From Silos to Synergies: Co-developing Collaborations Across Media Education Sub-fields Towards Social and Environmental Justice

Introduction

David Buckingham’s (2023) “The trouble with ‘information literacy’” raises observations about the differences among various terms and semantic framings regarding information literacy and other interrelated, yet distinct areas of study. Similar to David’s points about ill-defined or conflated terms related to information literacy and media information literacy, Brayton and Casey (2022) point out that semantic and ideological “fissures” (p. 91) are not unfamiliar to the media education movement in the United States (U.S.). Therefore, this article explores recurring discussions in media education and contemplates ways to disrupt the silos in academia and usher a shift towards a more synergistic approach. 

It is not my intention to suggest that one semantic framing emerging from a sub-group or peripheral discipline of media education is more valuable than another. Rather, it is my intention to engage as a thought partner with David and others by joining a conversation that considers the ‘why’ (see Figure 1) behind our respective frameworks, terminology choices, praxis, and what brings us to the work of advancing media education.

Figure 1

“Solve for Why”

Media Education: “Finite Pasts, Infinite Futures”

Media education has been defined by the advancements to information and communication technologies (ICTs) which have impacted the ways society functions. Drawing inspiration from semiotician Roland Barthes’ (1972) Mythologies, Len Masterman (1980) contended that the television was a medium worthy of study despite mainstream debates preferencing print-based literary genres. In his cult classic, Teaching the Media (1985), Masterman implores media educators to ask themselves, “Why teach the media?” (p. 1). While he emphasizes that there is not a unilateral response to this question, he encourages media educators to be mindful of their own responses to this question in order to better address limitations in theory and practice. Masterman recognized that mediums and media messages influenced social, economic, and political factors in society; he was also concerned about a lack of access to media education for students. In turn, he adapted cultural studies’ philosophies about media, power, and ideology into a theoretical framework and list of concepts beneficial for instructional implementation (p. 23).

Masterman (1985, 1993) asserted that the foundational principle of media education resides in an awareness that all media are constructed representations, rather than mirrors of reality. This assertion aligned with Birmingham cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall’s (1980) Encoding/Decoding Model which repurposed Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) hegemony and counterhegemony paradigm. Hall (1980) advanced an audience theory that magnified the agentic role of audiences to “decode” ideologies represented through signs, symbols, and codes which are “encoded” in media and popular culture. Relatedly, Masterman (1985) suggests that teachers and students can problematize ‘who constructs’ messages, assess authors’ techniques of persuasion, evaluate ideological laden values, and consider how audiences might interpret or receive media representations. He couples these principles with key concepts that he considered essential for students to comprehend and apply in their own media analyses (see Table 1).

Table 1

Len Masterman’s (1985) Core Concepts for Media Education

In addition to Masterman’s theoretical and conceptual contributions, he also suggested that “developing a conceptual understanding of the media will involve both critical reception of and active production through the media” (p. 24). Finally, Masterman insisted that media educators adapt their own concepts and “modes of enquiry” that are student-centered, age-level appropriate, relevant to learners’ interests, and cultivate students’ “critical autonomy” (p. 25).  

Masterman’s charge to teachers to develop their own curricular and pedagogical methods suitable for their students and learning contexts is important. His work reminds media education contemporaries that while our theoretical and practical contributions to the field may have been pre-established by ‘finite pasts’ guided by technological innovations, cultural shifts, and pioneering scholars–our work is ongoing. As society continues to evolve, this raises the potential and the demand for ‘infinite futures’ (see Figure 2) and expansions to media education.

Figure 2

“Finite Pasts, Infinite Futures”

Masterman (1985) argued for a collectivist approach that brings together “the work of many groups and agencies who have a legitimate stake in the development of media literacy” (p. 1). However, part of the struggle of pushing forward new contributions in theory and practice within media education resides in being able to offer clear-cut operationalizations of the semantic framing, philosophical foregrounding, and the practical elements necessary for deploying new pedagogical approaches to respond to the very issues we aim to address. The risk perhaps is becoming so focused on quantifiable or measurable theoretical and practical techniques that we lose an openness that moves beyond the boundaries of our respective disciplines, or at worst, suggests a one-size-fits-all approach.

Information Literacy, Media Information Literacy, and Critical Media and Information Literacy

Buckingham (2023) and Wilde (2022) each problematize the semantic distinctions or lack thereof that are connected with pressing challenges occurring in information ecosystems. In Buckingham’s (2023) case, he calls attention to conflations between information literacy, media literacy, and UNESCO’s (Grizzle et al., 2021) Media and Information Literacy (MIL) curriculum. To begin, he questions muddied terms like information, and how it is easily conflated with terms like knowledge (Buckingham, 2023, para. 2).

Similarly, Buckingham notes that Wilde (2022) identifies how several policymakers and stakeholders targeting disinformation have generated a milieu of monikers to explain and address this phenomena. Like Hall’s (1980) and Masterman’s (1985) focus on how media are socially constructed, Buckingham (2023) and Wilde (2022) emphasize the need to move beyond simplistic or narrow framing of a term to consider the more complex factors that underscore information and disinformation, namely: the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that drive how information or disinformation is constructed, received, or acted upon by audiences.

Additionally, Buckingham (2023) cautions readers about the limitations of categorizing information through a binary lens of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (para. 5) which became increasingly normalized following Donald Trump’s usage of the phrase “fake news” to make unwarranted claims against the credibility of journalists during and after his 2016 presidential campaign (Schilder & Redmond, 2019; Trope et al., 2021). Drawing from Maha Bali’s (2017) logic that one’s engagement with ‘real’ news requires managing their critical and emotional capacity, Buckingham (2017) suggests making informed judgements about information within media representations is a complex undertaking. A more nuanced approach to media analysis accounts for that “which is not immediately visible…the intellectual, historical, and analytical base without which media analysis” (Ferguson, 1998, p. 2) can become reductionist and remiss of examining context and encoded ideological factors in all of their complexity.

Akin to Buckingham (2023) and Wilde’s (2022) concerns about narrowly focused examinations of information absent from systems-level and ideological analysis, members from the Librarian Information Sciences (LIS) have raised similar questions. Most prominently, stakeholders have been challenging connections and disconnections within the field of information literacy. Tewell (2015) as well as Brayton and Casey (2019) trace the historical emergence of information literacy to the 1970s, noting how this field has traditionally preferenced teacher-centered and skills-focused approaches to guide learners “to access and evaluate information” (Tewell, 2015, p. 25). This commonly involves librarians/information scientists modeling how higher education students can access information to determine author authority (credibility), glean skills to conduct research-based inquiries, and experience modes of information discovery. While the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL, 2016) revised their previous Information Literacy Framework resulting from partial condemnation from information literacy stakeholders, Brayton and Casey (2019) observe how the changes in the more recent iteration of the ACRL’s framework can potentially allow room for more critical stances, highlighting the emergence of Critical Information Literacy (CIL). CIL examines information with a more social constructivist lens that attends to political dimensions of how information is developed, used, and encourages students’ critical thinking about social factors enshrined in information systems (Tewell, 2015, p. 37). In James Elmborg’s (2006) foundational essay that advanced developments of CIL, he expresses a similar notion to Buckingham (2023) and Wilde (2022) concerning semantics. He suggests the key challenge for librarians resides not in operationalizing or explaining ‘information literacy,’ rather he contends that theoretical grounding and praxis must be clarified (p. 198).

Taking up this charge can be clearly linked to Brayton and Casey’s (2019) developments towards a Critical Media and Information Literacy (CMIL) Framework. Taking issue with a lack of criticality in information literacy and LIS broadly speaking, they brought together theories from cultural studies and critical pedagogies inherent to critical media literacy to enable a critical approach to information literacy. They developed and iteratively co-taught credit-bearing undergraduate courses across several iterations, demonstrating an alternative method to traditional approaches to information literacy. However, they note that their deployment of CMIL is not intended to devalue information literacy, rather they assert that a critical approach can help move students towards a more critical interrogation and informed agentic awareness.

Ultimately, conversations between proponents of information literacy, media and information literacy, and critical media information literacy remain varied in scope. Both the connections and tensions about which approach can aptly mitigate concerns permeating information systems is not unfamiliar to discussions occurring between and among media literacy and critical media literacy advocates.

Media Literacy and Critical Media Literacy

While Australia, Canada, Great Britain (Hobbs & Frost, 2003), and Latin America (Mateus et al., 2022) have made media education a priority for students over the past several decades, there is still not a systematic approach in the U.S. (Higdon et al., 2021; Kellner & Share, 2007). Additionally, there remains ample discussion regarding the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of media education; in particular, which topics, issues, and pedagogical techniques are important for classroom implementation (Martens, 2010; Potter, 2022; Share, 2015).

Some scholars have initially utilized the “Big Tent” approach to filter media education into two categories: “protectionism” or “empowerment” (RobbGrieco & Hobbs, 2013). However, Kellner and Share (2007) problematize these distinctions, instead delineating four types of media education widely accepted in the field (Higdon et al., 2021), including: 1) a protectionist approach, 2) media arts approach, 3), media literacy movement, and 4) critical media literacy (Kellner & Share, 2007, pp. 60-62). To the relevance of this article, I will focus on the media literacy movement and critical media literacy.

Drawing from the Aspen Media Literacy Leadership Institute’s (Aufderheide, 1993) and Center for Media Literacy’s (2008) contributions to media literacy education, the National Association for Media Literacy (NAMLE) defines media literacy as the “ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication” (NAMLE, n.d.). This process includes guiding students’ engagement with print/non-print media and creating regular opportunities for learners to produce their own media using digital and/or analog tools.

Similar to Buckingham’s (2023) observation of the integration of UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy curriculum (Grizzle et. al, 2021) by policymakers in the United Kingdom (UK), there has been an upward trend in the U.S. by some state-level legislatures to integrate a focus on media literacy in K-12 schools (Media Literacy Now, 2020, 2022, 2023). This focus escalated amidst the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic given concerns about misinformation, disinformation, a public health infodemic, and increased forms of identity-based hate speech and violence as well as misrepresentations about the severity of the climate crisis (Melki, 2022). At the end of 2022, 18 states have passed varied bills, laws, or are continuing to develop policies pointed at developing media literacy curriculum/programs for K-12 students (Media Literacy Now, 2023, p. 3), many who employ similar or identical definitions framed by NAMLE. However, because there is no federal policy integration, media literacy education is not a guarantee for all students nationwide (Higdon & Boyington, 2019).

Additionally, clarification and consensus-building across the media literacy movement is still needed to pinpoint how media literacy is operationalized and to expand pedagogical implementation (Butler, 2020; Thevenin 2022). Some scholars have argued that one of the primary challenges for the integration of media literacy in the U.S. resides in limited theoretical connections and unclear “framework[s] of analysis” (Higdon et al., 2021, p. 1), thus creating barriers for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers that prevent scalable or sustainable models (Thevenin, 2022). Other scholars have noted that the flexibility or inattention to theoretical connections in media literacy education have been precipitated by a goal of striving to make media literacy more invitational for individuals across political views (Hobbs, 2008). Thevenin (2022) also notes that across the genealogy of the U.S. media education movement, several scholars adopt a stance towards media literacy practices that espouse political neutrality.

Conversely, others have denoted a recent shift in the U.S. media literacy movement by some stakeholders interested in bringing social and environmental justice issues to the forefront of media literacy education (Brayton & Casey, 2022; Melki, 2022). Brayton and Casey (2022) identify a key inflection point occurring at the NAMLE 2019 conference among sessions featuring critical media literacy and social justice. NAMLE’s Executive Director Michelle Ciulla Lipkin also delineates this conference as a turning point for the organization to actively attend to social inequities; more specifically, issues related to racial justice. This turning point served as an impetus for their 2021 conference theme, entitled: “Media Literacy + Social Justice” (NAMLE, 2021, p. 3). Outside of this conference, NAMLE served as the lead partner for “Mapping Impactful Media Literacy Practices” which provides an open-access research brief and interactive “Field Guide for Equitable Media Literacy Practice” (Mihailidis, Ramasubramanian et al., 2021). Explicitly denoting their actively antiracist stance, these scholars urge practitioners to move beyond an acknowledgement of the role of racism in schools, media, and society. Instead, they call-in teachers to dissent against white supremacy and interlocking systems of oppression to take action for racial justice. Similarly, Mihailidis, Shresthova et al. (2021) draws on bell hooks’ (1994) Teaching to Transgress, suggesting that transformative media pedagogies must make central how systems of oppression impact students’ local communities. In this viewpoint, teachers and students co-create a “culture of care” (p. 19) while deconstructing and producing their own media to enhance their critical awareness, agency, and social action. 

More recently, NAMLE’s shift to address social issues also included revising their “Core Principles of Media Literacy Education in the U.S.” (2007) which was released in 2023 (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

Core Principles of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE, 2023b)

One key change involves paradigm shifts noted in Core Principle 9:

Emphasizes critical inquiry about media industries’ roles in society, including how these industries influence, and are influenced by, systems of power, with implications for equity, inclusion, social justice, and sustainability.

Target indicators 9.1-9.4 further parse out attention to how media are socially constructed, the need for bringing in media from a range of identity-based perspectives (including those who have been historically excluded or silenced), and examining “issues of representation” (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, age, dis/ability, class, etc.). To further adapt and scale their curricular and pedagogical trainings available to the public, they also held a place-based Media Literacy Leadership Summit in the Fall of 2023 at Emerson College in Los Angeles, California to envision the future of media literacy education (NAMLE, 2023a).

While media literacy educators broadly agree that media is a pedagogical tool containing socializing factors necessary for applying critical thinking (albeit defined differently) or the importance of media analysis and production, there remain “fissures” (Brayton & Casey, 2022, p. 91) across stakeholders determining whether social and climate issues should be addressed in U.S. media literacy education. This is compounded by the current 21st-century culture wars, amidst rampant book banning, legislative attempts to censor the incorporation of Critical Race Theories of Education, the long-standing battle for Ethnic Studies, and persistent attacks on reproductive justice and the rights of LGBTQIA+ communities. The stakes are high; human and more-than-human rights are on the line. Allan Luke’s (2018) clarion call remains prescient. He urges:

In the face of increasing economic inequality, heightened violence between–and within–communities and a media and political environment of renewed racism, sexism, xenophobia, fear and hatred–despair and withdrawal cannot be the default…This is not a time for despair. This is your generational challenge as educators, scholars, and activists. (p. 179)

Addressing these generational challenges framed by Luke are not unfamiliar to proponents of critical media literacy. While critical media literacy incorporates many of the same aims as media literacy, it also draws its’ theoretical roots from the field of cultural studies (The Frankfurt and Birmingham scholars) and the more radical critical pedagogies emerging from Brazilian educator/activist Paulo Freire (1970) and his contemporaries (Share & Gambino, 2022). The primary distinction between critical media literacy and traditional approaches to media literacy lies in an explicit focus on analyzing the relationship between media and audiences, information, and power (Garcia et al., 2013, p. 111). Additionally, Kellner and Share (2019) advance a “multiperspectival approach” (p. 22) to critical media literacy. Multiperspectival approaches bring together an amalgamation of critical social theories, such as: Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991), Feminist Standpoint Theory (Collins, 1990, 2000), Critical Race Theory (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001), Queer theories (Van Leent & Mills, 2018), among others. They also note that as society and ICTs continue to evolve, more critical social theories must be embedded. 

To help bring theory into practice, Kellner and Share’s (2019) Critical Media Literacy Framework (p. 8) offers a set of six conceptual understandings and guiding questions that add onto a body of knowledge and expand upon several other media education scholars’ work from around the world (see Table 2).

Table 2

Critical Media Literacy Framework: Conceptual Understandings and Guiding Questions (Kellner & Share, 2019, p. 8)

The concepts on the left are intended for teachers’ comprehension and usage. The conceptual understandings can help teachers scaffold students’ critical awareness and consciousness about social/environmental inequities from a systems-level approach to deconstruct power imbalances reproduced in media and society. The guiding questions on the right support students’ critical inquiries about media, mediums, and the contextual factors that surround them. Adding onto Masterman’s (1985) stance, Kellner and Share (2019) encourage teachers to adapt this framework to become more age-level appropriate, culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2014), and socioculturally connected to learners’ lifeworlds. Additionally, this framework provides a tangible tool for teachers to integrate critical media literacy pedagogies to facilitate students’ critical media analyses and countermedia productions that promote truth-bearing forms of information while fostering social/environmental consciousness and civic actions.

Like Brayton and Casey’s (2019) development of a CMIL Framework, several emerging models continue to reshape various approaches to critical media literacy. For example, trauma-informed critical media literacy approaches (Baker-Bell et al., 2017), Queer Critical Media Literacies Framework (Van Leent & Mills, 2018), Critical Race Media Literacy (Cubbage, 2023; Yosso, 2002, 2020), Ecomedia Literacy (López, 2020; López et al., 2023), Critical Social Literacy (Currie & Kelly, 2022a, 2022b), and Critical Algorithmic Literacy (Moss, 2022) each demonstrate strong connections to the broader goals of critical media literacy. Each of these frameworks espouse types of critical media education that engage a dialectical social critique of media and exercises countermedia productions to challenge how social systems, structures, and ideologies reproduce issues of ableism, classism, homophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and other forms of identity-based and environmental injustices, albeit with varying techniques and depth. Thus, following in similar fashion to Masterman’s (1985) and Freire’s (1970) perspectives to constantly evolve theories and practices that address systems of oppression in order to move forward towards more just and sustainable futures.

Conclusion

As human beings and as academics, we are taught to explicitly label and categorize objects of study or our own experiences using language. It is what we are taught from the moment we are able to utter phonemes, build phrases, and ultimately use oral, written, visual, or other forms of expression to explain a thought, feeling, or experience. While Buckingham (2023) and Wilde (2022) cull attention towards the need for clarifying the meaning behind “information,” they also raise caution about dogmatic definitions which lack attention to the multiple social, cultural, economic, and political structures that impact how media or society is constructed. Brayton and Casey (2019) also offer an imperative key takeaway from their experiences facilitating their CMIL course with undergraduates in a conservative political context. They view bringing criticality into one’s pedagogical practices as a privilege which is not always available to librarians and educators in certain sociopolitical contexts.

The pressing demands of media education occur amidst parallel pandemics related to public health, anti-Blackness and other forms of racism, economic instability, and the climate crisis (Ladson-Billings, year, p. 2021, pp. 166-167). It is necessary that we tighten up our critical theoretical and pedagogical frameworks and our commitment to advancing justice. With this in mind, to move towards greater criticality in media education requires a multifaceted approach which includes the more technical and skills-based approaches alongside critical frameworks. According to Masterman (1985), any teacher, student, parent, organization, governing entity, or concerned member of society serious about advancing media literacy must be invited as a partner in the struggle for a media education that emboldens students’ critical autonomy.

If ever, we are to enable media education that advances social and environmental rights towards thriveable and just futures, then it is imperative to disrupt the traditional silos of academia as well as within our own fields towards a more synergistic approach. This requires an elastic openness to one another about expanding the theories and practices that have defined (or frustrated) our fields, or that have yielded fragmentation between us. In order to more comprehensively tackle the complex issues which are degrading our personhood and infringing upon human and more-than-human rights, we must further consider our responsibility to ourselves and our global community. For advocates of media education, whether critical or more traditional, it is imperative to return to Masterman’s (1985) question, “Why teach the media?” (p. 1). Perhaps if we sit and critically reflect on this question, hold space, and engage in open dialogic exchanges with one another, we can come to a greater understanding of the common challenges we are trying to address as media educators. Perhaps then, we can further evolve our thinking and actions to respond to our collective ‘whys,’ together.

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