SAGE Journal Articles
This article aims to make a contribution to the media literacy movement by focusing on the debate between liberal and more radical approaches. It argues that the media literacy movement is fighting a battle that is already partly won, but that contemporary popular culture has moved into a terrain that anticipates and undermines the supposedly liberating effects of increased knowledge on behalf of the television viewers. Drawing on Andrejevic’s work on reality TV and the author’s own work on dating shows, the article argues that the dominant viewing position can be described as a savvy one. The savvy viewer is not “duped” into a naive belief in the media but literally sees through the text. However, the article concludes that the savvy attitude is essentially a conservative one in which the media are understood but not challenged, leaving the capitalist media industries beyond criticism - a phenomenon described as critical apathy.
This study investigated into the ways in which two classes of six- and seven-year-old children in Hawaii talked about the media. The children were shown video clips from a variety of media and asked to respond both orally and in writing. The qualitative data gathered in this study were researcher notes, video and audio-taped focus group interviews with the children, and their written responses to open-ended questions about the media clips they viewed. The results suggest that these children were more media savvy than commonly assumed, and already grasped basic understandings of key media concepts. Drawing upon Foucauldian theory, the article argue for the need to move from the dominant model of developmental stage theory in media education, based on a deficit view of the child, to a strengths-based approach that recognizes and validates young people's varying experience with and knowledge about the media, and their agency when interacting with it.