Public Pedagogy

The Terrain of Public Pedagogy

Education is an enveloping concept, a dimension of culture that maintains dominant practices while also offering spaces for their critique and reimagination

Popular culture is a potential site for social justice, cultural critique and reimagined possibilities for democratic living Hidden curriculum

Everyday Politics on & of the Body

Our bodies and realities are mediated by the fantasies of marketers, directors, producers artists and the like

Hyper-masculinity from G.I. Joe to Batman to TCU horned frog mascot

Images of bodies are seductive in the sense that they draw our energies into maintaining and reifying the illusion

Laying the Foundations for Studying Race,

Class, Gender and the Media

Ours is a Mediated Society much of what we know and care about, and think is

important, is based on what we see in the media the media provides information, entertainment, escape

and relaxation The media can help save lives and conversely it can

also encourage people to cause harm to others medical

networks

emergency

(cost)energy

charity

social change

criminal acts

”security” and secrecy

We are global and connected

If the world is shrinking, and our “village” is becoming global, it’s because the media have brought things closer to us and to each-other

average american watches more than 8 hours of tv per day access and amounts of consumption

Types of Study - Methodologies

social scientists strive to maintain objectivity

critical/cultural studies subjective interpretation

Critical/Cultural Studies & Subjective Interpretation

extend their involvement with their research to include the ultimate goal of making the world a better place. if we can identity the ways in which our social structures function to oppress groups, then we can try to do something to make it more equitable.

Race, Gender & Class Matter

we do categorize people on the basis of race/ethnicity, gender and social class

our perception of our own and others’ identities color all our interactions; they affect our expectation of others, our expectation of our selves and others’ expectation of us

we make snap judgments about people and things and this is necessary because we live in a complex social world

Race, Gender & Class Matter

ultimately, we rely on these characteristics because we have been taught to do so. “the dividing line between groups that were created in the past condition our perception and impressions in the present. our ‘knowledge’ that skin color can be used to judge others and our sensitivity to this characteristic reflects our socialization into a race-conscious society with a long history of racial stratification” –Healey

we have been socialized into a gender-conscious society that is also stratified along the lines of gender

Race, Gender & Class Matter

stereotypes reflect our erroneous beliefs that the few traits we stress are the most important, and that they apply to all members of the group

prejudice is the tendency of an individual to think about other groups in negative ways and to attach negative emotions to those groups and to prejudge individuals on the basis of their group membership

discrimination occurs when people are treated unequally just because they belong to a certain group

The Social Construction of Race & Ethnicity

both are socially constructed and theories that propagate biological theories have been rejected and are wrong

race is primarily defined in terms of physical characteristics, but where markers are visibly noticeable they are only given meaning because of the society which constructs them; these meanings are not static and have changed over time

ethnicity is defined in terms of cultural characteristics

Audience, Content, Production: Three Focal Points

Production involves anything having to do with the creation and distribution of mediated messages

Content emphasizes the mediated messages themselves

Audience addresses the people who engage, consume or interact with the mediated message

SMRC (social science model)

source: who creates or originates the message

message: how the message has presented the ideas

channel: how the actual message is conveyed

receiver: to whom the message is sent

Production, Text & Reception (critical/cultural studies)

points of intervention to understand how social structures serve to oppress and repress certain

social groups in order to end that oppression

Key Concepts & Recurring Themes the framing of an event or activity establishes

its meaning journalists and 'the news'

despite their quest for the objective presentation of the "facts" to their audience, journalists use frames to give their stories meaning

facts have no intrinsic meaning framing is important because a great deal of

research as shown that the frames employed by the media when telling a story can affect or attitudes and judgments about the issue and people involved in the story — especially when people don’t have firsthand knowledge of and experience with the issue at hand

Symbolic Annihilation

media content offers a form of symbolic representation of society rather than any literal portrayal

to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power - social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that 'really matter'

through absence, condemnation and trivialization, the media reflects a world in which women are consistently devalued framing of appropriate roles and norms

Intersectionality

allows the latitude to investigate a multiplicity of social realities and experiences that recognizes we are all products of a combinations of experiences and identities that are rooted in a variety of socially constructed classifications and valuation cultural/social identities

Social Construction of Reality

identities are negotiated within a social context sometimes identities are forced onto people (one drop rule)

some time identities are rejected (passing)

most often we understand and accept what it means in our culture to be lower class or middle class, male or female, Black or white, Native American, Chicana/o, Latina/o Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc. because we learn what it means to be a member of a certain social group through our interactions with other.

Social Construction of Reality engenderment is the process by which a ‘biological’

female becomes a socially constructed feminine being and a ‘biological’ male becomes a socially constructed masculine being

the importance of race and gender in our society has nothing to do with the physical attributes of race and gender and everything to do with society’s interpretation of that it means to be a member of a particular gender or racial/ethnic group. what it really means to be a Black man or a Latina or a Muslim in our society is entirely dependent on what we think it means to be x, y & z. the perspective that race, gender and social class are

socially constructed is a contrast with the alternative viewpoint, one which sees race and gender as deterministic or essentialist

Power Relations and Hierarchies

at the core, each of these phenomena — racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism — is about power relationship; our society is hierarchical

discourse can be seen as interpretive frameworks that have a powerful role in defining the phenomenon of interest, in determining exactly what it is and how it can or should be dealt with—or even whether it should be addressed at all

ideology (Marxist concept)are sets of deeply held ideas about the nature of the world and the way the world ought to be

Dominant Ideology

discovering and articulating a culture’s dominant ideology and how it’s perpetuated is important to critical/cultural scholars, because if it serves to oppress and repress certain cultural groups, these scholars would like to see it changed

media perform a pivotal roe in perpetuating the dominant ideology, because media texts so often produce and reproduce that ideology

if we as members of society don’t see much that represents an alternative way of approaching or understanding our world, it’s unlikely we’ll embrace an alternative ideology

Critical Thinking powerful, self-regulatory judgment which results in

interpretation, analysis, evaluation and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is made (American Philosophical Association)

asking and trying to answer the following types of question (which will take a variety of forms, in part due to weather they’re directed at media content, media production or media audiences: Who do I see? What do I think it means? How did it get that way? To what extend is that appropriate, a good thing, or a handled effectivity? What does this tell me about some aspect of our media system, or our society? And finally, why do I say that? this is what needs to be asked in becoming a critical

participant in our media system

Media Literacy

the US falls far behind much of the rest of the developed world in terms of the extent to which media literacy is developed and integrated into the educational system

media literacy is a key component in people’s ability to participate actively in a democratic society, as well as within a global context

a media literate person does not know all the answers, but knows how to ask the right question

5 Standards for Media Literacy

personal and public complex relations context commercial nature audience specific communication

The Social Psychology of Stereotypes - Gorham

How stereotypical images affect media audiences

ABC Nightline Experiment: although the format of the video clearly plays an important role in steering people towards the belief that the man pictured is the criminal, research in social psychology and media effects suggest a man's race also plays a role

race really does seem to affect how we interpret media, especially in subtle ways

The Social Psychology of Stereotypes stereotypes aren't simply something that only bigots

have experiences with the cultural stereotype seems to play an important role

in how we process information about people from various groups regardless of whether we endorse it

defined as a cognitive structure that contains the perceiver's knowledge, beliefs and expectancies about some human group, stereotypes are schema for people we perceive as belonging to a social group

schemas help structure not only our knowledge of things but our exceptions as well

priming - schema that we encounter often through repeated & consistent exposure

priming tends to alter our interpretations of things toward what fits our schemas

The Social Psychology of Stereotypes because stereotypes are so pervasive in the media and

in our everyday interactions with others, they become very well learned

when we encounter someone of a particular social group, the stereotype for that group is primed and automatically activated and influences subsequent cognitive processing this is an especially nasty characteristic: stereotypes not

only tell us what people of a social groups are like, but they also tells us why the people are like that

The Social Psychology of Stereotypes inferences we make about people's behaviors are

biased in favor of our ingroups — we make the ingroups we identify look good and the outgroups we don't identify with look bad stereotypes are rarely neutral, they attempt to describe

and explain behavior of groups as well as evaluate those groups on the norms of the majority: even if people don't endorse stereotypes, members of dominant social groups interpret information in ways that support their superiority, and by extension, reinforce the subordinate position of minority groups

Implications for Media Audiences if people use stereotypes to understand a political

issue, then the decision they make in their civic life may have negative consequences for the groups being stereotyped—whether we intend it or not...portrayals in the media might help perpetuate discrimination and negativity toward some groups

stereotypes tend to be negative for all minority groups in society: negative cumulative effect

if the news is seen as an objective and accurate description of "the way it is," then those stereotypical images will help reinforce the truthfulness of the stereotype and the "explanation" of "natural tendencies"