Media Literacy in Primary and Secondary Education: The Core Issues Within the American Media Literacy Curriculum

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Submitted in part fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science in Media Studies

Media Literacy in Primary and Secondary

Education: The Core Issues Within the

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Faculty of Media Studies: Social Media and Digital Culture

University of Amsterdam

June 2016

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Chapter 1 - Introduction

“If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [Creative] and economic life.” — The New London Group

At age 23, my American friend, Giulia, believed she could do anything after finishing her Bachelor’s degree in Communication. Strong with ambition, she set her mind on getting professional experience in her field before starting her master’s degree. All seemed easy until she was confronted to the job search and application process. She began looking for job opportunities all over the Internet and, as a naive young woman who was just beginning to discover the real professional world, she did not expect the job hunt to be so tedious. After two months of searching, she came to several conclusions. Most companies were very demanding regarding the skills and competencies required to obtain any position within the fields of communication, public relations or marketing. Companies frequently required entry-level candidates to have language skills (often two languages - English and an EU language), analytical and critical skills, a high level of motivation and, media and/or digital skills amongst others. The most intriguing to her was neither the language skills nor the motivation aspect of applying for a specific function. Rather, she did not feel qualified for the media and digital skills that were expected from her. She did not feel strongly about her media literacy level regardless of learning many things through her primary, secondary school and university education. Sure, she learned how to analyze and find meaning behind certain print media texts such as newspapers or magazines in secondary school but it seemed to all remain superficial. Yet outside of school she would read print or online newspapers once in awhile and she would go on social media to connect with her peers but she doubted her abilities to perform in a professional setting. She found it difficult to understand why all professional jobs demanded, to some extent, a high level of media literacy regardless of the discipline while she simultaneously questioned her own deficiency. With a strong drive to improve, she particularly began wondering about these media literacy skills. As fulfilling as her educational career had been up to here, Giulia saw a lack of emphasis on media literacy within the educational institutions she attended in the United States. She then realized that her educational path could have benefited from a heightened curriculum based on media literacy skills and knowledge in order for her to feel more at ease now that she searched for a job opportunity.

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Furthermore, the expansion of technologies into people’s daily lives is inherently connected to the evolution of media literacy. As vital as ever, there is a constant need to understand technological functioning and adapt to the fast growing digital conversion of the corporate world. To effectively respond to corporations’ increasing demand for high quality graduates, the first step would be to further emphasize media literacy as part of the educational process leading to enhance one’s personal and professional skills (Brown and Scase 9). By giving one more control over media messages through media literacy, one could make better use of its information and be less affected by the amount of media messages they are confronted to on a daily basis (Potter The State of Media Literacy 680).

By starting with the fundamental teaching environments provided by schools as well as families, youth (specifically focusing on primary and secondary school children and teenagers) can learn the appropriate knowledge and skills to consume and produce media in the best possible way. In our current society, teenagers around the world spend more and more time-consuming entertainment media (television, Internet, popular music, movies, and videogames). For example, the United States estimated that kids between the ages of 8 and 18 have a media consumption of 6 to 8 hours per day (Livingstone and Bovill, 130; Hobbs

United Nations Literacy Decade). For both print and online media, young people necessitate

media literacy skills and knowledge which, on the long term, will help them become full and active participants within society (Jenkins et al 1; Hobbs United Nations Literacy Decade).

In the USA specifically, media literacy education is not as advanced as other English speaking countries like the United Kingdom or Canada. Despite decades of struggle since the 1970s by individuals and groups, media education is still only reaching a small percentage of K/12 schools in the US. While some major inroads have been made, such as getting elements of media literacy included in most of the 50 state’s educational standards and the launching of two national media education organizations, most teachers and students in the USA are not aware of issues involved in media literacy education (Kellner and Share 369).

Indeed, media literacy is a topic that has been debated over decades and still seems to bring up questions or doubt when evoked. The changing nature of media literacy by its definition and the skills and knowledge it necessitates will be the main interest of this dissertation.

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Definition of Literacy and Media Literacy’s Context

To begin, literacy needs to be clearly understood. Literacy entails acquiring the skills and knowledge to “read, interpret, and produce certain types of texts and artifacts” (Kellner & Share 369). Most importantly, one’s full participation in culture and society through the usage of intellectual tools and capacities are key to the concept of literacy. From both traditionalists and reformists’ viewpoint, literacy and education are closely connected. Literacy includes building up competencies required in actively learning and making use of constructed types of communication and representation.

In this dissertation, the topic of media literacy will be discussed in detail. Therefore, in addition to define the term media literacy, it is also necessary to evaluate its context. Media literacy has built up various definitions and sparked many debates over the years. Scholars tend to interpret media literacy as a necessity for many reasons. Adams and Hamm (2001) for example, see media literacy as something an individual needs to acquire in order to create meaning and build one’s own opinion about a topic. They state that media literacy refers to the “ability to create personal meaning from the visual and verbal symbols [one] takes in every day from television, advertising, film, and digital media. It is more than inviting students to simply decode information. They must be critical thinkers who can understand and produce in the media swirling around them” (33). Other scholars such as Barton and Hamilton (1998) define the concept as something with social values and refer to it as “primarily something people do”. They note that literacy is like an activity, between thought and text that involves more than just a set of skills in people’s heads. In fact, media literacy tends to become a needed ability in human interactions and human behavior (Barton and Hamilton 3; Fernández 88; Potter The State 676). To the social aspect, some scholars also include political and cultural factors to the media literacy description. Sholle and Densky (1995) determined media literacy to be a conceived as a social, political and cultural practice (17).

Regardless of the social aspect, the most common definition yet regarding media literacy is the “ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate messages in a variety of forms” (Hobbs 2007; The National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy 1993; National Leadership Conference on Media; The National Telemedia Council). In this context, it is important to comprehend what type of media are involved in media literacy. Over the past few decades, media literacy has evolved and focused on print, television and visual media to, more recently, expand to multimedia, computer and digital media (Potter The State of

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media seems to have taken a bigger role within society. As such, education needs to address the challenges of this technological revolution that led to new educational, cultural and social practices. Teachers have to expand the concept of literacy and develop new curricula and pedagogies within primary and secondary education.

Structure of the thesis

The structure of the thesis will be divided into five sections. After introducing the topic of media literacy and its relevance in the current academic field, the literature review will be carried out and will include three main theories, which will be supported by relevant case studies. Interested in Media Theory and Media Literacy and Effects, the American W. James Potter believes media literacy is crucial to be able to navigate through the current flow of information of our media-saturated society. He brings to light the problem young people have to keep up with the flow of information. He also guides us to better understanding the media world and bringing awareness around their repetitive attempts to influence us. Potter’s theory will be followed by a case study on the Dutch Nieuws in de klas association. Meant to increase students’ media literacy levels through the news, Nieuws in de klas will evaluate and discuss the feasibility of Potter’s solutions to enhance media literacy.

Then, we will go through the theories of the American scholar, Danah Boyd, who analyzed more specifically the teenagers and their media literacy challenges encountered within the American society. With the use of Media Literacy Week, an annual event to promote media literacy amongst children and teenagers in Canada, Boyd’s solutions to improve youth’s media literacy levels will be examined to further evaluate their feasibility.

Furthermore, we will explore Henry Jenkins’ theories by examining the concept of participatory culture being put forward as a key component to young people’s integration in society as responsible citizens. Participatory culture’s core challenges will be detailed to discuss the potential solutions of these challenges to the case study on a specific media platform. YouTube is a site where a lot can happen for its users. In fact, YouTube is known to be part of the “makers’ culture” as users can consume and produce media content. Finally, the theoretical frameworks and their case studies will give insight on the core issues to increase media literacy amongst young people in American education. With this, we will conclude the thesis with the most relevant findings and future steps to follow to boost the current education curriculum in the United States.

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Research Questions

The purpose of the thesis will be to understand and dig deeper into the topic of media literacy and its evolution through time in American education (primary and secondary school) as digital media began to emerge. In analyzing this, we will further examine the current core issues within the American educational institutions and attempt to provide solutions to them. This dissertation will therefore focus on the following main questions: (1) How has the understanding of media literacy changed over time with the emergence of new technologies? (2) What are the core issues for children in primary and secondary school to increase their media literacy levels within the American education? (3) What are the possible solutions to increase youth’s media literacy levels and are they applicable?

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Chapter 2 Chapter 2: W. James Potter and Media

Literacy

The second chapter will discuss W. James Potter traditional concept of media literacy. The notion of media literacy will be examined in relation to educational institutions and curriculum in the United States for primary and secondary school children.

Firstly, it is important to mention that most people believe they are reasonably media literate. Most often, one knows how to access various forms of media to find information, online games, music and other types of entertainment. According to Potter, we are clearly aware of “how to expose ourselves to the media, absorb information from them, be entertained by them, and use them to create our own messages and share them with others” (xv). Indeed, most people are media literate. Yet the information the Internet provides could be used for more than entertainment purposes. Many societies have started to preserve information and develop knowledge via artificial memory systems, which are current essential resources. The online information can now inform and instruct anyone interested in a specific field (Säljö 5).

Media literacy in the evolving multimedia environment is arguably more important than ever (Kellner & Share 370). The American society could particularly be much more media literate and other media areas could be further explored by gaining a better control over media exposure. This is possible if one’s knowledge of the media is expanded to a broader view (Potter xv). In his book, he states that “to survive in our information-saturated culture, we put our minds on “automatic pilot” to protect ourselves from the flood of media messages we constantly encounter. The danger with this automatic processing of messages is that it allows the mass media to condition our thought process” (Potter 2). To avoid those risks, media literacy in education is important as it is the first step in learning how to control the flow of information, which students can be confronted to on a daily basis in and out of school infrastructures. Students are increasingly growing up into a rich digital media environment. Essential for the comprehension of the digital evolution, both notions of digital natives and digital immigrants necessitate clarification as they are often used in academic writing. These two terms show light on the fact that today’s students think and treat information entirely differently in comparison to their predecessors. Digital natives are born in the digital world and have a better sense of how to use the media available to them while, in contrast, digital immigrants are not born in the digital world and thus, need to further adapt to technology.

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Expert in the field of education, Marc Prensky states that students in the current education system no longer respond as efficiently to traditional learning methods. The distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants is most likely due to their radically different types of experiences that led them to have different brain structures. In fact, digital natives thinking pattern changed (Prensky Digital Natives 2). Nevertheless, their interest for technology as ““native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” could be a potential idea of improvement in education on the long term (Prensky

Digital Natives 2). Media literacy would be a significant factor to this improvement, which has

already taken place in several other educational systems (Säljö 5). The topic of digital natives and digital immigrants will be further expanded later in this chapter.

Nevertheless, researchers have observed a historical advancement regarding literacy from “classic literacy (reading, writing and understanding) to audiovisual literacy to digital literacy or information literacy and more recently to new media literacy” (Chen, Wu & Wang 84). In the 21st century, the progression of new media has become so impressive that it has infiltrated every aspect of the current society and, with time, students have migrated towards new media (Chen, Wu & Wang 84). The crucial concepts of traditional media now need to be blended with the contributions of these new forms of media. Students require help in navigating the new-media labyrinth to “create [a] narrative that is coherent, relevant and meaningful” (Ohler, 31). This is why media literacy plays a vital role for the full participation of any citizens, especially youth, in the 21st century society.

Media Literacy and Its Characteristics

In his 2014 book “Media Literacy”, Potter defined media literacy as:

“A set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the mass media to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter.” (Potter 25)

Additionally, media literacy has two essential characteristics: media literacy is multidimensional and media literacy is a continuum (Potter 25-27). Media literacy and its multidimensional aspects refer to the fact that one needs to gain cognitive knowledge. The cognitive dimension is one type of information that includes sets of facts from textbooks, magazines and more. Besides the cognitive dimension, one also needs to consider information from other dimensions such as emotional, aesthetic and moral. All four dimensions converge towards a specific area of understanding. Cognitive perspective gives an understanding of factual information including dates, names or definitions while an emotional understanding reflects upon feelings like embarrassment, anger, love and

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happiness. The emotional dimension applies when attempting to read emotion through a media message, which is an ability to acquire further comprehension of a message. Producers of media content often use symbols to trigger and transmit these emotions to the consumer who reads print and online written materials. These symbols frequently do not necessitate a high level of literacy but the subtler emotions also need to be understood. To understand these subtler emotions, media literacy comes into play to decrypt them and, thus, better comprehend the media messages (Potter 25-26). To produce media messages, information is required and can be obtained through the third area of understanding: aesthetic. The information helps us judge different domains of expertize and make a distinction between good and bad writers, photographers, performers and other types of entertainers and artists. For many scholars such as Messaris, the aesthetic qualities within media messages are essential. Visual literacy is intertwined with this dimension of understanding, as the processes through which meanings of visual messages can be understood should be made highly aware of (Potter 26; Messaris 70). The fourth and last dimension of media literacy, the moral domain, involves information regarding values. Moral information relies on the ability to distinguish what is good or bad, right or wrong. According to Potter, “the more detailed and redefined our moral information is, the more deeply we can perceive the values underlying messages in the media and the more sophisticated and reasoned are our judgments about those values. It takes a highly media-literate person to perceive moral themes well” (26). By acquiring all four dimensions, it allows for a complete understanding of the obvious and subtle media messages and meanings. All in all, one’s media literacy perspective needs to include all four domains.

Why Increase Media Literacy?

According to Carmen Luke whose interest is media studies and new media, media education needs to go beyond simply examining the production of meaning. She stated that critical media studies must ‘‘extend to explorations of how individual and corporate sense-making tie in with larger socio-political issues of culture, gender, class, political economy, nation, and power’’ (Luke 31).

Like Luke, Potter focuses on the reasons why media literacy should be further developed throughout society. He associates media literacy’s slow increase to three features:

• The information problem;

• The issue with dealing with the information; and

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Firstly, the information problem reflects upon the growth of information which is continuously expanding and which can be difficult to keep up with. The media messages saturating our culture are the point of origin of this information problem. The growth of saturation is speeding up at a very fast pace leading people to be more and more confronted to a high degree of exposure as they spend more time on media messages due to its high attractiveness (Potter 4-5). This could eventually lead to a wider issue as we have a tendency to protect ourselves by avoiding most media messages online and, despite them having a higher value to us, setting our minds on automatic pilot. The media messages’ meanings are generally accepted but these can provide a higher risk of being faulty (Potter 11). One also attempts to keep up with this growing flow of information and high degree of exposure. People then multitask as a means to keep up with the online content. Even if multitasking does increase the level of exposure to information as one would be on several online platforms at once. It does not help to get ahead of the information saturation (Potter 6).

Secondly, media messages are constantly delivered to everyone, everywhere. Thus, dealing

with the information problem includes three factors: the challenge of selection, the automatic

routines and the advantages and disadvantages of automatic routines. The saturation and high exposure to information can firstly be controlled via good selections. The selection can be difficult when people are confronted to millions of messages every minute of every hour of every day. The best way to filter all content is to have a specific idea of the information needed then use search engines such as Google or Yahoo, for instance, while using keywords to find the relevant material and then sort the results. Nevertheless, this system still remains problematic as search engines such as Google gives us hundreds, thousands or millions of results to our query. Search engines are efficient to reduce the numbers of results very quickly but the overwhelming number of choices is still hard to deal with. People need an additional way of filtering the search results offered to them. To further filter, automatic routines are put into place to fulfill this role. These routines are “sequences and behaviors or thoughts that we learn from experience and then apply again and again with little effort” (Potter 7). By learning a sequence or routine, your brain will adjust faster and will be able to filter information with little mental efforts in comparison to when you first started learning the sequence. We encounter media messages everyday in a state of automatic processing, which means that we do not consider all messages. While going through the media messages, your mind can be triggered by a word or sound, which will attract your attention and then the automatic processing will stop to allow the mind to focus on the trigger related to a particular media content (Potter 8). Nevertheless, advantages and disadvantages come with the automatic processing. On one hand, automatic processing

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allows us to make a great number of decisions with very little mental effort. On the other hand, we start making poor exposure decisions due to the fact that we believe the value of most messages are low and irrelevant to our query, which might not always be the case. Less mental effort reduces concentration while simultaneously having a higher exposure level but this unfortunately does not translate into an increased level of learning (Potter 9).

Thirdly, the big question is the last issue to the increase of media literacy amongst the American population. The big question refers to the knowledge of who is programming the computer code that governs people’s automatic processing. To know more about who influences us to program our codes in a particular way, the subquestion converges around the fact that the “who” can help us gain useful information while it can also push us in the wrong direction. This can result in wrong decision-making, wasting personal resources, time and money (Potter 10). Being media literate can help one comprehend and distinguish whether one’s consumption is good or bad. A media literate person will know how to gather relevant information while applying effective automatic routines techniques.

All in all, people cannot avoid the constant flow of information that tries to catch the “consumer” eye. Putting our brain on automatic pilot mode to protect ourselves, can also have some disadvantages During our automated state, we allow the media to condition us to habitual exposure patterns that lead us to pay attention to the media messages planned for us, rather than the media messages which are most valuable to us. This leads to a higher risk of accepting certain meanings that are faulty.

The Potential Solutions to The Three Problems

In regards to the above three issues, Potter thought of possible solutions to increase and maintain high levels of media literacy within American youth. He presents this in a twofold explanation where he clarifies how to help yourself and how to help other to achieve this goal (423).

We will focus on three main areas need to be considered that can improve the literacy levels of students in primary and secondary schools in the United States. To solve the issues, each individual (yourself), parents and educational institutions need to change. Helping yourself is the mandatory key to helping others such as parents and schools.

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Helping Yourself

His key idea is the following: “You have the power to develop media literacy strategies to influence society and other individuals, but first you need to increase your own level of media literacy” (424). He set twelve guidelines to follow in order to first improve your own media literacy level:

• Strengthen Your Personal Locus

• Focus on Usefulness as a Goal

• Develop an Accurate Awareness of Your Exposure

• Acquire a Broad Base of Useful Knowledge • Think About the Reality-Fantasy Continuum

• Examine Your Mental Codes

• Examine Your Opinions • Change Behaviors

• Make Cross-Channel Comparisons

• Become More Skilled at Designing Images

• Do Not Take Privacy for Granted • Take Personal Responsibility

These twelve aspects will improve one’s personal media literacy levels but there are also other aspects to be mastered to then be able to teach others. In this context, one has to take into account the four dimensions mentioned previously (cognitive, emotional, aesthetic and moral) in the form of learning ladders (Potter 25-27). To improve our media literacy level, we first have the cognitive ladder which begins with the awareness and ability to perceive media messages’ informative elements through the use of analysis. After becoming proficient in perceiving media messages’ subtle information, the next step consists of understanding and perceiving the essential components forming the media messages and classifying them according to their relation to one another. In order to use these components as templates for future comparison with present-day messages, one needs to be able to evaluate them by means of good contextual information. With the cognitive aspect in the knowledge structure, one can understand the producer’s media messages and their valuable elements (432).

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The second dimension to increase one’s own level of media literacy is the emotional ladder. At low levels of emotional advancement, people’s emotions are controlling them such as for instance, someone crying at a movie theater and not being able to stop. While people with high level of emotional development have control over their emotions and can consequently use the media at their advantage. In fact, they can use the media as a way to shape and control their emotions. If people are aware of what they are doing, then the use of media to manage moods is a sign of high levels of media literacy. This is only the case if people consciously use the media to satisfy a particular need. (432)

The third dimension related to the moral ladder necessitates the development of conceptions in regards to the ethical nature of media messages. If one has a low level on the moral ladder they will most likely trust and accept someone else’s opinion or base their opinion on pure intuition. On a higher level, one will analyze the overall narrative of the media message instead of just focusing on individual characters and, thus, will reinforce their own values. A high moral level reflects upon one’s ability to have different moral perspectives on a media narrative (433).

The fourth dimension includes the aesthetic appreciation ladder. A high level of aesthetic appreciation means one can enjoy and appreciate the media content they are exposed to while lower levels of aesthetic appreciation will lead one to categorical opinion of the media being good or bad. For instance, the TV show “Friends” is more enjoyable when one understands the media content as a text that provides insight on the contemporary culture which we can identify ourselves with. Through the understanding of the processes, “Friends” visual media creates meaning. Whereas, a low level of reasoning leads to a more intuitive decision (expressed here as a narrowed opinion) and viewers cannot effectively explain what they like within the TV show (433).

Helping Others

Further resolutions to promote youth’s participation in society through media literacy are comprised in four categories: interpersonal and societal techniques, interventions and public education. Even though the main focus of this dissertation is linked to school’s teaching infrastructures, additional actors play a role in increasing literacy in society as a whole and they are necessary to comprehend before digging deeper into the field of education.

Especially useful for parenting, the interpersonal method refers to the use of informal things people do on a daily basis to help others - often children - with media literacy. The effects of these methods depend from a family (or a child) to another and some techniques work while some do not. Within these interpersonal methods, rules, co-viewing and active mediation are

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three various means of educating children on media which will gradually develop their media literacy (Potter 436). Nonetheless, restrictive mediations and rules have yet to disclose their effectiveness (436). The technique of co-viewing on television and the Internet implies that the parent(s) co-views media content with the child or teenager in close proximity.

Then, active mediation seems more effective than other techniques as it helps children reduce “unwanted effects from viewing television”. It appears to be most successful in enabling children to question what they see on media like news television for example. In fact, children’s interpretation and emotional response is influenced when parents actively mediate with them during media viewing. By continuously asking questions, children engage in a thinking process of the means of actions, words, pictures, and more. Active mediation also lowers aggression and decreases the manipulation of advertising (Potter 437). Many benefits can arise from parents’ involvement in teaching their children about media.

The second solution applied to media literacy development involves societal methods such as bringing public awareness of the issue or encouraging certain changes through a particular part of society like the government or other institutions (446).

The third method that can be applied in relation to improving media literacy in the American society are interventions. Unlike interpersonal methods, this involves formal interventions that allow one to achieve a specific media literacy aim. In education, interventions are frequently present through the means of mini-conferences, seminars, media materials and so on, discussing particularly issues with a targeted group. By doing so, the selected target group will avoid experiencing a risk of media messages’ exposure when receiving essential information and insight on a specific subject.

The fourth aspect and most relevant for this dissertation is the increase of levels of media literacy in public education. Unlike the family environment, public education entails reaching a larger amount of people at once and appears to be the place to start educating and training people to increase their levels of media literacy, outside of the family education. In comparison to other countries such as Great Britain or Canada, it has been observed that the USA is behind on implementing their educational curriculum and courses to allow students to increase their media literacy levels (Potter 442; Brown 49; Kellner and Share 369). The fact that the United States are falling behind is a major issue as they are the country with the highest amount of media-saturated online content in the whole world. The U.S. are focusing their time and money towards media consumption but disregards the importance of media education. The barrier to the development of media literacy in education appears to be partly due to the lack of centralized decision-making when it comes

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to education in the different states of the U.S. (Potter 443). Indeed, the 50 states in the United States include over 15,000 school districts with separate administration systems which means that the decision power mainly originates from a local perspective (Brown 51). The USA needs to make potential radical changes in their curriculum and “to succeed, a curricular program of media literacy must be developed through collaboration among teachers, administrators, specialists, and parents, who together must build it into the systematic educational process” (Brown 52). To achieve such changes, a high level of engagement needs to happen from both educators and parents. Overall, public education in the U.S. is falling behind on teaching youth about media literacy but they have the opportunities to turn this deficiency around. By putting several strategies into place, the USA can catch up on media education. Public education should agree on the curriculum and include media literacy at a higher level than what it currently holds. Educators should be trained accordingly to be able to enhance their students’ media literacy levels. With the need for significant training, educators will most likely have to cut down on the load of teaching material. To conclude, helping others include four features (interpersonal and societal methods, interventions and public education) that demonstrate the importance of both formal and informal settings. The combination of the family and the school environment are key for young people to maximize their learning and therefore boost their media literacy levels.

Case Study: Nieuws in de Klas

Scholar W. James Potter has exposed issues within media literacy throughout his book and gave recommendations for future improvements of the current American societal infrastructure for both formal and informal settings. His solutions incorporate helping yourself and helping others and, from there, a case study was chosen to see if these solutions could be applied to a recent context. Therefore, the Dutch association Nieuws in de klas will exemplify Potter’s theory. In relation to media literacy, Nieuws in de klas gives the impression to be a functioning system where media literacy is an ongoing and successful process of improvement in the Netherlands. A background of Nieuws in de klas and its evolution through time will be given before comparing this particular case to Potter’s theory on media literacy, its problems and its possible solutions.

In 1976, the Dutch Newspaper Publishers’ Association NDP (NDP Nieuwsmedia is currently the Trade Organization for News Media Companies in the Netherlands) founded Nieuws in the klas. News in education Netherlands (NIE) aspires to further encourage the use of news media in the educational institutions. It gives teachers and their students access to news media and learning programs. (Nieuws in de klas, News in education Netherlands)

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According to Nieuws in de klas’ website, “NIE programs promote and facilitate education with and about news media by providing schools with news media, developing educational materials, offering teacher trainings and conducting research about youth and news media” (Nieuws in de klas, News in education Netherlands)

These program services are available to teachers in many different level of education including primary and secondary education, vocational education, language courses for immigrants and lifelong learning. This covers a wide variety of people who could benefit from these programs. In the Netherlands, these services are available through a broad range of means. All year around four means essentially provide these services like newspaper delivery which occur twice a week, the news media portal that gives readers an overview of all news sites, access to online news archives during a period of two weeks and finally, educational tools. Throughout the entire school year, these services are available nationwide.

The three prime objectives of NIE are to promote readership, media literacy and citizenship through their newsmedia programs in education. Newsmedia in education is essential as it procures important tools to improve language and information skills, crucial instruments for citizenship and democracy but it also gives vital sources of education on a daily basis. Applied through media literacy, all of these skills provide a full understanding of how media work. Media literacy is thus used to develop students’ skills and teach them how to make effective use of these skills to better understand and read newspapers.

NIE programs also promote (media) literacy and encourage youth to find information about the daily news events around the world and analyze how news media platforms circulate these events. To examine the news, students are taught to use the 5W's (what, who, when, where, why?) and then reflect on information according to this method of analysis. By doing so, students gain critical usage of overall media and its content, initiate discussion and reflection regarding the news, active participation in the circulation of information and become civically engaged. The practical application and reading strategies of news messages is given by the NIE via the 5W’s scheme. The 5W’s technique is looking to ask specific questions to help students understand the news messages. Youth should question “who says what, when, and where, and why? What is their purpose/interest? And how do they approach the topic (style)?” The trick to effectively use the 5W’s technique is to frame a search strategy, organize the information found and evaluate the search results by comparing them to each other. These questions are answered once one reads and rereads the media text, interpret and give meaning to the information, which then leads to reflection and discussion of these findings.

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In relation to news, media literacy in education enables students to become media literate citizens and thus to know how to use news media. Media education programs and media literacy are taught in a way that concentrates on computer skills improvement, the production of audiovisual media, youth protection against harmful media content. Another aspect of these programs is the fact that very little consideration is provided to the critical analysis of media content.

Besides the lack of media content consideration, youth can also participate in the production of news and, if so, need to start thinking about the reasons they would write about news. Their creativity begins once one ask themselves about what and why one will write but also when and where this content would be published and finally, consider the audience this written material would be applied to and the approaches or writing style to take regarding the topic. The students then practice numerous aspect of online content. Besides the ability to read and analyze news media content, they expand their writing skills, apply journalistic rules, actively participate and engage with the online content, and learn how to deal with feedback which is intertwined with their content production’s accountability.

Comparison Between Potter’s Theory and Nieuws in de Klas

After a complete description of the Dutch NIE programs and its purposes, a comparative analysis with James Potter’s potential solution will be applied to this case study. We will see if the launch of NIE programs was due to similar observations on a problem that needed a solution in the Netherlands. The investigation of the solutions and their applications through the NIE programs will shut light on the credibility and feasibility of these solutions on American educational curriculum.

In the countryside of Belgium, I woke up to dozens of worried texts from friends on March 22nd 2016. Before I knew it, something terrible had happening in Brussels, Belgium. The capital got attacked by (Islamist extremists) ISIS1 both in the international airport of Zaventem and the underground metro station Maalbeek which resulted in many deaths and injured people. As any concerned citizen would do, I rushed toward the nearest source of direct information at home, the television. After an hour of taking in all the details of the attacks, I finally notified my friends abroad of the situation giving them my perspective on the events. Over two weeks after the event, online platforms and newspapers were still

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mentioning details about the incident. To follow up on the ‘truth’ regarding news locally or internationally can at times be difficult to manage as there are an overwhelming amount of sources where one can obtain information. Nieuws in de klas found ways to overcome the difficult discussion regarding dramatic events. On their home page, the educational platform suggested articles such as “Tips to discuss news about attacks Brussels” to help teachers communicate the unfortunate news about Brussels to their students in the best possible manner (Nieuws in de klas, Home). In addition to having set teaching materials on the platform (discussed below), the organization provides regular updates on recent researches, news or articles on how to best communicate particular news in classrooms. It can often be difficult for students to find the appropriate source of information in the vast sea of Internet sources. The media messages saturation is ever growing which leads to the pressing need to educate and train students in order for them to be able to navigate the flow of information. Nieuws in de klas does contribute to this with the section “Our services” which gives access to methods of enriching media literacy connected to the everyday news for both students and teachers. This means that both students and teachers are able to educate themselves and improve their own levels of media literacy. Yet it is important for teachers to comprehend how media literacy works in order to transmit their knowledge and experiences to the younger generations of students.

Under the “Our Services” tab, the News Services for Teachers are news media that enables teachers to receive magazines and/or newspapers of their choice on a period of two weeks for free. The News Service for Students is similar and allows students to receive free magazines and/or newspapers for a period of two weeks. Both students and teachers can choose newspapers from the New Media Portal provided online which presents regional Dutch newspapers such as 7 Days, Leidsch Dagblad, Metro and many others. When students read news media at home, they learn and become familiar with them as sources of information. They can both read on their own and at their own rhythm which takes pressure off of the student who does not need to comply to a collective effort usually found in classrooms. Simultaneously, students can discuss the current events in class where they can share their opinion and knowledge about an event while also learning from others who might have different perspectives on the matter. The teachers also have access to teaching materials that include a variety of teaching techniques about news media and media literacy’s development. The teaching material, lesson plans, case studies, pupils poll and

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Teaching Materials

Teaching materials include subjects such as cartoons in the news which focuses on the meaning of cartoons and caricatures in newspapers. In collaboration with the Press Museum, the aim is essentially to comprehend cartoons as commentaries on the news, the recognizability of prominent people, the style used by cartoonists and analyzing cartoons (Nieuws in de klas, Cartoons in the news). As part of the curriculum, students are given the opportunity to actively participate as they have to prepare for a competition called “Junior Inktspotprijs”. Held by the Press Museum, the competition’s purpose is to produce the best political cartoon representative of the previous year’s news (Nieuws in de klas, Cartoons in

the news). Other examples of the teaching materials section are the Roadshow Press Freedom where secondary school students can meet journalists and discuss the freedom of

expression, etc. or the Information Literacy which helps students in secondary schools to come across effective and efficient online information to then interpret and process it. Students are also given the possibility to create their own newspaper which necessitate many skill sets including the writing, delivering of visual materials and cartoons amongst other things to produce an entire newspaper either on paper or online.

Lesson Plans

Lesson plans include other aspects needed. For instance, Nieuws in de klas states that all sort of texts can be found in news media. These embody texts such as argument consideration and discussion which can be examined through the usage of specific questions (What is the position of the author in the article? What arguments are put forward for the pros and cons of this topic?). Another lesson plan are photographs captions. Pictures captions are also a form of text as there is a signature (often seen at the bottom of a photograph) that provides a brief explanation of what is illustrated in the picture. The understanding of linguistics and its analysis is also a vital aspect to perceive the message(s) behind the words. Some application examples of the analysis and the signal words can comprise students to differentiate a sentence of a news topic, finding signal words for cause-effect, enumeration and problem solution, etc. which provide students with the examination of various texts. This second section on lesson plans can also involve lessons on how to distinguish facts from opinions or the creation of one’s own news quiz.

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Case studies on articles about teaching primary and secondary students how to use current events and news in classrooms. For instance, an article from the magazine Zone demonstrated three examples of the use of current events in the classroom in the Netherlands. Or, an article explaining the Zaanstad Broad School Academy’s (BSA) new concept of working on reading comprehension using current events for students in primary school.

Pupils Poll and New Tool

Pupils poll illustrates students’ opinion and most memorable moments when it comes to news media. For example, the annual Pupils Poll revealed that students elected the attacks on Paris in November 2015 as the biggest news event of the year 2015. And, finally, the

New Tool allows students to create their own newspaper which represent a combination of

fun and education. With New Tool, students can let their creativity run free as the production of one’s newspaper is free and take into account features like text, photos and videos. Therefore, students can freely create and publish their own news, either online or on paper.

Overall, Nieuws in de klas offers a variety of methods to spread media literacy ranging from paper to online format of newspaper. The educational platform offers techniques, articles and tips on how to investigate texts (linguistics of words, information literacy), visuals (photographs), the combination of both texts and visuals (cartoons, caricatures and photo captions) and most importantly, the process to understand the meanings behind all of the media content. The consumption and the production of media content is also encouraged and, in that sense, students can fully experience the development and spread of information. By producing media material, students can better comprehend the entire process evolving around media messages. Additionally, the platform tries to subtly address the information problem while teaching primary and secondary students how to deal with it and understand who is behind the spread of information and the messages transmitted.

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Digital Divide: Digital Natives versus Digital Immigrants (Marc Prensky)

To further develop upon Potter’s theory, Marc Prensky’s notion of digital natives and digital immigrants is crucial to grasp. As the following chapters will explain, students have a different way of thinking and processing information. Thus, educational systems should adapt their traditional teaching techniques and find new methods that better fit students’ need for improvement. The need for an adapted educational curriculum due to students’ changing thinking patterns brings about a new theoretical notion, which defines these ‘new’ types of students.

The term digital native refers to students who were born in the digital age and thus, interact with more ease with technology. Digital natives are “native speakers” of the digital language that constitutes today’s society. This includes the language of computers but also video games and the Internet (Prensky Digital Natives 1). They are used to receiving information at a fast pace and master the process of multi-tasking. It has been seen that digital natives function better when networked.

Whereas the people who were not born in the digital age, digital immigrants are curious about technological innovations and try to adapt to them but this process is different from the digital natives’ one. Digital immigrants have a tendency of learning digital techniques later in their lives, which is scientifically proven to be registered in a different part of their brains. This fact illustrates the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants as they do not register information in the same part of their brains and thus do not use their skills and knowledge in the same manner. Examples of digital immigrants ‘behavior’ towards technology includes printing a document to edit it or printing an email with a barcode for an event instead of digitally edit a text on the computer directly. These examples reflect the “accent” digital immigrants can keep, even after getting more integrated into the digital world (Prensky Digital Natives 3).

At the moment, the biggest issue within education is the fact that the faculty staff, teachers, are digital immigrants which means that they speak an ‘outdated’ language in comparison to the digital natives. Digital immigrant teachers believe that students should learn educational material in the same fashion they did when they were young but, unfortunately, this is not possible anymore. As students’ have a different mindset, teachers need to apply updated teaching methods to keep them interested and familiarize themselves to the student’s thinking pattern. When studying, students are most productive when there is an instant gratification or regular rewards to be gained. Also, they would rather play a game than do serious work. Therefore, a possibility to explore would be to make school curriculum more

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interesting and entertaining by making a game out of learning. This potential idea is called “edutainment” which signifies that education and entertainment are intertwined with each other to produce effective learning approach. Yet this approach has, so far, failed.

But, Marc Prensky, American writer and speaker on learning and education, believes that improvements can be implemented to provide a long-term productive teaching technique (3). Besides digital immigrants outdated teaching techniques, teachers’ beliefs generates an other issue as they presume true that effective learning cannot be built when students multitask work with watching TV or listening to music simultaneously. Because immigrants cannot do these simultaneous tasks themselves, students suffer from old ways of thinking as they are caught in a system where education is not supposed to be fun. The assumption that students today are the same as students back in the time is no longer true. Today’s learners are dramatically different and necessitate new adapted teaching techniques (Prensky Digital

Natives 4). Marc has a clear idea of an effective education system. For him, teaching via

(computer) games will actively enhance digital native’s knowledge and skills. He believes this is the most adequate manner for students to learn. Nonetheless, the publicizing and spreading of such innovative teaching methods need to be promoted and put into practice.

On the other hand, Danah Boyd states that students’ ability to access social media platforms and information is there but they do not have the skills or knowledge to reach the content’s full potential. Thus, the role of the teachers is increasingly essential for students to fully take advantage of the Internet and content to become active participants of the networked society (Boyd 176).

A question still remains: Should students learn the old ways or should teachers learn the new? It seems obvious that students will unlikely go backwards so, instead, both methodology and content need to be reconsidered in education. The methodology includes keeping the same meaning of what is essential in their curriculum but teach them these meanings through a faster and less step-by-step mode of operation (Prensky Digital Natives 4). Then, the content of the curriculum is divided into two distinct forms of content as the digital emerged: legacy and future content. One the one hand, the legacy content includes the traditional curriculum where certain eras of studies will remain important while others will slowly become less, like Latin and Greek language. On the other hand, the future content is mainly digital and technological. This aspect includes topics such as software, hardware and robotics but it also brings other important subjects in relation to these such as ethical behavior online, politics, sociology, etc. (Prensky Digital Natives 5).

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All in all, teachers will need to change their teaching techniques if they want to reach all digital natives present in their classes.

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Chapter 3 - Danah Boyd and Teenagers’ Rights

As an American scholar whose interest lies in technological integration in youth lives, Danah Boyd has yet another point of view regarding students’ literacy levels in education. Unlike Potter who exchanges opinions in a traditional manner, Boyd debates over American society’s failure to understand teenagers’ online behavior and consider improvements to teach and increase their levels of media literacy. She traveled across the U.S. to get first hand insight on teenagers’ engagement with online platforms such as Facebook or YouTube and their relationship with society. By doing so, she became knowledgeable about teenagers’ challenges when connected online on social media.

Teenagers’ Challenges Online

Teenagers’ online challenges are divided into four main issues. These include the following:

• Assumption that digital natives are knowledgeable about technologies because they were born into the digital age, the students’ limited access to information that could be problematic or inaccurate;

• Functioning of algorithms and their influence on our knowledge and finally;

• Digital inequality, also called the digital divide, which comes into sight between digital natives themselves as they do not have the same opportunities to have access to computers; and

• Internet or other technologies.

The Concept of Digital Native and Its Problems

A few days back The Guardian published an article about a graffiti artist, Casey Nocket, who had been banned from all national parks in the United States for vandalism after several Reddit users tracked her down through social media. After trial, Casey was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and a fine for vandalizing at least six national parks (Death Valley, Colorado National Monument, Canyonlands, Zion and Crater Lake) with acrylic paint. As some pictures circulated on the Internet via social media (Instagram, Tumblr and other websites), many negative reactions towards these drawings began to spark. The article stated “[...] people have very strong attachment to these places. For a lot of people, visiting these parks has a very deep to find the person responsible for these acts of vandalism.

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Soon enough, Casey’s social media accounts were posted to Reddit and she got arrested (Woolfe The Guardian).

Social media brought to justice the graffiti artist that was vandalizing national parks across the western U.S. However, another truth lies in that story. It is interesting to notice how the online justice is executed and how some pronounce another guilty. This only justice goes against the tenant of the American justice system that states “Innocent until proven guilty”. Casey’s story is an example of how social media is used more often as a means of tracking down someone and exposing them. For society, this exposure could also mean that someone’s life could be in danger. The article points out that some individuals provided the artist’s home address and, given the nature of violence in the U.S., that is most likely not the best thing to do. This story also highlights the fact that, in the physical world, this turn of events would not happen but yet in the online world it is permitted. Then, there is a need to reconsider the world we live in. Are we in a period of rapid transition where society is moving from one of pure physical to one of a hybrid – digital and analog2_{? If so, how does that} reflect on providing social norms to children these days when they are supposedly more familiar with the “digital” but not with the “analog”.

The article links back to the issues teenagers encounter while experimenting online activities. There is an existing gap between teens and parents regarding the purpose of technological usage. The existing gap is the result of their opposite views on what sociability entails (Boyd 85). Yet Boyd’s main problem with the misunderstanding of teenagers’ online usage is the assumption that youth automatically comprehend new technologies because they are digital natives. Indeed, teens today are “deeply engaged with social media and are active participants of the networked publics, but this does not mean they inherently have the knowledge or skills to make the most of their online experiences” (176). This misrepresentation of young people’s current situation is not true. The assumption that digital natives comprehend new technologies is the source of most issues in teenagers’ literacy levels and their development. In fact, the concept of “digital natives” is seen to be a distraction to fully make sense of the issues that young people face in a networked world (176). Now, teenagers must provide for themselves to comprehend technologies’ processes and the spread of information. Indeed, they make their own personal media content or share it online but this does not indicate that they naturally hold the knowledge, skills or perspective to critically investigate what they consume daily (177). It can be assumed to be

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alarming that teens are automatically informed about how technology functions, the good and the bad content or platform. This assumption gives a naive perspective that the so-called digital immigrants cannot offer anything to the digital natives. In fact, digital immigrants can offer a lot including a critical perspective which they gained with time and experience (Boyd 177). By ignoring the fact that youth need to learn about media literacy tools and skills, they will not be able to be protected from the wild wild west of the Internet. The graffiti artist’s story reflects the necessity to put aside the assumption that digital natives are knowledgeable and provide children and teenagers with the knowledge and skills to understand the dangers of being online as well. The rules and regulations of the online world are different from the ones in the offline world which they might not always be aware of when navigating the Internet.

In both school or in informal environments, young people necessitate a chance to further grow their skills and knowledge in order to engage with coexisting technologies in an effective and meaningful manner (177). Whenever the work indispensable to help youth grow digital competence is not applied, schools as well as educators and the public recreate digital inequality as children and teenagers with more privileges get more opportunities to grow these skills externally to their formal setting in school. Additionally to the problem regarding the terminology of digital natives, another issue arose when digital inequality amongst digital natives themselves occurred. Contemporary society settled in an increasingly technologically mediated world and being comfortable with it is highly crucial in everyday life. Examples of the everyday necessity of being technologically at ease can range from obtaining a well-paid employment, managing medical care, engaging with government. In fact, most job applications are done online which necessitate a certain level of knowledge to find the employments online, filter them according to your preferences and fill out the application form. In the banking industry, mobile phones and applications for payments are yet other examples of the urgency to gain a certain media literacy level.

This encourages all parties including parents, educators and policymakers to work together in order to effectively support youth, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences. Particularly, educators have a vital influence on young people’s navigation through networked publics and the saturated information context which the Internet reinforces. In formal settings such as schools, digital skills are not brought forward in the curriculum as the assumption that digital natives inherently understand technology and everything connected to it as well. A curriculum at schools must focus on multiple aspects of digital life for natives, as well as for immigrants. For example, the technology and how it is constructed. In other words, how the Internet works and some of its most prevalent services (Google, Facebook,

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online applications, etc.) and how they fit into the overall framework of the digital world. It is also important to mention how new technologies change the social balance in society (the moral and values especially), and teach students how the digital world affects individual privacy (government snooping, corporate tracking for advertising and other forms of surveillance). In this changing world, children most importantly need to be made aware of the shift from analog to digital. Thus, rather than assuming they know about technology and how it works, adults (parents, educators or librarians) should attempt to transform teenagers experiences online into concrete knowledge (Boyd 180).

According to Boyd, teenagers today need to be media literate and critically engage with the media. Either as consumers or as producers of media content, youth should acquire the knowledge and skills to answer questions regarding the construction and dissemination of specific media artifacts (181). By understanding the bias, the intended meaning and the consequences behind an artifact, students increase their levels of media literacy. In comparison to other countries, the United States began to put efforts into improving media literacy education in the 1960s, which occurred later than, for instance, the UK that initiated considerable efforts in the 1930s. These initiatives were put into place to avoid audiences from believing certain aspects of manipulative messages and, rather, for them to question the content they see. The late American reactions to improve the society’s media literacy levels could explain why they are still behind in taking initiatives in this regards (181). It appears that many people have little training in being critical of the content that they consume. With the emergence of the Internet, critical media literacy has become increasingly crucial as the flow of information found online is growing more and more.

Limited Access to Information

Another existing problem for Boyd is the fact that students’ access to information considered problematic or inaccurate is limited which does not allow them to identify faulty information independently.

They need to know how to grapple with the plethora of information that is easily accessible and rarely vetted […] and given the uneven digital literacy skills of youth, we cannot abandon them to learn these lessons on their own (Boyd 181-182).

Students need to acquire critical skills and media literacy to comprehend the biases in media messages such as the field of advertising for example. In the U.S., the plethora of medical or medicine adverts on TV are clearly aiming to convince people that they “may” have this

Media Literacy in Primary and Secondary Education: The Core Issues Within the American Media Literacy Curriculum

Submitted in part fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science in Media Studies