

#5.ALL MEDIA HAVE COMMERCIAL PURPOSES. 

 This brings us to the issue of money, merchandising and motivation . Teenagers are certainly aware that the creators of movies, television, music, advertising, computer games and other media are trying to make money. They do not necessarily however, actively process this when they make purchasing decisions or when they are watching a program . We can make them more conscious of this by drawing their attention to the plots and storylines producers assume they are interested in , and by having them concentrate on products sold during these programs. What similarities and differences for example do they notice between the type of products targeted at females and those targeted at males? How are these products and the values/lifestyles associated with them, consistent with and contradictory to the lifestyles and values of the teen characters in the programs they sponsor? What cumulative portrait do these products construct of modern youth and their values? How realistic or unrealistic do our students think this portrait is? One excellent contemporary resource to facilitate this topic or learning is the PBS broadcast, The Merchants of Cool. The program takes us into the world of youth marketing with an emphasis upon MTV and the creation of 2 teen composite characters, the Mook[ offensive, male] and the Midriff[ sexualized early teenage female].