The “Telling Stories, or How Do We Know What We Know?” paper written by Ginsberg begins by emphasizing how storytelling has evolved from face to face sharing; Current day storytelling transcends geography, gender, race, etc. Then it talks about the Cultural Indicator project which tracked TV content over time and the audience’s views on social topics. They found that this content influenced heavy TV watcher’s views on certain groups and issues. For example, heavy TV watchers were found to see the world as more dangerous because of an over representation of crime on TV and were more likely to score higher on a sexism scale because of the portrayal of women on TV. Finally, the paper discusses the Cultural Environment Movement, an organization that promotes diversity in media and changing media ownership. The “From Digital Consumption to Digital Invention Toward a New Critical Theory and Practice of Multiliteracies” paper explains that often in education students are taught about digital media but are not actually engaging with the media. The paper calls for increased engagement with digital media in education and emphasizes how it helps youth build critical thinking skills while learning about their society as well as their place in it. The main point from Erica Halverson’s Ted Talk is that schools need to incorporate the arts into teaching because art (traditional art, film-making, etc.) promotes creativity, innovation, social learning and an understanding of the self. These skills lead to students becoming productive citizens in society.
The Cultural Indicator project part of the Ginsberg article resonated with me because as a person of color I have felt the direct impact of stereotypical representation of Asian/Indian Americans in American TV. Growing up, these stereotypical portrayals often led to people having assumptions about me and other Asian or Indian Americans I knew. These assumptions and microaggressions cause minority groups to feel left out of media and therefore left out of American society. Because of these experiences, I am appreciative of the CEM organization for working on bringing more representation onto media. I believe that the second article which pushed for increased youth engagement with digital media makes a good argument based on my own educational experience. In fifth grade, my teacher made all the students create blogs that we would post in throughout the year as we learned history; we would make all kinds of posts ranging from reflecting on what we learned to writing about an event from a historical figure’s perspective. This project kept me engaged in the material we learned and also helped me build my digital literacy skills. I think if more students were given opportunities like this in school, it would increase their creativity, critical thinking and help them learn to use technological resources more. In a society that is becoming increasingly technological, it is important for schools to teach students how to engage with technology and digital media. The Ted Talk also resonated with me because I pursue various kinds of arts in my free time and they have truly increased my creativity and helped me express myself in a way that allowed me to better understand myself. If more arts can be integrated into education, more students would get the opportunity to build these skills and express themselves in different ways.
My question for the class is: how has digital media impacted your view of yourself and your place in society?
Siri's EDU 185 Blog 