Radical Media Literacy: Self-Defence in The Communication Age

In capitalist societies, it is sometimes difficult to see the media’s social good. Between framed news a hair’s-breadth from the propaganda witnessed under authoritarian regimes, and a deluge of Social Media platforms taking over the role of societal depressant from drugs, sex and undeniably hypnotic Saturday-night television, the dangers facing media illiterate audiences have increased exponentially. The never-ending cycle of trashy advertisements, whether political or commercial, moulding audiences into well-trained consumers devoid of criticality is but one frightening facet of the cultural ecosystem we are all currently subservient to. Despite the obvious benefit of such systems in facilitating worldwide dialogue, it has to be questioned whether such a benefit can be considered meaningful within the context of anti-democratic media outlets controlling said dialogue and restricting the general population’s access to basic media, information and critical literacy. Restrictions ranging from biassed news reporting to lobbying against arts and social science education in order to curtail critical thought and suppress popular consciousness.

Sadly, this state of affairs is most harmful to communities without economic and political power such as the working-class, who have no organised (nor widespread) means by which to defend themselves, let alone represent their interests. It has therefore become necessary for those of us working in fields even tangentially concerned with media (‘communicators’ and ‘educators’) to support such an effort. Fortunately, the seeds of this project already exist on university campuses and in self-managed social centres all over the world, but haven’t yet seen the light of day. Possibly for their radical nature. Possibly for the threat they pose to the established order. If we are to stand any chance of defending ourselves from the dangers of capitalist communication, the access to training and (counter) information surrounding media (let’s call it ‘radical media literacy’) provided by these closed spaces must become more freely accessible, say through existing services like the Public Library.

The Communication Age

21st Century audiences are defined by their relations to media. Media shape how we think, feel and act, publicly and privately. We consume products and vote for political parties on the basis of how well we have been groomed to do so by media experiences. With this in mind, it is important to clarify that although we as audiences are complicit in our own subjugation, our collective dissociation does not come about in a vacuum. Rather, this subtle conditioning relies on a symbiosis of capitalistic ‘structure’ and ‘content’, each of which exploit our need for information in order to generate profit and maintain the status quo.

Media outlets are usually organised vertically. Like all corporations, they are run by an absolute executive who wields their editorial outlook as a king would their divine right to rule. Final say over the direction of practically all modern news and entertainment rests in the hands of either a single individual or an oligarchy of shareholders whose every decision is influenced by maximum profit. It matters little whether said individual has a social conscience, as their decisions are preordained by virtue of being the figurehead of a capitalist organisation. Ultimately, this leads such an organisation to equate information with monetary value, prioritising one-way dissemination of information that relies on its audiences’ lack of critical thought in order to be effective. In fact, the content of this information often doesn’t matter so much as the fact that we are being trained to sit back and be shaped. It is the case after all, as Marshall McLuhan famously pointed out, that “the medium is the message”. Examples of media well-suited to the authoritarian needs of contemporary media outlets include traditional Radio, Television and Film, each of which act as large-scale instructors with little room for two-way dialogue. Audiences on the receiving end of these media experiences simply get comfortable and prepare to be informed, whether or not the information they are receiving is detrimental. With that in mind, it is easy to see how close these examples of more traditional media draw to Paulo Freire’s “banking model of education”, whereby students are docile “banks” in which teachers deposit knowledge.

While in the last twenty years Social Media has levelled the playing field with regard to audience participation in media, the very nature of platforms like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok make the kind of face-to-face interaction required by Freirian dialogic action to be effective, impossible. Whilst audiences have now become their own distributors and curators of information, to an extent reclaiming this role from the likes of News Corp, there is a propensity (coupled with the power) for us to censor views we disagree with via the block button, or even to magnify those we agree with through a simple repost. ‘Clickbait’, a phenomenon seen across Social Media platforms, exploits this kind of confirmation bias by incentivising instantaneous gratification over critical engagement with often misleading information. In a sense, the two-way dissemination model employed by Social Media companies, which are still capitalistic in nature and thus driven by profit maximisation, is much too vast and nebulous to invoke true positive social change, instead facilitating the tried-and-tested neoliberal strategy of atomisation. A strategy which, in turn, sows toxic communication between users who cannot interact in person, and can therefore more easily dehumanise—a clever means of muddying the socio-political waters and upholding hegemonic power.

While the most aspirational solution to anti-democratic media would be creating a liberatory alternative from the grassroots up, such a strategy requires that educators and communicators first do two things: grapple with the dangers of ‘content’ and provide a means of self-defence from it. As touched upon above, given the necessity for corporations to profit under capitalism, there is a requirement for media corporations’ products (information) to make money. Most often this takes the form of advertising and personal data exchange between corporate parties, seen most infamously in the recent case of Cambridge Analytica. Interestingly, this commodification also manifests in film, television programmes and lifestyle magazines by way of disguising sales as native advertising. Rather famously, a vast majority of the revenue generated from the Star Wars franchise comes through merchandising rather than the films themselves, demonstrating billion-dollar content as a means of directing an audience’s trained desire to consume into wider markets. It is precisely these capitalistic content effects that radical media literacy seeks to challenge.

Literacy as Self-Defence

The good news is that a blueprint for radical media literacy already exists. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire outlines the most illustrative example of such a concept in both theory and practice. Through his “banking model of education” Freire explores the means by which didactic education systems under capitalism entrench rather than displace subservience, discouraging students from questioning the information that they are expected to internalise. This relationship (like having money deposited in an empty piggy-bank) deprives the working-class of an environment for investigating their social reality, in much the same way as media do for illiterate consumers. Freire’s most important contribution to the concept of radical media literacy is his assertion that overcoming the harmful relationship between teacher and student, state and citizen, can be achieved through the process of “dialogic action”: the act of challenging and understanding the nature of state violence through participatory practice. With this in mind, it is possible to see the same Freirian principles underpinning a discussion of misinformation or propaganda intrinsic to capitalist media.         

Fast forward several years to Umberto Eco’s Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, an essay making much the same argument as Freire though in the context of “The Communications Era”: a historical epoch defined by hierarchically-organised communication infrastructure (mass media) and its power to shape the popular consciousness of a global audience. As the title suggests, Eco’s big idea is “semiological guerrilla warfare”, a strategy imploring nominal “guerrillas” to “occupy, in every part of the world, the first chair in front of every TV set…”. In other words, both to engage communities in the construction of their own media and to proliferate a general critical literacy to every consumer, thereby negating the capacity for centralised outlets to influence the popular consciousness. Much like Freire’s “dialogic action”, Eco’s “semiological guerrilla warfare” is firmly rooted in participatory action, seeking a decentralisation of decision-making and knowledge into the hands of the oppressed, so that they may utilise it in their pursuit of social justice.

Today, broadly speaking, media, information and critical literacy are each devoid of the revolutionary aspect called on by Freire, Eco and their contemporaries. Whether by way of training consumers to be docile or manufacturing consent for war and resource extraction, media organisations under capitalism are fundamentally political and should be treated as such. For a radical media literacy to be taken up as a form of self-defence, it must accept and highlight the structural barriers preventing meaningful social change. After all, media do not exist in isolation; the largest levers of cultural power are held by a capitalistic elite with biases that force them to preserve their power over the poor and oppressed. Identifying the system is a good start to dismantling it and recognising how it influences the social realities of students, something which, Freire would assert, leads to the kind of organisation and social action necessary to build freer communities.

Revisiting the Public Library

Unfortunately, radical media literacy has sheltered in the purview of academics, researchers and activist circles, rendering such knowledge inaccessible at best and outright censured at worst. Despite the best efforts of critical pedagogues like Freire to proliferate the principles of dialogue and participatory action amongst communities of poor workers, these principles have become the buzzwords of research institutes trying and failing to grasp, by their very hierarchical nature, the need for them to be put into practice by the oppressed. All of this begs the question as to how we, as ‘communicators’ and ‘educators’, can begin the process of transitioning radical media literacy from lecture theatres and info-shops into the public arena. This is where, I contend, public libraries have a vital role to play.

With the propensity for capitalism to depoliticise information and thereby use it to mould the will of recipients, as described earlier, public libraries have come under increasing pressure to censor radical texts, discourage access and move towards a Fisherian “business ontology” entailing the professionalisation of library workers and the coupling of economic value with information. In other words, this traditionally free-at-the-point-of-use service must make money to compete in a capitalist economy. Under this pressure, and with minimal changes to the fundamental functions of public libraries, these spaces have the potential to become engines of community dialogue and organisation against harmful propaganda.

First and foremost, it must be recognised that today’s public libraries already serve as accessible refuges for vulnerable individuals. Those who, in a manner of speaking, already exist on the periphery of capitalist social relations and have perhaps even suffered from them. The elderly immediately spring to mind as frequent library users, as well as those who are most cruelly endangered by, and susceptible to, the influence of media narratives. Examples of narratives targeted at the elderly include the false relationship between immigration and resource scarcity and the existence of a ‘mythically perfect national past’. This second example is particularly apparent in the distorted mythology deployed by U.S. Republicans, one which all but erases the existence of minority groups from American history, harkening to an alleged time when life in the country was some utopian meadow. One has simply to switch on the T.V. to see similar mythologies becoming popular all around the world.

Importantly, this narrative appeals to the desire for safety, community and stability in an increasingly tumultuous world, never mind the fact that such tumult is caused by the same right-wing commitment to hierarchy and ruthlessness. With this in mind, it is not only in the interests of vulnerable groups to engage with media on a critical and radical level, but is inseparable from their right to defend themselves from its forces. Whilst recognising that radical media literacy is no substitute for direct material support, for libraries to support the process of conscientization amongst their users, to help prompt self-organisation and social change, is a service that cannot be overstated.

Secondly, the natural structure of public libraries as perhaps the last truly socialised service left uncommodified by capitalism lends itself to the anti-capitalist and democratic processes intrinsic to participatory and dialogic learning. Put simply, the combined lack of a profit motive and emphasis on shared resources within libraries makes them perfect environments for anti-capitalist critique. Libraries, in this sense, are already living, breathing engines of freely-accessible knowledge residing in the blindspots of a system that seeks always to turn information into a resource for wealth-accumulation. If ‘radical media practitioners’ (e.g., anyone involved in the process of teaching and learning radical media literacy) were to combine the access provided by libraries, which today extends beyond just the written word and includes visual, audio and sensory media, with the dialogue necessary for critical engagement, community-based social change would be just around the corner. Given the drought of emancipatory spaces under capitalism, it would be a waste not to fulfil the revolutionary potential of the Public Library.

Spaces for the Future         

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of capitalist media are their ubiquity. The effects of authoritarian communication can be felt throughout the world in almost every social issue. Whether through flawed climate reporting, the regurgitation of debunked immigration narratives or ongoing commitment to a growth-centric and hyper-individualised worldview, media are the most significant roadblocks to genuine social change because they influence everything. With that in mind, an intersectional approach to identifying and resisting media effects is crucial. By extension, while a transformation of media structures is sorely needed, it must be said that to do so requires dialogue, agitation and organisation from the grassroots upwards. Offered here is just one aspect of such a programme; one that reimagines media, critical and information literacy as a form of revolutionary self-defence in the interests of the working-class. Though the roll-out of such a programme will inevitably lead to the creation of new spaces for cultural resistance, it is important to co-opt such spaces for critique and learning that already exist. The Public Library is one such space that cannot be taken for granted, lest, like other universal services under late-stage capitalism, it is forced into privatisation.

All of this begs the question as to what activities might take place in these ‘spaces for the future’. In other words, what does radical media literacy look like in practice? Although local needs are fundamental to any autonomous project, I recommend three potential programmes for those looking to either transform their public library or create an alternative in the community: ‘screenings and readings’, ‘personal media practice’ and/or ‘collective media practice’.

By ‘screenings and readings’ I refer to critical engagement with media of a radical, anti-capitalist persuasion. In the context of the public library, this might entail the public screening of a video with important social themes; ideally ones with relevance to the local community. Broadening critical engagement with visual texts is vital to proliferating the psychological self-defence advocated as part of radical media literacy. In tandem with, or instead of, video screenings, library workers might be more comfortable facilitating book clubs, something akin to their current duties. Though it may be a pipe dream to imagine the average library-user interested in some work of high theory, it is entirely plausible and probably more desirable for them to brush shoulders with the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin, George Orwell or Nanni Balestrini, authors of easily-accessible fiction discussing alternative viewpoints. Of course, these kinds of activities require dialogue and participatory action in order to achieve their aim of raising consciousness, though, in accordance with Freire’s own method of problem-posing education, one simply poses the problem by way of a book or video rather than direct investigation.

A more popular activity might be facilitating ‘personal’ and ‘collective’ media practice. By this I mean the provision of media production skills and equipment like digital/smartphone cameras. In learning to use a camera to capture their social experience, audiences are not only put in the mindset of creator but encouraged to investigate their communities, highlighting the issues that matter to them, in turn facilitating dialogue about how best to overcome them.

If we are to take Freire’s model of problem-posing education as a reference point, as done so earlier, one replaces the external investigator with a group of co-investigators working together to learn and share their ideas. This practice can be carried out on a personal level, with a programme taking inspiration from “photovoice” projects seen in Greece and elsewhere, or on a collective level in the form of a community newsletter or radio station, assuming the technology and training can be provided. Moreover, through the lens of “makerspaces”, media theorist David Gauntlett argues that the very act of media production can facilitate a transformation in the self-conception (or identity) of a “maker”, citing hacker-labs, libraries and museums as pre-existing examples. Either way, the tangible and deliberative processes entailed by projects of this kind require face-to-face communication, knowledge sharing and go some way in offering service users an alternative to Social Media’s pseudo-participatory mechanisms, while laying the groundwork for further consciousness raising.

All in all, it is not just desirable but necessary for critical, media and information literacy to become radicalised, so that audiences, who have for too long been on the receiving end of harmful media effects, stand a chance of fighting back. I feel strongly that it is entirely possible (if not inevitable) for the projects and ideas mentioned above to play a key role in liberating the working-class from hegemonic structures. The real unknown is whether or not, when offered the opportunity, we will take it. Call me naïve but I have an inkling that, with the right training and space, we will.

Bibliography

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Kukreja, R. (2022). Migrant workers are flipping the script and using Photovoice to tell their own stories. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/migrant-workers-are-flipping-the-script-and-using-photovoice-to-tell-their-own-stories-180500.

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