communicative ecosystem

7/28/2019 Communicative Ecosystem

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Beyond Media Literacy: CommunicativeEcosystems as a potentially useful metaphor for

planning, implementing and researching mediaand education.

Beth Titchiner


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Foundation:

Purpose:

Exploring:

Examples:

Theoretical approach to doctoral researchLatin American education and communication theory

Educomunicao (Educommunication)

Highlight elements of framework which may becomplementary to

concept of Media Literacy

How does Educommunication difer from Media Literacy?What is the metaphor of communicative ecosystems?

What can these concepts ofer planners and researchers?

Educommunication project in So Paulo, BrazilMy own approach to researching this project


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1. How adequate is the concept of Media Literacy for planningand research?

Concept of traditional print literacy:

Media literacy is the ability to read and write audiovisualinformation rather than text. [It] is the ability to use a range of

media and be able to understand the information received (Ocefor Standards in Communication, 2010)

Critical literacy:

to be media literate [] means, for example, being able toexercise critical understanding over the choices of products,services, information and entertainment content available and tobe able to respond, comment or complain (Media Literacy TaskForce, 2009)


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Focus too heavily on developing and measuring individual skills,competencies and communicative practices in isolation from theenvironments within which they occur?

Luiz Ramiro Beltran:

If a researcher, in attempting to study the social behaviour of ants,

were to negate the influence that the environment exerted on them, hewould be bitterly criticised by his colleagues for this obvious blindness,for the crass artificiality of his lens. Nevertheless, when a researcherstudies the conduct of human communication with an almost totaldisregard for the decisive influence of the organising factors of society,few of his colleagues condemn him. Is this form of carrying out

research realistic, logical and scientific? (Beltran, 1985: 3, mytranslation).

Should we be questioning the impact of practices on environments

and vice-versa?


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2. Educommunication and the metaphor of CommunicativeEcosystems

Focus: articulating the relations [and tensions] between previouslyautonomous camps of education and communication (Lauriti,2009) and on the educommunicative environment as a whole.

Management of communication in educational spaces

(Horta, 2005; Costa, 2009)


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Roots of Educommunication

Paolo Freire, Antonio Pasquali, Jorge Huergo, Mario Kaplun, JesusMartin-Barbero, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Ismar de Oliveira Soares.

Transmission-reception (banking) model

Promotion of violence by reserving the condition of subject forsome and the condition of object for others, attributing distinctidentities to pedagogical subjects and valuing certain types ofknowledge and expression over others.

Symbolic and epistemic, institutionally prescribed, sociallylegitimated


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How can we talk of a media education which places increasing

emphasis on promoting young people as active participants,

communicators and citizens in democratic societies, when many ofour schools still function according to a 19th century model which

allows relatively little space for student voice and active democratic

participation?

Focus on: communicative processes inherent in education rather thanEducation purely as a tool for teaching about communication


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The metaphor of CommunicativeEcosystems

In the relation between Education and Communication, the

latter is almost always reduced to its purely instrumentaldimension.

That which is precisely important to consider is left on thesidelines; that is, the insertion of education in the complexprocesses of communication of todays society, or in other

words, to consider the communicative ecosystem whichconstitutes the diffuse and decentralised educationalsurroundings in which we are immersed.

A diffuse surrounding, because it is composed of a mix oflanguages and knowledges which circulate through diverse

media devices, but which are also dense and intrinsicallyinterconnected; anddecentralisedby its relation with the twocentres: school and book which for various centuries haveorganised the educational system

(Martin-Barbero, 1998:215, my translation)


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New technology for old pedagogies? Old pedagogies for new technologies?Or an interrogation of education:

What does knowingand learningmean in the time of informationeconomies and communicational imaginaries?

What epistemological and institutional changes are being demanded bythe new methods of cognitive production and appropriation?

What do our schools know about the deep modifications in the perceptionof space and time experienced by adolescents?

(Martin-Barbero, 1998:5-6)


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3. Planning: an example

Programa Nas Ondas do Rdio

USP-SME Partnership

Phase 1 (2001-2004) Educom.rdio

455 Municipal state schools

Workshops in production skills

Discussion forums

Allocation of SW Radio equipment

Aim: Democratisation of school env.


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P

Phase 2 (2005- onwards) Lei Educom

Objectives:Democratically managed use of

radio and other communications

resources in a way which favours

the expression ofallmembers of

school community

Introducing technologies not as

didactic instruments or objects of

analysis, but as means for

expression and production of culture


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4. Researching: an example

Programa Nas Ondas do Rdio

Changed the school

Changed teacher-student relations

Contradictions and conditions ofSchool environment

deep crises

Little permanency


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Enquiry:

Shift away from: measuring skills and competencies, media effects, audienceResearch, didactic (instrumentalist) potentials of technology, success or failure

Towards: exploring articulation of relationships and tensions betweeneducational and communicational practices

Communicational dynamics of school space

Role of media education in challenging or reproducing relationships

Implications on personal and social levels

Identity, roles, power relations, epistemologies, institutional culture......


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Conclusion

Communicative ecosystems as an added dimension to Media Literacy?

Asking: not only what role education can play in teaching

about media and communications, but also what role communication plays in

education?

What do our rapidly changing educommunicative practices and environments

mean for the roles of teachers, students, school and the ways we educate?

communicative ecosystem

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