Gender, Ageism and the Media

Chapter 36 in the Media Literacy Reader explores the idea of how older women are represented in the media. The chapter talks extensively about the way in which our society does not value older woman as shown by their portrayals in the mainstream media. Often these older women are seen either as a mother and a grandmother or as linked to disease, isolation and worthlessness. This chapter really resonated with me because I know how rare it is to see older women represented positively on television shows or even on reality television shows. As the chapter also notes, when they are actually present in the mass media, they are rarely ever portrayed in a positive light.

This chapter also examines the link between ageism and sexism and how women experience a certain type of ageism in which they are not seen as attractive anymore. I think this link between ageism and sexism is really interesting. The pressure on females to live up to the unrealistic beauty standards of the media is clearly intensified as women age. The following video shows actress Marina Sirtis, who is most famous for being on Star Trek: The Next Generation, speaking about the ageism that she faces in Hollywood. This reinforces the argument of the chapter which is that there are limited opportunities and representation of older women on the television.

Furthermore, while some students are aware of sexism, racism and classism, it is rare that ageism is ever talked about within the classroom. I think ageism is an incredibly prevalent form of discrimination and oppression in our society and it is especially important to talk to youth about this because they sometimes can buy into ageist notions. One example of ageism seen in our society recently could be the treatment of John McCain in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Many newspaper and other forms of news media ridiculed him for being too old to be President. The picture below is an example of a picture that was ageist and made fun of McCain for being too old to be President of the United States.

http://contexts.org/socimages/files/2008/10/mccain_no_old_men.jpg

An interesting example of the intersection between sexism and ageism could be seen in the treatment by the National Post of Dolores Claman who was in a fight with CBC over the theme song for Hockey Night in Canada. The National Post inserted a line about how “it is puzzling that a major media company would have left itself capable of being outfoxed thus by an elderly lady.” This shows how the author of this article found it not only surprising that a female could “outfox” a major media company but found it especially surprising because this was an “elderly lady.” Below is a picture of Claman.

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As a future teacher, I think it would be really interesting to examine ageism with my class. Perhaps we could use magazines to cut out pictures and make collages of how the media represents elderly people. We could also discuss the types of older people we know in our own lives and some of the qualities that they embody and compare this to the stereotypes that are perpetuated in the media. In addition to this, I did some research to see if there were any other resources that had ideas on how to combat ageism and found this website that gives some tips on how to move past ageism. I also found an article that further discussed the intersectionality between ageism and gender. Through exploring these ideas I think we could dispel some commonly believed stereotypes of older people especially women.

Civic Engagement, Participatory Media and Youth

“Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement” was a really great article that highlighted some important new ways that youth can and are becoming active in civic engagement. As someone who is 20 years old with a lot of exposure to other youth and various technologies, I can personally attest to the fact that participatory media including blogs, wikis or social networking sites like Facebook are really awesome ways to engage incredibly technology savvy youth and encourage them to become involved with social justice issues.

The idea that participatory media can encourage civic engagement became really apparent to me especially with the 2008 Election for the U.S. President. I remember how many of my friends either “donated” their statuses to raise awareness about Barack Obama and to encourage their friends to get out and vote. The picture below is an example of a status that was donated to Barack Obama.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/triciawang/3045293448/

The video below explains the importance of social media in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.

Beyond encouraging political participation, I also agree with the article that participatory media can also be very effective in drawing attention to issues of social justice. Blogs such as www.feministing.com not only have posts about feminist issues that are relevant today such as the state of Arizona passing abortion restrictions but they also usually link to a website which can help you get involved with this issue. Additionally, Feministing has a community blog section so not only can readers comment on the blogs but also contribute to the Feministing community and raise awareness about issues that are important to them. Within the Feministing community, many readers such as this one, are in university or younger which indicates how many young people are getting involved with these issues of social justice.

Furthermore, Facebook is another site that has really been used by young people to raise awareness about social issues. With the events feature on Facebook, you can post an event and invite many of your friends to it. Examples of events that I’ve been invited to in recent months include a protest against the genocide against Tamils in Sri Lanka and a protest for the passing of Proposition Eight.These events really show how youth are starting to engage with these forms participatory media and beginning to fight for certain issues of social justice. Other friends changed their profile pictures to reflect the social justice cause they were promoting. Below is an example of one of the images many of my friends changed their profile picture to in order to protest the genocide against Tamils in Sri Lanka.

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I also loved how the article provided various strategies for teachers to encourage students to learn how to exercise a public voice through blogging and through wikis. Many of the examples I have given above of people who have been exercising civic engagement through participatory media have been older teenagers or young adults who may already been encouraged to develop a public voice or civic engagement. However, I think it’s incredibly important to try to foster an interest in social justice issues and civic participation and engagement as young as possible which is why their tips seemed very helpful for educators to use. As a socially conscious young adult as well as a future educator, I was so happy to read an article that recognized the youth that are already exercising their civic engagement and getting involved with issues of social justice as well as learn about these really great tips for encouraging youth to pursue these issues and exercise their public voice.

MySpace and the Potential for Cyber-Bullying

“Why Youth Heart MySpace” takes an interesting perspective on a website that is usually seen in a rather negative light. As the article mentions, many people focus on the ideas of bullying and online predators when speaking about MySpace instead of considering the benefits this website offers for youth. This article makes some great points when exploring the different valuable aspects of MySpace. “Why Youth Heart MySpace” points out the ways in which MySpace can provide youth with a public space to socialize that is not controlled by the adults in their lives. The article also addresses the way in which youth use it for identity production and for socialization.

As someone who loved MySpace in my teenage years, I personally agree with a lot of the points the authors of this article emphasize. As a teenager, I loved being able to have an identity that my parents were not aware of and be able to talk and ‘hang-out’ with my friends in an atmosphere uncontrolled by my parents. I also felt that my experience on MySpace was pretty valuable in terms of my identity production, how I conceptualized my own identity and how I represented myself both online and offline.

While I did feel this article was very valuable in producing a new perspective on MySpace, I also felt it somewhat glossed over the very real dangers of MySpace, such as cyber-bullying. I think it would’ve been really interesting if the article referenced some things that students, educators and parents could do to address the issue of cyber-bullying. While I never personally experienced cyber-bullying, I did have many friends who did and I think that cyber-bullying can be a large problem with MySpace and other social networking sites. This is not to say bullying does not exist in other mediums as well but bullying on the internet is slightly different because it can be anonymous and you cannot always know who is doing the bullying. While I agree that it is incredibly important to note the values of MySpace, it is also important for us to remember to be proactive and think about preventative measures for issues like cyber-bullying as well as resources for people who experience this.

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An example of cyber-bullying

Cyber-bullying has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, especially with the case of Megan Meier, a thirteen year old girl who was bullied on MySpace by the mother of one of her friends who was pretending to be a boy who liked Megan.

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A picture of Lori Drew, the woman who cyber-bullied Megan Meier

Megan eventually committed suicide partially as a result of the cyber-bullying. The video below gives a few more details about this awful situation.

Clearly, this is a problem that should not be ignored. While educators and parents are taking steps to address this issue, it is important that we continue to remain vigilant in dealing with this and trying to ensure that it occurs as little as possible. As a future teacher, I want to keep myself aware of the values of certain websites (such as MySpace and Facebook) but also keep myself aware of the dangers that also occur. When looking for resources to deal with cyber-bullying, I found two sites that give some tips on dealing with cyber bullying. The first site deals with possible preventative measures people on the internet can do to reduce cyber bullying. The second site deals with things educators can do in order to try to encourage students not to cyber-bully other students.

Exploring Media Assignment- Remix

The L Word was one of the first television shows that represented lesbians within the mainstream media. This show has worked to challenge prevalent stereotypes of lesbians and the queer community at large. Through providing a greater amount of representation as well as more accurate representation for queer identities, shows like the L Word can work to normalize diverse sexual identities which in turn helps to create equality and social justice in our world.

Technology in the Classroom

As a student who had limited exposure to technology within my education I found these readings which addressed technology leadership and technology integration into the curriculum to be fascinating. Additionally, as someone who wants to be a teacher and use technology consistently in the curriculum to support my teaching, I thought these chapters were very useful. Chapter Four advocated the ideas of having technology leadership, as opposed to technology administration in schools, and gave tips for administrators to take an active role in promoting technology within their schools. Chapter Five gave really good advice and tips on how to integrate technology effectively into the curriculum (below are two pictures of different ways technology can be integrated into the classroom), especially through practicing reflexivity when brainstorming different integration techniques.

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I agree very strongly with Chapter Four’s argument that administrators should strive for technology leadership as opposed to technology administration. My agreement partially stems from my own high school experience which made me wish that my high school administrators were interested in and had pursued technology leadership. In my high school, technology that did not have an explicit education purpose (such as books or computers) was not used at all. Cell phones were banned from the school, we were not allowed regular access to the internet and the majority of our assignments did not even involve using anything beyond course books. The only lengthy exposure we had to technology was during computer class where we simply mastered typing and completed one research project using the internet.

Due to my own experience in high school, Chapter Four gave me a lot to think about. I wonder how different my high school education would have been if the administrators had been interested in technology leadership. I believe that my high school education could have been a lot more interesting, that I would have learned and remembered a lot more if my teachers and administrators had tried to incorporate technology and used it to facilitate their curriculum goals.

In order to further see the importance of technology leadership I did a little research and came upon a website which argued for the importance of technology leadership. This website helped facilitate my understanding of the importance of technology leadership but also provided some additional information for me to look at as well as noted some pitfalls that may occur when trying technology leadership. I also came upon a website that showed an example of a school board that seems committed to technology leadership. It is great to see a school board passionate about this and hopefully more school boards have and will continue to adopt this perspective.

Additionally, I also think that many of the ideas in Chapter Five are incredibly useful for me as a future teacher. I thought reading about integration as a reflexive practice was not only interesting, but also something I would choose to implement in the future. This strategy seems like it would be very effective because it would allow me (as the teacher) to think of new possibilities instead of simply being told what to do. I also enjoy how this method does not start thinking about actual technology instantly but instead focuses on the curriculum goals. Focusing first on curriculum goals ensures that technology is supporting the curriculum instead of the other way around. Below is a video that illustrates different ways to incorporate technology into the curriculum. With these resources and hopefully a supportive school board I hope that I can be a teacher that actively uses technology to support my curriculum.

Getting Inspired!

The relationship between media and teaching is a really interesting one to learn about and to think about. Even though I want to be a teacher, before this course began I never really thought about the ways I’d incorporate media within my courses. However, given the fact that we live in a society that is so media-saturated, it has been invaluable for me to start reading about the different relationships between media and teaching. It has also been really important for me to start thinking about the different ways I would want to use media in a classroom and as a pedagogical tool.

As this week’s readings note, many teachers are still focusing on simply getting students to master technology or simply using technology to support their curriculum. My education has proved this point to be true. Throughout elementary school, all my exposure to media involved learning to use different sites of media (such as the internet or the television) in order to get information out of it. For example, we would simply learn to use the internet to research certain topics in order to write papers. However, we never learned to critically engage with media and critique the different media we were exposed to. We also never had a chance to learn how to use different sources of media in a constructive manner that would promote social justice. Even now, in my third year of university, my professors tend to avoid using technology or use it very minimally. Some use the discussion board function on WebCT but as Domine notes in Chapter 3 of “Rethinking Technology in Schools” these ‘discussions’ end up being a series of unrelated points that are all responding to the teacher.

The way in which many teachers in my experience have used technology and media is especially disappointing because of the powerful ability of certain media to transmit positive messages and work towards a world of social justice. One website I regularly visit Feministing which is a blog that deals with various issues related to sexism is an example of how media can be used in a way that promotes social justice. Below is a video that one of the commenters on Feministing recommended.  It is another example of the way media (such as You-Tube) can be used in a way that promotes social justice (like anti-racism).

Another blog that I have recently discovered which I think has particular value for me as a future teacher is the blog Anti-Racist Parent. There have been recommendations of multicultural books that are truly multicultural as opposed to being typical stereotypes of various ethnic groups.  Below is an example of one of the books recommended on Anti-Racist Parents.  It is titled “This Jazz Man” and it is by Karen Ehrhardt.

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These readings inspired me to think of different ways in which I’d try to combine media and teaching in my future as a teacher. One thing I’d be very interested in doing was trying to have a media literacy unit in which we could all try to think critically about Disney movies for example which often can have many sexist, racist, classist and heterosexist idea embedded within them. This could be as simple as brainstorming different characteristics between boy and girl characters within Disney or thinking about whether Disney portrayals are accurate. While none of these ideas are concrete yet, it’s been incredibly refreshing to be inspired to think about the different ways I would want to combine media with teaching.

Below is a picture of some Disney characters that we could possibly critique in class.

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Question Everything!

In Noam Chomsky’s influential piece “The New World Order”, Chomsky, a critic of U.S. foreign policy, addressed the way in which the U.S. exploits other countries in order to maintain their dominant position within the world. He also addresses the ways in which the media supports the actions of the U.S. instead of questioning them. Joe Kincheloe’s paper “Chomsky, the Empire and Media Literacy” builds upon Chomsky’s piece and shows how Chomsky’s comments and insights were still relevant in 2006. I agree with Kincheloe and feel that Chomsky`s piece is definitely still relevant in our world today and while sometimes it may seem that the media is more critical of governments and the status-quo in general, that really is not the case.

It was evident that by the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, many media sources, especially news channels that were considered to be more “liberal” were questioning his effectiveness as a leader. These news stations were reporting on how dissatisfied the American public was with Bush as a leader and how many American’s did not agree with Bush’s decision to declare a war on Iraq. Additionally, Sarah Palin (shown in the picture below), who was the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in the 2008 elections and who also supported the Iraq war, was criticized heavily by more “liberal” news media and especially by independent bloggers.

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However, while it may appear that the media has become more critical and questioning of U.S. foreign policy, I still believe it is incredibly important for us to continue to be critical of the media. Firstly, it’s important to remember that while many American’s did not support the war in Iraq (US Soldiers serving in Iraq pictured below), it was not, as Joe Kincheloe points out, the fact that millions of Iraqi’s were dying that bothered people as much as the fact that America was losing a war. Additionally, we can also remember that while Sarah Palin was critiqued, it was not so much for her foreign policy views but more because of her lack of experience.  Additionally, there were just as many news media sources such as Fox News who supported her as a Vice Presidential Candidate.

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In addition to that, in the video below we can truly see how the U.S. government and the U.S. media are so closely intertwined. The video addresses the way in which the U.S. government continues to spend money in order to create advertisements to shape public opinion on the military.

Clearly, after watching this video it becomes apparent how the U.S. media continues to support the agenda of the U.S. government and how Chomsky’s piece still rings true today. This reinforces the idea and the need for media literacy that has been brought up in earlier chapters of Media Literacy: A Reader and Rethinking Technology in Schools. It is so essential for people to be able to critique the media that is out there and question instead of just taking it at face value. Schools are important in this regard because they can educate students on media literacy and allow them to develop the skills necessary to critique the media. I guess the most important thing for me to remember is that as a consumer of so many different media sources every day, I need to remember to question everything!