Fighting fire with fire: An analysis of critical media literacy videos
Abstract
Educational videos that teach media literacy to students have become an important tool in media literacy education. However, while a great deal of attention has been paid to the educational strategies utilized by media literacy educators, the pedagogical strategies of media literacy videos have remained largely unexamined. This project performs a rhetorical analysis of the strategies of three popular media literacy videos: Sut Jhally's Dreamworlds II: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video, Jean Kilbourne's Slim Hopes: Advertising's Obsession with Thinness, and Jackson Katz's Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity. Using personae analyses, this project examines how these media literacy videos attempt to persuade viewers of the problematic aspects of representations of gender in the mass media. Additionally, an audience analysis of fifty-six college students explores the following questions: (1) What are the responses of the viewers to the media literacy video texts? (2) What differences do the social locations of the viewers make in their reception of the texts? (3) What views on feminism and gender representation in the media do the participants bring to the viewing of the texts and how do these views intersect with discourses in the texts? This project argues that while the videos are useful pedagogical tools for educators, the strategies they use often run counter to the very critiques they are making. Moreover, the audience analysis reveals unanticipated reactions of students to the video of which educators using these videos should be aware.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Keehner, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Communication|Mass media
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