literacy – MATTHEW OVERSTREET

Digital Media Literacy & Writing Instruction

As discussed in a previous post, this semester I’m thinking about digital media literacy and its relation to writing instruction. James Potter’s Theory of Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach is my starting point. So, if we follow Potter, what might digital media literacy entail? How might it relate to the writing classroom? In this post, I’d like to posit some tentative answers.

First, to define digital media literacy, we need to specify our goals. What are we trying to do? At what level of the media ecology are we seeking to intervene? Potter, as the title of his book indicates, works at the level of individual.* “The primary responsibility for increasing media literacy,” he writes, “resides with the individual person” (65). As I see it, his claim here is that we (as scholars, educators or policy-makers) can’t force anyone to do anything. Individuals, as media consumers, are the ultimate decision-makers. This means that literacy promotion must be inherently rhetorical—we have to convince people of the benefits (to them) of certain ways of thinking and being.

Relatedly, Potter puts great emphasis on tracing the effects of media consumption. “Any theory of media literacy,” he writes, “must at its core be a theory about how people are affected by the media” (66). I think this is an important insight. It reminds us to focus on the real-life consequences of our media consumption habits. The underlying idea is that individuals are impacted by both the form and content of the media they consume. We should seek to trace the nature of this impact. Such inquiry, Potter believes, will reveal that some ways of watching TV or using your phone, say, are better than others, in that they lead to more desirable personal and social consequences. Media literacy scholars should seek to identity and promote best practices.

So Potter urges us to study (and try to influence) individual media consumption habits. Now, the question arises, how does this relate to writing instruction? Some would argue that it does not. They believe that writing instruction should focus on the production, rather than the consumption of texts. The type of text to be produced varies, but the key point is that those in this camp devalue interpretation. I take the opposite approach. As I see it, the primary move at the heart of all writing instruction—whether teaching academic writing, creative writing or digital media—is the enhancement of the student’s meaning-making ability. And meaning is never made in a vacuum. Instead, we write and think using resources we draw from the world. Writing, as Thomas Kent argues, is intractably hermeneutic. It presupposes interpretation.

If we assume that all writing involves interpretation, we start to see how media literacy might intersect with writing instruction. Our goal is to enhance meaning-making ability. To do so, we must hone interpretive skills. Media literacy theory, I’d argue, can provide guidance to this end. In particular, the concept of filtering seems key. According to Potter, interpretation involves not just how we understand what comes into our field of view, but the practices and habits by which we decide what comes into view in the first place. These habits of attention are engrained in us through media exposure. Taking this to be true, it’s only reasonable to assume that these engrained habits impact how students read and write. Undoubtedly students spend more time texting and on Facebook than they do writing essays or creative non-fiction. The practices learned in the former very likely shape the latter, both as to form (how we write) and content (what we write about). Media consumption habits must thus be a concern for writing teachers.

So to summarize, the goal, when thinking about media literacy, is to identify and promote healthier media consumption habits. For purposes of rhetoric and composition, “healthier” equals those habits which allow students to construct more expansive meanings. And what might these habits be? This is complex question, but I think more attention to our filtering practices is important. What have we been trained not to see? How can we engage with Facebook and Netflix in ways which gives us a more complex and complete repertoire of facts and ideas with which to write and think? To promote media literacy, writing teachers will have to devise strategies to help students ask and answer these questions. Potter’s ideas provide some guidance, but there is obviously much work to be done.

*Some complain that media literacy education of the type Potter promotes, by emphasizing individual choice, ignores the determinative effects of larger social structures. They argue that media literacy should entail elucidating these structures and engaging in collective action to change them. While I’m all for change, I’d argue that this work—while important—isn’t the work of writing teachers. Simply put, in the writing classroom our primary goal is not/should not be to shape policy at a national level. Instead, it is to help our students (as individuals, necessarily) survive and thrive in the current discursive environment. Of course, it’s not an either/or choice. As Potter shows, intervention at the individual level can and will promote broader change. We just have to be satisfied working from the “bottom up.”

(Digital) Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach

Digital Media Literacy

This semester I’m teaching a course on digital media literacy and as such, have been reading up on some of the foundational texts in the field. One book I’ve found particularly informative is W. James Potter’s Theory of Media Literacy, A Cognitive Approach. Here, Potter, author of a noted media literacy textbook, lays out the theoretical foundation for his views. Though he deals primarily with “old media” (TV, radio, etc.), I think his ideas are quite relevant to digital culture.

Potter’s approach is shaped by cognitive psychology. He starts from the assumption (reasonable in my opinion) that humans, by nature, seek to conserve mental energy. This means that most of our interactions with media are automatic, unconscious and habituated. In info-rich environments, he writes, “our minds stay on automatic pilot,” unconsciously screening out most stimuli (10). Integrally, though, Potter believes that unconscious exposure can still be influential. Even when we’re not actively paying attention, messages still get through. “Over time,” he writes, “images, sounds, and ideas build up patterns in our subconscious and profoundly shape the way we think” (10).

Basically, Potter sees the human mind as a porous entity. The discursive environment in which we move shapes us whether we like it or not. To me, this idea rings true. It explains, for example, the millions of dollars paid to get brand names on sports stadiums. Per Potter, it’s not about conscious messaging. PNC, for example, doesn’t want people actively thinking about financial services when they go to PNC park. Instead, they want mindless, habituated exposure to their trademark. They want to enter the world of consumers via the side door, so to speak, as not to deal with the trouble of actually proving their services are of value (which they would have to do if their claims were to be consciously considered).

So Potter’s cognitive approach explains the behavior of advertisers. How might it relate to new media? Potter writes that media businesses “do not want our attention as much as they want our exposure” (14). Again, active attention would open media messages up to unwanted scrutiny. Instead, media-producing businesses want consumers to engage with content mindlessly and habitually. Does the same dynamic apply in regard to media in which content is user-created? This is a difficult question. Certainly, social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter want to get consumers in a pattern of habitual use (and thus exposure to ads). Likewise, they don’t want consumers thinking too much about those ads, the interface itself or the possible (side)effects of their product. At the same time, it seems that social media requires a slightly more active consumer. If a user simply scrolls through her feed and doesn’t create content or engage with other users the platform is deprived of data, hence profit.

Despite the above, it seem that on a cognitive-level, consumer behavior in an old media vs. new media environment would be much the same. We browse our feeds in default mode, automatically filtering out most content. That excess content is still there, though, shaping how we understand the world.

Potter is mainly concerned with consumers mindlessly succumbing to the wishes of advertisers and media outlets. He argues that we are “being trained to tune down our powers of concentration” as to accept secondhand meanings rather than create our own (14). In regard to new media, we can assume a similar process, but perhaps a more diverse array of influencers. Certainly Facebook and its advertisers are trying to give you meanings, but so are content generators (your uncle and Russian bots, for example). How do we make sense of this jumble? Returning to the idea of mental conservation, we can assume that those meanings that require the least amount of energy to process might be the ones that get through. This idea would help explain the simplification of discourse common in online environments. If Potter is right, though, others disparate meanings would still be impacting us (to the extent that they exist in our discursive space).

It’s pure speculation on my part, but perhaps in a world of decentralized content creation, we should think in terms of form rather than meaning. In other words, rather than focusing on how the circulation of specific meanings may be impacting our lifeworld (Hillary good vs. Hillary bad), it may be more productive to consider the forms those meanings take. If Potter is right, advertisers, your uncle and the bots will be using similar strategies to get you to buy their messages (E.G., radically simplified discourse). “Media literacy” would thus become the process of recognizing these strategies and the ways in which– apart from the content pushed– they might shape how we think and act. It seems to me that Potter’s cognitive approach can help us perform this sort of analysis.

On Bad Writing

Rhetoric

In my last post I wrote about unsophisticated discourse. Today I’d like to discuss some of the features of such writing.

It seems to me that one of the key features of “bad” writing is a reliance on dichotomies: liberal/conservative, good/bad, etc. Of course, every academic since Derrida has warned against the dangers of binary thinking. I don’t want to join that chorus. Oppositions, binary or otherwise, can be useful– they’re a form of abstraction which allow us to cut the world into manageable bits. Of course, as online trolls and lazy students demonstrate, the power of abstraction can also be abused. So then, what distinguishes good abstraction from bad?

One key, I think, is that the writer recognize, and signal to the reader that he recognizes, that oppositions are just tools for thinking. There is, of course, no such thing as “liberal” or “conservative.” These are just symbols we use to signal a certain web of political commitments. Such a web naturally has contradictory element. A sophisticated writer/thinker knows this. For example, instead of “all liberals hate America,” she may write, “liberals have a tendency to be critical of the dominant culture.” The nuance in the latter statement indicates that the writer knows that an abstraction is just an abstraction. The former writer, on the other hand, seems to fetishize his abstraction. The term “liberal” appears monolithic to him, and therefore, he appears simple-minded to us.

Unsophisticated writers also use a lot of insults. On the clickbait website I discussed yesterday, it seems that every other post refers to someone as “stupid” or a “moran.” Why is this? Are people with low literacy skills just jerks? No. Following my always generous sensei Dave Bartholomae, I see these writers as trying to express their experience using the limited linguistic tools available to them. There is pain in their world. They have named that pain “liberal” or “Obama.” And by writing, for example, that “Obama is a hommos muslim,” they are attempting to share their subjective experience of this pain.

So in short, as a writing teacher, when I see writers resort to petty insults I want to find out what’s really bothering them. They are undoubtedly feeling some complicated stuff (all feelings are complicated). They’re just expressing it in a way that users of SWE/SBL find simplistic.

Is Literacy Inherently Liberal?

Writing

Yesterday I wandered into a dark corner of the web: the comments section of some obscure right-wing clickbait purveyor. As a writing teacher and student of rhetoric and composition, I find such spots fascinating. Some thoughts.

First, what is up with all the misspellings and crazy grammatical constructions? I ask this question in all seriousness. Let’s be clear– I am in no way a SNOOT. In fact, in my writing classes I make an exaggerated show of not caring about grammar. But still, on this particular website, almost every comment contains non-standard language. Why?

The easiest explanation is that the people attracted to right-wing clickbait (stories about hero police dogs, etc.) are simply not very “literate.” They are older, perhaps didn’t go to college. This lack of linguistic sophistication is reflected in both consumption (what they choose to read) and production (their commentary).

Let’s unpack this further. In this case, sophistication = socialization. Proper bourgeois subjects like myself (and most likely my reader) have been trained in certain habits of thought and action. These include linguistic norms and rules relating to evidence, logic and narrative coherence. We write in Standard Written English (SWE), understand the world via Standard Bourgeois Logic (SBL). Our click-baited friends, for whatever reason, have internalized different standards. To us, therefore, both their choice of reading material (“libtard teacher stomps on flag”) and language use (no distinction between your and you’re, seemingly random capitalization) seems alien.

The above is pretty basic stuff. A more interesting question is whether discursive practices and social/cultural/political values are linked. Does the internalization of SWE and SBL push learners towards a certain political alignment? Or in other words, if one can write a coherent paragraph is he or she less likely to be attracted to the ideas underlying “Obummer” clickbait?

This is a difficult question. Of course there are both left-wing and right-wing clickbait websites. And of course, one can be discursively sophisticated and hold right-wing views. It does seem though, at least from my admittedly bias perspective, that the least “literate” discourses lean conservative. Hence my titular question.