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Shifting currents in media awareness.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This longitudinal qualitative research study examines how a group of parents and teachers sought to raise awareness in their community about harmful media effects. Initially condemning the influx of new digital media technologies such as violent video games, the group eventually shifted tactics in an effort to go beyond 'preaching to the choir' and bring other parents into the fold. Their experience suggests that we might reconsider media literacy as a form of social work.

Introduction

The introduction of media literacy initiatives into U.S. public schools faces numerous obstacles (Kubey, 2003). Beyond the curriculum restrictions of recent standards-based legislation and a general lack of funding for in-service teacher training (Hobbs, 2004), efforts to address students' media diets are often stymied by the gulf between lessons taught at school and values learned at home. Despite the challenges, a group of parents and teachers at a public elementary school in rural Massachusetts have banded together to form the Media Awareness Project. Concerned about the relationship between violent media consumption and aggressive playground behavior, the group has organized two regional media literacy conferences in the past three years. This essay will consider the trajectory of the Media Awareness Project, a journey which has produced a host of growing pains and epiphanies that can serve as a lesson to us all.

Preaching to the Choir

Our analysis is based on a comparison of interviews[1] conducted with members of the Media Awareness Project in the Fall of 2004 and Spring of 2006. In 2004, all our informants echoed the same refrain: "we're preaching to the choir." As one teacher observed, "99.9% of the people who attended [the 2004 conference] have this knowledge and awareness [of harmful media effects], so one of the problems was that people who would have benefited were not there." Moreover, it seemed that mindful parents were already taking steps to regulate their children's media diets. The challenge was how to reach parents who used TV as a "free babysitter" devoid of quality control. In 2004, Boulton (2005) conducted a two-month qualitative study of the Media Awareness Project and came to the following conclusion.

Most members of the Media Awareness Project are outraged by the end of childhood as they knew it and the moral decline of popular culture in general. Such nostalgia could offend their target audience, namely families who consume the very media that they so despise. Likewise, blaming the 'third person' for social ills such as aggressive socialization and protecting your child from the 'contagion' of other children could form attitudes that only further alienate other parents. (p. 5)

The "third person effect" theory predicts that individuals will perceive media to have more harmful effects on others than on themselves (Davison, 1983). For example, while we might be...

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