Critical Media - Academic Context

Media educators have typically sought to integrate media production into the curriculum using various modes.  We define these modes as vocational, reformist, and critical, and, while not all media educators take this approach, we view these modes as sequential. Furthermore, we believe all three modes of media education production are essential to becoming media literate. However, the last of the sequence, critical production, is most often left out. Critical production is even often missing at the college level—the level one would expect the most freedom in critical inquiry. Thus, students rarely get the opportunity to learn this approach by “doing the thing”—producing media content that critically critiques the media system. This article argues, though, that we are at an historic moment in media education in which critical production can make sense to our students. Our students are increasingly immersed in critical digital media production, even though they may not know it. We describe a class-based project called Critical Media, in which we called upon the technological skills/critical mindset our students brought to the classroom, challenged our students to create a piece of critical media with high production values, and somewhat successfully combined all three modes of media education.

Review the full document: "Doing Vocational, Reformist and Critical Production: New Pedagogies for Media Education" (in PDF format).