TALKING BACK TO MEDIAFIRST REGIONAL CONFERENCE IN MEDIA LITERACY2 - 4 April 1993Broadway Performance Hall, Seattle Central Community College, Seattle, WASPONSERED BY 911 MEDIA ARTS CENTER AND THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF MEDIA ARTS AND CULTURE (NAMAC)"CAMERAS DEFINE REALITY in two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images."Said social critic and author Christopher Lasch, "We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion." The overload of image-based media, with the attendant demand to synthesize and absorb a plethora of information daily, demands a method of intellectual management. In an era as visually and technically complex as a Nam Jun Paik video universe, understanding media is crucial.Educators, sociologists, and media artists are tuning into the relatively new discourse on media literacy education to explore the dominant role of media in society. Such was the focus of "Take Charge and Talk Back," the first Northwest (and the first American) conference on media literacy, sponsored by 911 Media Arts Center and the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture.While a general definition of media literacy might be "the ability to interpret symbols and images from media, and an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media," specific definitions vary with individual critics and proponents. In the keynote address, Elizabeth Thoman, executive director of the Center for Media and Values, offered a definition that emerged from a media literacy conference in Toronto in 1989: "the ability to decode, analyze, evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of forms."Thoman explained that media literacy education strives "to empower the individual to accept or reject media messages based on the process of active engagement, critical reflection, and conscious evaluation" -- what in the Buddhist tradition might be termed "mindfulness." This goal, however, presupposes a receptive student with a foundation of critical inquiry and an adequate level of education. "Individuals interpret media differently," Thoman asserted. "We each create the meaning of a media experience as we experience it. Each of us constantly assesses and evaluates media in our individual experiences. We all participate in it, but not all may be educated to criticize or question it."Elaborating on this idea, she outlined four main priniciples:First, media constructs reality. Every media event is a construct of reality, and shapes a perception of reality. An example: "TV images from Gulf War coverage were carefully manipulated to show positive images of the war and support for it, and to deflect images of the grim realities of the war," Thoman explained. The military learned from the press coverage of the Vietnam War that wars are not won or lost on the battlefield, but in people's homes on TV.Second, media uses identifiable production codes and techniques, including lighting, music, camera angles, and so forth, which viewers can be taught to isolate and decode.Third, the media are businesses with commercial interests. Thoman inverted the myth of sponsorship. "You are brought to the sponsor by the program. Programs on TV are not just there to entertain us, but to ensure that viewers will watch; our eyeballs are being rented."And last, all media contain ideologies and messages. Media literacy education, Thoman said, helps to identify what those values might be.Media literacy can bee taught in elementary classrooms, Associate Professor at Appalachian State University David Considine suggested. Allowing children to write their own versions of popular stories (e.g. The Three Little Pigs) helps clarify the unspoken viewpoint inherent in all narratives. Media literacy education can take place while teaching children to produce their own videos, thereby empowering them to become creative with the television medium and in constructing their own versions of reality.But is media literacy merely offering a different way of seeing the world? According to Kathleen Tyner (executive director of Strategies for Media Literacy in San Francisco), the stakes are higher than that: "You can't understand the democratic process without understanding the impact media has on people," she stated. We exist in a "mediacracy," "not rule by the media, but by those who can use and manipulate media, images, and symbols." The United States lags far behind the rest of the world in formal programs, she said. In terms of media literacy education, we are Third World country.If media literacy education is endorsed as a way to comprehend and participate in society's media environment, it is also necessary to examine the changes the media environment has had on cognitive thinking. Author Dr. Jane Healy explored the changes in young students' cognitive ability as a result of the transition from a verbal and print-oriented culture to one based on visual images. Healy described four areas of cognitive function that are suffering: problem-solving, attention span, language development, and listening. Depsite Healy's concern over the effects of visual media, she suggested that media literacy education could actively engage students in developing and strengthening these skills. But it is not, she said, a panacea.One workshop offered at the conference, by video artist and activist Branda Miller (State of the Art / Art of the State, Witness to the Future), stressed the democratization of video production and distribution as a means of empowerment. She advocated home distribution as an alternative to Deep Dish TV and other more conventional means. Cable companies should not control Public Access TV because of censorship, she said. Channeling it through a nonprofit with a board of directors, as they do in Portland, Oregon, is better. She also addressed video-making as a vehicle for social change: "If you can find a group that is politically active, then you can go in with the tools of media to empower people on a project. It is absolutely essential to have a theme...."In retrospect, the conference represented an ambitious attempt to examine media literacy as an approach to education. Advocates insist that media literacy could exist in all aspects if school curricula -- from health care education to cultural studies. Additionally, there was a strong appeal to transform consumers of media into manipulators of media: "to take charge and talk back." An emphasis on critical interpretation -- as begun in the Miller workshop -- could be the focus of the next conference; once individuals have become skilled at creating their own media, there arises a need for critical examination of its propagandistic aspects, and of its potential use as a catalyst for social change.../img/state-of-the-arts.jpg../img/img-placeholder.gif../img/img-placeholder.gif> Take Charge and Talk Back: "State of the Arts / Art of the State" (1991) by Branda Miller.