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This guest author post is written by Carla R. Chamberlin, author of the new book Media Work: Language Teaching Through Media Literacy from the University of Michigan Press. The book is available in paperback and accessible ebook.

Misinformation.
Media bubbles.
Disinformation.
Social media.
Deep fakes.
AI.
Information saturation.

The list of media-related challenges that we face today is overwhelming and seems to grow in intensity on a daily basis, threatening our mental health as well as our democracy. The average 8–12 year old in the U.S. spends 5 hours 33 minutes in front of screens outside of school, and that figure rises to 8 hrs 39 hours for 13-18 year olds (Rideout et,al., 2022). Globally, the average adult spends 6:40 online per day (We Are Social & Meltwater, 2023). Consequently, educators have been paying more attention to media literacy, and some school systems have made it a mandatory part of primary and secondary curricula. Media literacy offers strategies to contest the dangers posed by our new screen-mediated dystopia. But screens are not the only form of media that we encounter. To understand how educators can integrate media literacy into their practice, we need to begin with a broader view of media and its potential for teaching and learning.

Many people associate media literacy with the development of technological skills and the ability to decipher false information, propaganda, and scams. These definitions are incomplete. Media literacy is much more than a defensive stance against disinformation or the demonstration of technological competency (Hobbs & Jensen, 2009). Media literacy is a way of looking at the world around you, interpreting meaning and stories, learning to contextualize, and responding to media messages in thoughtful, critical, and productive ways.

Media literacy is not only about the messages we see on screens. Take a look around you. Whether you are in your kitchen, a classroom, a bus stop, a café, a museum, or walking down a city street, you see signs, posters, flyers, labels, menus, calendars, pamphlets, forms, billboards and bumper stickers. You will quickly realize that, despite the proliferation of digital media in our lives, analog formats have not disappeared. Our mediascapes are both digital and analog. In my book, Media Work: Language Teaching through Media Literacy, I adopt a vision of media literacy that examines a wide spectrum of media formats as well as an expanded definition that focuses on processes of learning about content and context. Students can learn not only about language and culture, but also about their neighborhoods, local social issues, the history of places, and their role as participants in their communities. Although I focus on teaching about language and culture, Media Work can be used to explore any subject that is represented in media today. Teachers can, in fact, use media to teach about language, culture, history, science, social justice, health and wellness, and other topics.

In the first chapters of Media Work, I introduce some of the big ideas from both media and language studies. I discuss where the two fields converge to show how language allows for endless creativity, how language represents different ideologies and values, and how media formats structure messages. This lays the foundation for embedding media in social and historical contexts, questioning how media formats shape our environments (Strate, 2017) and using media to develop critical thinking skills.

At one point, while writing this book, I second-guessed my choice of the word “work” over “play” to describe this pedagogical approach. Media creators play with language and imagery to capture our attention and convey a particular message. Likewise, unraveling meaning can include a sense of playfulness and creativity. However, media “work” is the better choice to describe the opportunities for teaching about language, culture, and social issues through the texts and images of our linguistic landscapes. Media work does not bring popular media to classrooms as entertainment; instead, media are used as a source for observing descriptive language and a catalyst for talking about culture, values, and ideologies. Media work leads students to thoughtful analyses and theoretically-grounded discussions about meaning that are applicable to their everyday lives.

Media work is an approach to teaching, but it is not prescriptive. The purpose is to encourage students to notice, observe, and interrogate language and mediated messages around them, with the ultimate goal of giving them a voice to respond. Take photos of what you see. Ask students to do the same. Then, you can apply media work—thinking of it as a menu with choices that do not necessarily have to be selected in a strict order. You should, however, understand how all of the choices contribute to learning. In essence, media work prompts us to ask questions about the content and context of media, to decode the message and situate it in time and place.

For example, it is common to see signs posted in public spaces in the U.S. that tell pet owners to clean up after their dogs. Ostensibly, these signs are reminders of public ordinances and laws. You can build a lesson around the vocabulary, euphemisms, and idioms.

At the intersection of content and context, however, media work digs deeper through the processes of observation, interrogation, interpretation, reflection, and response. These processes can be applied in varying sequences and intensities to adapt to your students, but they should not be overlooked. Through these processes, we can connect these signs to interesting stories that go beyond the superficial messages. Media work will challenge your students to think about the format of these messages, the neighborhoods where they are placed, the visual elements, and the tone conveyed through language. Why are there such different approaches to conveying the same message? Are any of these signs multilingual? What difference does locality and socioeconomics play in the choice of language and imagery? Is it appropriate to respond to someone who is not following the rules? Even signs as mundane as “clean up after your pet” can lead to discussions about responsibility, animal rights, public health, environment, use of public spaces, etc.

Media Work contains over 80 examples and illustrations of various media that are found in local spaces. The specific examples are not meant to be used by everyone, but to inspire you and your students to notice the messages in your linguistic landscapes and then make sense of how they relate to local communities and the larger world. In one of my courses, my linguistically and ethnically diverse students looked at media about a local school district’s bitter debates over Critical Race Theory. They learned how media frame contentious issues in different ways, how messages are disseminated, and how to do lateral research to fact-check information (Breakstone, et al., 2021).

For students who are new to your community, media work can focus on cultural knowledge that is helpful for daily life. Advanced and older students can take media work further to question representations, discrimination, ideologies, and values. In all cases, media are good catalysts for discussions. A focus on specific media examples gives students a chance to talk about differing interpretations through an objective lens, contributing their own experiences only if and when they are ready. Media Work will prepare teachers and students to notice and interrogate language, interact with their immediate environments, and respond to media messages with curiosity and critical thinking.

References

Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2021). Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait. Educational Researcher, 50(8), 505–515. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211017495

Hobbs, R., & Jensen, A. (2009). The Past, Present, and Future of Media Literacy Education. The Journal of Media Literacy Education, 1(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-1-1-1

Rideout, V., Peebles, A., Mann, S., & Robb, M. B. (2022). Common Sense census: Media use by tweens and teens, 2021. Common Sense.

Strate, L. (2017). Media ecology: An approach to understanding the human condition. Peter Lang.

We Are Social & Meltwater (2023), “Digital 2023 Global Overview Report,” retrieved
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-global-overview-report 05 March 2025.