Journal Article

Pedagogies of Paradox in Media Studies and Media Labour

Mayer, Vicki

2019

Overview

Language and other representational forms are media for creativity and action. Passed along through social processes, they enable us to speak in our own voices and express the material conditions that have shaped us. Theories of voice and social action have underlined numerous strands of media activism, from the pre-Stalinist Labor Press in the early Soviet Union to the NAACP's The Crisis magazine to Pacifica Radio and Bread and Puppet Theater. Media industries are rife with creative teams who've worked with each other since the old college days. With so many people working together even for a matter of weeks, the classroom tends to reproduce voices that represent the shared qualities of the whole, or lack thereof. If student media production reflects the quality of the clustered community, and we do not pay attention to or assess the social condition represented therein, then we should not be surprised at the narrow scope for media creativity and action, the lack of pluralism, and the abundance of highly skilled media pieces that all say very little.

• Publisher: Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, FB 319
• Subject: Classrooms / Communication / Ethics / Insurgency / Media studies / Pedagogy / Political activism / Rebellions / Students