A study of students’ critical media literacy changes through design of digital video

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how the critical media literacy of four undergraduate students from a local community college was changed when resolving dilemma-type problems through a digital video creation project. Jonassen (2000) observes that dilemma-type problems are by nature partially-defined and without fixed solutions. Such problems require that information be assessed from multiple directions or through constructive thinking. The four students participating in this research were studied to determine the extent to which they acquired critical media literacy through resolving dilemma-type problems. One important aim of this study is to assist learners to be self-reflexive and self-responsible when receiving information or misinformation from the media. The study assumes that audiences will experience the four states-of-exposure -automatic, attentional, transported, and self-reflexive -when reading media messages. This assumption is grounded on Potter’s Media Exposure Model (Potter, 2009). Based on the model, audiences will also draw on mental resources to different degrees during their media exposure in order to perform the information-processing tasks of meaning construction and/or matching. The four states-of-exposure highlight that every exposure to the media aims to serve different kinds of needs, such as those relating to emotions or cognition. Potter’s proposed model has also helped in the design and construction of the states-of-exposure rubrics introduced in this study. These rubrics facilitated the process to better understand the state of critical awareness of the four subjects before and after video production. This inquiry argues that several other critical media literacy studies have not utilized tools necessary to assess participants’ ‘true’ critical abilities and have also claimed that audiences are aware and conscious of their media exposure. The present literature has also equated critical media literacy only to an ability to offer alternative viewpoints on a media text or the capacity to learn how to use new technology for subsequent application in creating media products. A variety of methods were used in this qualitative study, including group work, phenomenological interview and think-aloud activities to answer one main and two subordinate research questions. The questions helped probe into how and possibly critical media literacy developed among the participants and identified the factors that facilitated and inhibited those changes. Results gathered over a period of ten weeks suggested that all subjects exhibited improved critical media literacy after their video-making task. One student even attained the highest level of critical media literacy on one occasion. On one hand, the six specific types of supporting elements provided to students have helped them to develop augmented critical media literacy. On the other, schools, past experiences or motivation was found to be factors hindering ability to think critically. In sum, this study offers both field practitioners and researchers a more precise definition of critical media literacy, and the didactics, instructions, pedagogies and/or strategies to construct or increase the level of media criticalness in their target audience. It also recommends further investigations into the factors that encourage audiences to construct meanings at the beginning of their media exposure that run contrary to Potter’s Media Exposure Model.