PROFESSIONALS
REPORT MEDIA LITERACY SEMINAR 20 October 2016
Supported by :
Media Literacy Seminar The Cinekid for Professionals Media Literacy Seminar set out to address and assess the role that media plays in presenting issues of global, social and personal significance to young audiences, with a series of authoritative and entertaining contributions from mediamakers and producers of educational content. David Kleeman, SVP Global Trends for strategy and research consultancy Dubit, opened the Media Literacy Seminar. A veteran of some 30 years working in children’s media, Kleeman anticipated Nathalie Bank’s talk on the formation of personal identity by looking at stories from his own past and explaining how aspects of his own personal identity were formed. When he was growing up, he said, Russia was the enemy and the media messages that he saw, mainly on television, were very dark and foreboding. Then, 15 years ago he went to Russia, visited the Red Square and saw immediately that what he was encountering bore no relation to what he had grown up with. It was beautiful, but the only image he had ever encountered growing up was of squadrons of troops marching through the square. Years later he visited a film production company in Appalachia in the United Statescalled Apple Shop and a director there would go into the coalmining communities to help the locals make films about their lives. For the director it was not important where the videos were distributed or broadcast, other than show them on the back of a truck to the communities he had been working with, and the ‘power’ for miners was in the making of the films, the telling of the stories.
David Kleeman, SVP of Global Trends for Dubit
He told of one of his mentors, a head of DRTV Denmark, who said how it would be so easy for the broadcaster to buy in Disney programming for kids in order to meet provide entertainment, but he told his team ‘when a child gets up in the morning in Denmark, how do they know where they are?’. “So he wanted Danish kids to grow up with stories of Denmark,” continued Kleeman. “But the other thing he told his team was ‘I want children in Denmark to know that children everywhere grow up with equal dignity, even under unequal circumstances,’ and he sent TV crews out to document this for young audiences.” “Kids today are immersed in multiple media and that gives some benefits, it democratises the production of it, but within that democratisation there is a responsibility to learn to interpret and to evaluate the quality of somebody’s story,” Kleeman stressed. “And now we are entering a new age of VR, which can be used to get you very excited, to put you on a rollercoaster or give these stimulating experiences, but also one of the early things that we are learning about VR is that it [instills a sense of] reflection and puts you in the mood and sometimes the body of someone unlike you, and gives you a new perspective on the world.” Opening words: John Leek, Mediawijzer.net Mediawijzer.net co-organised the Media Literacy Seminar, together with Cinekid for Professionals. The company’s John Leek explained the dilemma of unrestricted youth media activity and how Mediawijzer.net is combatting this. Europe is changing, he pointed out. Refugees and terrorism are factors in the resurgence of nationalism across European states. Although these are not problems caused by new media and technologies, audiences for hate and hate speech can be found more easily than ever before. Why is it important to analyse and reflect on the role of media use and consumption in the construction of identity, he asked. Almost always the rise of a new medium is accompanied by the need for media education. The invention of the printing press accelerated the development of formal schooling for example. This seemed a logical response (at least in the Middle Ages) on the part of the authorities to retain a degree of control over the minds of the population.
These days formal education can barely keep track with new media developments, so these are now becoming part of the curriculum, at least in the Netherlands. “That sounds very comforting, but what does this mean to a kid whose online menu is crowded, but none of it very much connected to school?” While parents are paying lip service to Facebook, our children are out of sight, virtually online 24/7. And although it is notoriously difficult to monitor we can also conclude that online hate speech has also been increasing greatly over the years, Leek suggested. And the refugee crisis is taking this to new heights. “Next to this the effects of the so called ‘filter bubble of information’ due to the ongoing personalisation of online information could play a role in the process of construction of opinions,” he added. It is tempting to believe, therefore, that this might lead to more narrow-mindedness among youth – which is, of course, a historical fear of parents. But media literacy has a history of empowering children and youth towards the creation of their own media messages, a powerful approach in order to develop critical thinking skills as well as creative skills. “And this is where kids can find their own space, far away from mainstream media.” So, how should the media literacy world respond? There are many things Mediawijzer is already doing, Leek pointed out. The theme of this year’s Dutch media literacy week in November has the title Fact Fake or Filter. The central goal of this campaign is to raise awareness of the influence of media and how kids can be influencers themselves. Many thousands of young children participate in Media Masters, the national campaign for primary schools, Leek continued, where over five days kids of all ages work on many media assignments, and are further happy to continue to find answers beyond school time. At the National Institute for Sound and Vision the Let’s YouTube exhibition has a special parent lounge where parents can find out various information about the medium and how it impacts their children. What’s more, hate speech and radicalisation are being challenged through programmes developed between Mediawijzer and the Ministry of Education.
“Deeper understanding of the power of media is now more than ever a necessity to teach during the growing up of our children,” Leek ended. “It is our common [purpose] to create suitable media playing fields for the years to come and we all here [at the seminar] are responsible for that.”
Influence of media on cultural identity construction and learning to interpret these messages Nathalie Bank, Cyber Influence Warfare research at the Dutch Defence Academy Bank regularly goes into classrooms in the Netherlands to oversee workshops about conflict radicalisation. Her address to the seminar assessed both how media messages are used in contemporary conflict and how we can we teach young people to decode these messages and hence alter their effectiveness. Everybody goes through the process of teenage identity construction, Bank said, it is is a time of flux, change, confusion, a time when your youth is still in a transitory stage. Very much core within this process is the construction of a cultural identity, and one of the key ways this is formed is via 24/7 media. “But it is important to remember that the same media that children are so immersed in is also becoming a battlefield in today’s theatre of warfare,” Bank warned. “And these youth are sincere targets and actors in modern forms of conflict as they are played out in part on mini-screens… Cultural identity construction through media is very much a weapon in contemporary conflict.” Bank moved quickly on to IS and how it uses media to broaden the horizon of their conflicts. Conflict is, she said, no longer tied to a geographical location. What’s more, the conflict is framed and broadcast, often in real time. We are therefore there, even if it does not occupy our own physical space, and we feel fear. And because they are ideology-driven, spreading an issue that was once local to a vast worldwide audience in turn raises the stakes and empowers our opponent who “now has an audience that was hitherto unreachable”. In 2007 al-Queda’s Al-Zawahari said: “More than half this battle is taking place in the media.” This quote dictates the shape of modern conflict and how the importance of media in warfare was understood very early, said Bank.
Organisations such as IS have certain powers over us as states. A non-state does not have a populace to answer to. It can say and do what it wants, with neither hierarchy nor bureaucracy to justify itself to. “We have to conclude that we, as states, are not very good at warfare through media, even though it is essential we become more flexible in this.” Also, the volume of media messages is too great to intercept, and even doing so brings us legal and ethical problems we do not want to face, Bank underlined. Bank then deconstructed the sophisticated IS messages and videos, most notably the video of the James Foley beheading. Elements such as framing, anonymity, high production value, the clothing of Foley which is reminiscent of the orange jump suits worn by the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. “On one side their ideologies disapprove of western culture, but at the same time use these western techniques to radicalise and to gain followers,” she added, showing examples of Call of Duty and LOLO pastiches. Bank then moved onto the fear engendered by the Paris attacks, and how we all tuned in, and all experienced this broadcast live, hence becoming targets and players ourselves in the terrible unfolding drama. “These people who died that day, they were not the targets, they weren’t even the victims. The targets were everybody who was watching. Those people who were killed were merely the medium.” And all the time, she added, it was timed for US broadcast so it became a real-time experience, and then we actively engaged in the process by tweeting about it or by putting a French flag over our profile pictures. “As such, as we take part in this conflict which in a very big part takes place in the theatre of media. We are both actors and targets in this conflict.” Then a complex matter becomes a series of polarising sound bites, she said, so all Muslims are bad, all refugees are looking for money. And in classrooms the sense of closeness to conflict is palpable. During the Paris attacks, kids in Brussels were half expecting an attack and were afraid to talk to neighbour Muslims, Bank observed. “Which is why it is essential, that mediamakers encourage conversation and curiosity, because that is the key. If we understand what is going on, then there is less of the unknown and it is the unknown that gives us fear.”
Bank argued therefore that it is imperative to bring the debate online, to think of creative ways to engage children in examining and understanding the world, but the conversation must be taken offline too. “We have to re-iterate that this is a fluid line and there is not such as a thing [paradoxically] as an online world and an offline world – they are the same thing. And we must ask in our assessment of media, who is the creator? What is the intent? What are they asking me to know/do? What techniques are they using to attract my attention? Is it extreme or is it a well-balanced statement? What is being omitted? “If we teach our teenagers to think in this way when they are faced with something polarising, something without a source, something extreme, if we can train their thoughts, then this gives us more knowledge, more strength and therefore more control over the image. And that will make us a stronger part in this conflict. We should not teach children what to think, but how to think.”
Providing tools to make media, and communication your identities Hanna Higginson, Engagement producer at Watershed Arts and Digitial Media Centre, United Kingdom Higginson kicked off with a short description of the Watershed, a leading hub for the arts in the south west of England, located in the ‘young’ city of Bristol that has seen a 16% increase in youth population between 2015 and 2016, 187 countries of birth among its population and 91 languages spoken, and hence is a very “diverse and interesting” city. She spoke about the RIFE project, a youth-led online magazine developed in partnership with Bristol City Council, a platform through which young people can develop their online content creation skills (blogging, filmmaking, photography, social media etc.) and where they share the stories that are important to them. In Bristol, this meant many stories of identity and culture. Panel discussion during the Media Literacy Seminar
“We knew that the online space was where young people were consuming and creating most of their content so we wanted to do a project that put is in this space,” commented Higginson. She told how she was influenced by an early comment that online content provision meant that the digital explosion no longer meant that the gatekeepers of culture were white, and in order to infuse authentic expertise into the project she trawled Bristol to find kids on social media with huge followers, people with their own brand and generators of much content. From this RIFE was born. “It was all about insight by doing, so we were making content the whole time and observing how they were working. We had a bunch of people, many of whom were key influencers online and who engaged with the project from the start… The first thing the kids said was hand it over to us. We want to hear other kids talking about issues we care about, or events in the city….We don’t want to hear adults telling us about it.” The kids said keep it visual, it had to be about multiple social media platforms, and the priority had to be about how the content is pushed out and how it is seeded with key influences, rather than just sitting there on a website. RIFE now, therefore, lives on social media and that is where young people access the content. “Creating the content is important, but as important is the social media plan that goes alongside this,” added Higginson. “How you engage the audience for that bit of the content.” So it became a youth-led online platform, an editorial magazine covering the full gamut of output from politics and the arts to features and comment pieces, plus a what’s on guide. What’s more it has proved a springboard to successful careers at national newspapers such as The Guardian, and many people have launched digital start-ups. “We find that if we give young people digital skills and the permission to experiment, to play and to fail then they will find their own way of expressing what is important to them. One of the privileges we have working outside the formal education system is that we don’t have to maintain that hierarchy that is sometimes necessary at schools, that teacher/pupil relationship, so we always emphasise co-creation, working with
them, them respecting our skills as professionals but also us recognising that the young people have knowledge that we do not have, and working together to create something,” commented Higginson. “Of course this can be complex and messy, and the biggest thing I find that we have to bring to RIFE as staff members is an emphasis on the audience, and it is interesting that addressing aspects such as ‘who you are speaking to’, ‘what is the call to action’, ‘why would somebody click on your content’ is what makes it shareable. Because they are creating the content themselves, it is actually very deep learning because they are thinking about it for their own story, and that makes it very powerful.”
Workshop during the Media Literacy Seminar
Jasmine Thompson, Content creator for RIFE Magazine Thompson spoke about her work, why she works they way she does, and what inspired her. As content creator Jasmine creates articles, illustrations, videos and films on the subject or topics that she cares most about or which ‘draw her in’. At university Thompson studied race, culture and integration, where she spoke with different communities in Bristol and tried to find out whether people of many different backgrounds found it easy or difficult to stay in touch with their cultures. She was fascinated by sensor maps which displayed how different ethnicities settled, one dot per person representing a different race, and what she noticed
most was the degree of division, even in 2014, and it determined her to ask questions about their lives in the UK. Coming from a mixed family, she was immediately interested in the factors behind this. Was this division out of their control? Was it voluntary? Was it to do with money or class?
Jasmine Thompson, illustrator and designer based in Bristol and content creator for RIFE Magazine.
The answers made her learn a lot of about her own life and her own culture, especially after interviews with her own family. She transformed these maps into illustrations. “It was the first time I used illustrations to be political. It was about representation and it was about giving voices. Drawing was a really powerful way to discuss these issues.” RIFE allowed her to continue to do this and it was the perfect platform to reach a very large audience and a great opportunity to create ‘relatable content’ effectively. “I could reach out to kids who were feeling just like me or any other young person with an identity issue who could look at my work and relate with it.” Subsequent projects for RIFE were about the stigma among women concerning real African hair and another on the refugee women of Bristol, of which she said: “A lot of great work being done for a lot of great people – this was a celebration of their various cultures and a place where people could share. It made me realise how the media makes people view themselves and others around them. Creating content yourself, you can uncover the real stories behind stuff and what people are all about, not the negative representations or the stats or the numbers.”
Mthoba Chapi, director of youth magazine show Bona Retsang for Vuselela Media, a platform that brings to light young people’s daily challenges across South Africa. Vuselela Media is a media training organisation in South Africa that works each year in over 100 schools and 25 community centres throughout the country offering media literacy training on mobiles and cell phones. The initiative was launched so that the stories of South Africa’s youth could be broadcast across the country. It has been an ‘important’ initiative that has taught news journalism to youth in South Africa. The programme has become ‘the voice of their communities’ to the outside world and reaches more than four million people on national and community TV platforms in South Africa. It shares across social media and is seen across the world on the Kids News Network. The programme started in 2013 in partnership with the European Journalism Centre as well as SABC in South Africa. They have worked in 100 schools with 30 pupils per class for 7-8 hours at a time. The classes would teach framing and sound on cell phones as well as the basic principles of story-telling and the five W’s of news gathering - always without the need to edit. The kids are very enthusiastic and are asked to produce two minute cellphone clips. The best ones would be broadcast on Bona Retsang on SABC1.
Mhtoba Chapi, director at Vuselela Media NPC
“We are very proud to have our media literacy course accredited,” commented Chapi. “A lot of the young people, when they matriculate, when they finish school, they cannot afford university costs, but after one year of training we can give them a certificate on film and TV production which is the equivalent of one year in university, meaning that if they get further support they can continue their university studies. This shows how our programme has helped young children in South Africa.“ “Young people get to watch themselves on television and what has happened is the big budgeted shows on the other SABC channels broadcasting at the same time as us have actually had to move their schedules around,” Chapi added. “The fact is that we are increasing career options for young people in South Africa. There is more community dialogue. We host community talks where people actually come and watch the videos produced around the communities and they speak about the issues that are happening there. Young people produce the content and ask the questions and keep the conversations going further, which is good.”
Creating awareness: mobile story-telling workshop by EYE Film Institute, Florian Wiebenga EYE’s Head of Education Florian Wiebenga invited attendees to split into groups, each group member to display the last photo taken on their phone. Then the groups constructed a series of narratives from the nine or ten images arrayed on the desks before them. The results were fascinating and imaginative, and indicated how a narrative order can be naturally placed on a random sequence of images. It also, tellingly, indicated how personal identity can be underlined through story-telling.
Workshop initiated by the EYE Film Institute
“I was very happy with the creativity and the openness of people. They really like to collaborate, to work together, to share their thoughts and their photos and their personal stories, and I think that is something necessary in these difficult times we are living in, but I think you can tell how media can open up discussions and debates,” commented Wiebenga after the exercise. “The results showed what they [the participants] experience every day and want to give meaning to this, and think about its structure. Something very creative can be created out of such a random set of images. And it has to do with connecting the story with your own life, but also what you have seen before, and what you expect to see with others.” “Sometimes you have to be pushed to think out of the box, and I could tell that some participants dared to step out of the linear story and also added some weird or not very well defined pictures. I liked that and I hope that if there is more time that they will dare to step out of what they already know and create some new stories.”
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