Ingrid H. Dahl, Editor of Youth Media Reporter, explains the vision and model for the very first YMR academic peer and practitioner reviewed issue.
Month: August 2008
Practitioner Q&A: What Tools and Materials Can We Share?
Practitioners interview one another at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit 2008 during a youth media educators caucus organized by I. Dahl (editor, YMR) and P. Narumanchi (program director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking).
Practitioner Q&A: In your work what challenges do you face?
Practitioner’s interview one another at Allied Media Conference in Detroit, 2008 with Ingrid Dahl (editor, YMR) and Padmini Narumanchi (program director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking).
Practitioner Q&A: What Do We Need to Address?
Practitioners interview one another at the Allied Media Conference’s youth media caucus, asking, “What critical question does the field of youth media need to address?”
Youthtopias: Towards a New Paradigm of Critical Youth Studies
by A.A. Akom and S. Ginwright, San Franscisco State University, and J. Cammarota, University of Arizona
Social science research on Black and Latina/o youth over the last century has been dominated by studies that frame young people as ‘problems,’ ‘pathologies,’ and ‘poisons,’ rather than focusing on young people’s emerging ‘assets,’ ‘agencies,’ and ‘aspirations.’ More often than not young people’s educational under-achievement has been explained as an individual pathology or cultural adaptation, which stem from social disorganization in their communities or lack of individual effort. In this article, we argue for a more expansive notion of youth cultural production, one that posits young people as central subjects to knowledge production and underscores their ability to actualize their agency for personal and social transformation. Following the work of Freire (1970), Fanon (1963), Solorzano and Delgado-Bernal (2001), Soep and Chavez (2005), Kellner and Share (2005), Cohen (2006), Andrade and Morrell (2008), to name a few, our new framework establishes clear pathways for civic engagement and social justice in the field of critical youth studies by utilizing the following five elements to form it’s basic core:
1) An explicit commitment to understand how race intersects with other forms of social oppression such as class, gender, religion, nationality, sexuality, phenotype, accent, immigration status, and special needs;
2) Challenging traditional paradigms, texts, and theories used to explain the experiences of students of color;
3) Fore-grounding the experiential knowledge of students so that young people and adults are “co-constructing” the learning environment;
4) A commitment to developing critical consciousness; and finally,
5) A commitment to social justice.
Download A.A. Akom, J. Cammarota, and S. Ginwright’s article here.
Young People, New Media, and Visual Design: An Exploratory Study
Sanjay Asthana, Ph.D., Middle Tennessee State University
The present generation of young people, unlike its predecessors, lives in an increasingly globalizing world that is being transformed by a wide range of technological innovations. Despite these major developments, it is a world that faces deep socio-economic disparities across various regions. This article will follow contemporary critical approaches to media education, youth, learning, and literacy by considering these as conceptual constellation that remains alert to the really existing social realties and life-worlds of young people and the communities. Through an examination of two initiatives from India, this article demonstrates how theory and praxis are indeed integrated in the media education practices pursued by young people. In creating and producing a variety of media content, the youth provide interesting perspectives on the local-global relationships which goes beyond the dominant understanding of the dialectic relations between the local and global contexts. For instance, young people raise crucial questions about power modalities around gender, poverty, and other generational and socio-economic inequities. In a preliminary manner, this article will explore some of the issues identified above, and suggest some possible connections with youth media education practices in the United States, and the role of media educators in fostering a globalist approach.
Download Sanjay Asthana’s article here.
Challenging the Silences and Omissions of Dominant Media: Youth-led Media Collectives in Colombia
Diana Coryat, Global Action Project
The purpose of this article is to introduce scholars and practitioners of youth and community media to exemplary youth-led media projects in Colombia. It highlights case studies of two media collectives led by Afro-Colombian and Indigenous youth, who are producing media under difficult conditions fueled by war, violence and poverty. This article explores the following questions: how do oppressed or marginalized groups in Colombia use media to challenge the invisibility of their social and political identities, perspectives, and struggles in the media and public discourse? And, when they do receive attention, how do they challenge the dominant narratives that circulate in the mainstream media and public discourse about their communities? Thirdly, as Colombia is embroiled in an internal armed conflict, what are the challenges they and other mediamakers face within that difficult context?
Download Diana Coryat’s article here.
Creating Empowering Environments in Youth Media Organizations
Renee Hobbs, Ed.D. and Jiwon Yoon, Ph.D. candidate, Temple University
How can we understand the differences between youth media programs? What are the characteristics of high-functioning programs? How can youth-serving organizations best provide meaningful learning experiences with media and technology, given the inevitable limitations of budget, time, staff, and other resources? Using a case study of a youth media organization which serves out-of-school youth, this paper presents a theoretical model designed to examine how certain programmatic and structural features of youth media organizations contribute to the quality of student learning, growth and development. The model emphasizes alignment between the following key elements: (1) program goals and outcomes, as articulated by leaders and staff; (2) the use of texts, tools, and technologies, (3) approaches to instruction and youth participation, including expectations of youth as learners; and (4) approaches to program management, including staff development and resource allocation. The model was generated from a case study of a struggling youth media program in a large metropolitan area that gives educational and vocational opportunities to out-of-school urban youth ages 17 – 21. After identifying how role confusion, staffing problems, and low expectations can combine with power relations issues among participants and program staff to the detriment of achieving learning outcomes, we identify four key elements of youth media programs, using data including interviews with program leaders, staff, and students; participant observation data; and analysis of staffing strategies. Youth media organizations should focus on strengthening student competence, confidence, character, connection, and contribution. However, media production instruction and youth participation in media and technology activities (by themselves) do not always guarantee that students develop these capacities. This paper argues that careful alignment between four key elements can help administrative leaders and educators in youth media programs to offer meaningful learning outcomes to program participants.
Download Renee Hobb’s and Jiwoon Yoon’s article here.
Making Meaning of Media Education: Professional Development among Youth Media Practitioners
Sara Keenan, M.A., with contributions by JoEllen Fisherkeller, Ph.D., New York University
This article presents qualitative field research conducted among the Youth Media Learning Network’s New York City Fellowship, a professional development program for youth media educators who work both in and out of schools. Sites of professional development are spaces where educators and youth workers can actively and reflectively construct meaning about teaching and the field of youth media education. This case study investigates how the background experiences and the context within which educators and youth workers have learned about and enacted media education—the classroom, the after school program, the community center—inform youth media educators’ language and practices, and how they make sense of their work. In conclusion, we provide suggestions for how the field of youth media education, regardless of educators’ background and contexts of practice, can be sustained and fortified by professional development, building on the successes and limitations of the Youth Media Learning Network’s inaugural experience.
Download Sara Keenan, M.A., with contributions by JoEllen Fisherkeller, Ph.D. article here.
Shaping the Digital Pen: Media Literacy, Youth Culture, and MySpace
David Kirkland, New York University
New technologies and online social communities have changed how youth practice literacy. However, many literacy classrooms seem detached from such changes. To help bridge this divide, I offer youth media educators the example of Derrick, a student who participated in an “ethnography of literacy” I conducted from 2003 to 2006. By analyzing three texts that appeared prominently on Derrick’s MySpace page, I seek to broaden notions of literacy, situating them in the current culture of technology where youth media literacies thrive. I also attempt to address a larger question of what Derrick’s example means for youth media education. In addressing this question, I hope to accompany youth media educators into an exciting textual universe that, by its very nature, challenges deficit assumptions about students and narrow ideas about literacy and its processes.
Download David Kirkland’s article here