Learning to "Read" Media Texts in the Classroom and Beyond

After completing the music literacy assignment for this week, I started thinking about analytical assignments and why so many students--high school, college, and even graduate school students--struggle with them.

When I worked at a university writing center, I was initially surprised that so many students had difficulty writing analytical essays. Many of them volunteered that they had never been asked to complete such assignments--they had limited opportunities to engage in critical thinking in a classroom environment. If students aren’t challenged to critically evaluate texts in the classroom (and I use the word text in the most encompassing way possible), how are they going to do so in their everyday lives?

I’m obviously considering media literacy from the vantage point of a university/high school teacher and future librarian, and my concern is with helping students gain the analytical skills necessary to become active, rather than passive, consumers and users of information. Using various forms of media--“texts” with which they are familiar--provides educators with a great resource.

When I taught college composition, I focused on media literacy and media texts to introduce students to analytical thinking and writing, and then used that as a segue to thinking critically about other, more “traditional” texts like short stories and novels. While nothing works perfectly for every student, I was impressed their analysis of music videos, advertisements, toys, and movies. I think many enjoyed “speaking back” to these texts and fleshing out meanings.

One of the hardest parts for those new to critically reading media is understanding what context means. A text can’t be analyzed in an isolated environment--one needs to know how it is situated in a particular culture. I always think of this as where the fun begins. Drawing connections and piecing everything together is what makes the text and possible meanings come alive. 

For instance, when my class was studying advertisements, I had them look at some of the Guitar Hero commercials--specifically the one with Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, Tony Hawk, and Michael Phelps. The first time I saw the athletic quartet decked out in pink button-up shirts and rocking out to "Old Time Rock and Roll" I thought one thing: Tom Cruise in Risky Business. My students, who loved this commercial, didn't have this contextual information at hand and so part of this text (and part of the entertainment) was lost on them. 

Once they started to understand context, I was pleased to see that so many of them were enjoying "the hunt." Even when we moved on to literary analysis, they were more eager to dig up any information they could find on the authors of their books to try to draw connections. With that being said, they weren't necessarily perfect when it came to expressing this in essay form, but I was happy with the thinking that was going on. Several students even complained that they'd never be able to watch a commercial the same way again. To me, that is a good thing.

Media literacy and media analysis are topics I’m planning to continue to investigate from my new perspective as a future librarian. I found some techniques and developed some assignments that worked pretty well in my own classroom (I’ll admit there were some flubs, though), but I want to find ways to bring this into a library as well.