Classroom Strategies for Exploring Realism and Authenticity in Media Messages
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Abstract Teachers can improve students’ critical reading and viewing skills through interactive learning activities that make use of a wide range of nonfiction media, including film, television, print, and the Internet. Four classroom learning experiences designed to facilitate careful analysis of the ways in which media messages are constructed are described in this article. These activities, appropriate for children aged approximately 12 and older, are intended to create a learning environment that encourages active discourse on critical questions about information sources, belief, uncertainty and doubt, authority, credibility, and judgments of realism. Strategies for critically analyzing realism in nonfiction film and television and for evaluating the credibility of Web sites are emphasized. |
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Introduction
Each day, we make crucial but largely unconscious decisions about which information is believable. By looking carefully at the ways in which media messages are constructed, students can develop critical reading and critical viewing skills that will make this decision-making process more conscious. Students demonstrate their interest in issues related to the credibility and trustworthiness of message sources all the time. We hear their concern when they ask
A skillful teacher provides opportunities for students to explore these kinds of questions by creating a learning environment where paradox is appreciated and complexity is embraced. These questions -- about truth, beliefs, credibility, authenticity, and perceptions of realism -- get students’ attention, emotionally and intellectually. They are centrally concerned with the relation between texts or media messages and the things they represent. They are questions that form the core of a number of academic fields in the humanities, social studies, and sciences. Such questions provide broad and deep opportunities to develop critical thinking skills by exploring the media’s role in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Helping students become more reflective about the decisions they make regarding what to believe in media resources can open up opportunities to explore parallel decision-making processes with respect to credibility of information in the newspaper, on the radio, in film, and gathered from friends and family. Assessing the relationship between media messages and reality can inspire discussion of important questions about truth, intentionality, meaning, judgment, and interpretation. In particular, these activities can stimulate skill development and engagement by making connections to issues that are meaningful and relevant to young people.
Truths about Truth
Teachers and students are alike in the diversity of their understandings about the complex and paradoxical concept of truth. There is no concept that has been more central to the enterprise of study of the humanities. Its uncertain and changing values have been explored by philosophers, historians, and scholars (for a review, see Fernandez-Armesto, 1997). More and more, it appears that “doubt is the truth of our times,” as the ancient legacy of relativism, first articulated by Protagoras, is reinvented in postmodern visions of multiple truths arising from difference -- in sex, sexual orientation, race, class, lifestyle, and geography.
But as multiple realities, uncertainty, doubt, and relativism reign, and even as philosophers point out the inevitable self-referential nature of language, contemporary thinkers remind us that the search for truth is a collective enterprise, one that depends on making use of a wide variety of strategies for apprehending it (see, e.g., Habermas, 1987). Palmer (1998) writes, “Knowing of any sort is relational, animated by a desire to come into a deeper community with what we know.... At its deepest reaches, knowing is always communal” (p. 54). Students must recognize that, despite the limitations of our systems of perception and our language, humans are able to share information and work together by valuing the modest but authentic processes of knowing or truth seeking.
It is important for students to identify their existing beliefs and attitudes when undertaking an exploration of these concepts and ideas. The exploration can begin with Activity 1, a learning experience that invites students to respond to the multiple perspectives, meanings, and metaphors of numerous short quotations that describe the concept of truth. Discussing the quotations opens up the complex and multidimensional issues around this concept.
Deciding What’s Believable
We use all of our senses in assessing the truth status of information. Another activity for introducing discussion of the complex issues of truth and believability involves learners in reflecting on how seeing, reading, listening, viewing, and experiencing shape our assessments and judgments. Activity 2 generates complex discussion about multimodalities and the role of perception in the meaning-making process. It provides an opportunity to explore the various criteria that people use in evaluating information from various sources.
Evaluating Realism in Film, Video, and Television Texts
How can teachers help students explore the ways in which realism is constructed in audiovisual media? Video realism is highly contested terrain in the field of media studies. Different fields apprehend the concept of “realism” in different ways. For example, cognitive psychologists have conceptualized children’s reality judgments (Hodge & Tripp, 1986; Potter, 1986), while film scholars have argued about the impossibility and constructed nature of all forms of film realism, including documentary and cinema verité (Nichols, 1993; Tobias, 1998; Winston, 1995). Psychoanalytic perspectives have long shown how much of the viewer’s pleasure in film viewing comes from the willing suspension of disbelief that exists when we enter into a film’s alternate universe, populated with people and events that are simultaneously both familiar and strange (Holland, 1992).
By the time young people enter high school, they have formulated their own ideas about what constitutes a believable character, a realistic portrayal, an authentic scene, or a credible news story. In literature classes, students may examine the devices used by authors to create realistic details, to develop complex characters, and to simulate authentic dialogue. For some, this is a compelling way to learn about how writers shape meaning through strategic choices; for others, this seems an irrelevant and meaningless exercise.
Though most students at this age seek out film, television, and video, they generally have had little formal opportunity to study how realism is constructed in these media. Exploring realism in film and video can be an effective and motivating prelude to exploring similar concepts in literature study. Activity 3 provides a bridge from students’ media experiences to the teacher’s agenda; it is an opportunity to enter into discourse about the criteria people use to decide what seems realistic and unrealistic, whether in a printed text or in a film or television program. By exploring realism, this activity explores the constructedness of media messages and leads to reflection on the impact of these constructions in shaping our understanding of self and other, the present and the historical past.
Evaluating Web Sources
One of the correlates of Western society’s current “information overload” and its demands on human attention and cognition is the increased importance of evaluating the quality of information received from the Internet. As Nelson (1997; online document) has pointed out,
The volume of information on the Internet creates more problems than just trying to search an immense collection of data for a small and specific set of knowledge. Large volumes of data are fraught with inconsistencies, errors and useless data. When we try to retrieve or search for information, we often get conflicting information or information which we do not want. Therefore, validating information is another important aspect of information overload.
Growing numbers of resource materials promote the critical analysis of Web sources (see, e.g., Alexander & Tate, 1996, 1999; Auer, 2001, online document). Many are designed by library professionals using standards and criteria derived from library science -- assessing accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage, for example. Some are designed as school library resources to be used by students aged 6 through 18 in conducting research projects (see, e.g., Schrock, 2001, online document). For example, checklists for determining Web site quality may include questions such as these:
These approaches have the disadvantage of being highly reductionist, transforming the complex process of making judgments about quality, relevance, authority, and authenticity into a series of yes-or-no questions about the format and structure of Web pages. For example, the library of Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, has posted evaluation rubrics like the following:
Step 1: Identify the Type of Web Page
Step 2: Use the Appropriate Checklist (Answer questions with Yes or No )
Step 3: Based on the Checklist Criteria, Determine the Relative Quality of the Web Page. (The greater number of checklist questions answered yes, the more likely the page is of higher informational quality.)
It is important for learners to recognize that evaluation of the quality, relevance, and veracity of a Web source involves an interpretive judgment made by a reader and not acceptance of fixed and static properties of the message itself. Reducing the evaluation of Web sites to a simple checklist does not promote individuals’ construction of meaning or the idea that people use their existing knowledge and experiences in assessing new information. In fact, such instructional approaches promote rote learning and right-or-wrong thinking, which profoundly disrespects learners’ autonomy and uniqueness and radically misrepresents the process of knowledge discovery.
As an author creates and designs a message, he or she makes use of a wide range of content and structural elements that enhance a reader’s perception that the message is authentic and authoritative. For example, journalism has shown the rise of specific literary and stylistic techniques, first used at the end of the 19th century, that mark a text as “objective” (Schudson, 1981), including the third-person voice, the attribution of sources, and the use of opposing perspectives to display balance.
In Activity 4, students explore the constructedness of authority in Web sites just as they explored the constructedness of authenticity in film and television programs in the previous activity. This Web activity makes use of a close analysis of sites that concern the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
From Cynicism to Skepticism
Some students, when asked to ask questions about the believability of media texts, may respond from deep within the familiar adolescent state of alienation and mistrust. In a more or less conscious way, they may answer, “I can’t believe in any of this information. Nothing is believable.” This cynical perspective is the antithesis of what the educational experience strives to foster. It is informed skepticism and a sense of the power of communication as a form of action to transform and shape society that educators hope to impart to students (Apple, 1991). When confronted recently with cynicism among high school students, I responded this way (taken from my audiorecording of the class) in an effort to help chip away at such attitudes:
Belief is what you do. Beliefs are powerful. You decide what to believe in, and if you decide to believe in nothing, you have no power. You decide what to believe in. And you pick the criteria that you use to decide what to believe in. That might be different from your friends, and it might be different from your parents and it might be different from your teachers.
If you have a set of criteria to help you decide what to believe in, then you don’t have to be afraid of one point of view that says X and another that says Y and they don’t seem to relate. You know how to apply your criteria to information to evaluate it -- for yourself.
Teachers often challenge students to base their beliefs on established criteria of evidence and information. In fact, part of the education process is the building up of a foundation of beliefs based on the latest knowledge of the community and society, beliefs designed to expedite the process of democratic participation (Dewey, 1916).
A teacher can choose the extent to which he or she shares with students a personal belief system about a range of issues and topics. The current emphasis on character education in the United States reflects the complex and widely varying perspectives of this process and its outcomes or effects (Berkowitz, 1998; Leming, 1997). When students are stuck in alienated mode, one common response is for them to ask about their teacher’s belief system and possibly adopt or deliberately avoid some elements of those beliefs. Because of this, we sometimes choose not to share our belief systems with our students because we want them to come to their own conclusions and think for themselves. But when we do choose to articulate our belief systems, we display their dynamic and foundational nature -- we show that they are always in flux, but are firm enough to enable us to build more and more complex ideas. When we reveal our own knowledge, beliefs, and values, we reveal the constructed nature of knowledge and the process of knowing; we reveal our own professional role in inquiring and investigating. If we are open to both sharing and continually revising our belief systems based on evidence, we demonstrate ourselves to be part of a community of learners. We ignite students’ curiosity and sense of themselves as lifelong learners.
Conclusion
Educators across the nation are imagining the future. As Alvermann and Hagood (2000, p. 193) write, “Literacy is on the verge of reinventing itself.” If we are serious about providing students with genuine opportunities to explore text and meaning in the classroom, one goal must be to challenge them to think critically about their own lives. In encouraging them to explore the often-unconscious criteria we all use in evaluating the believability of messages, it is important to provide opportunity for shared discourse and reflection on perceptions and interpretations of the world around us.
Young people benefit when literacy skills deepen and enrich understandings of self and other; such understandings are essential for life in our complex, dynamic, multicultural society. Media literacy activities in the classroom can provide a wealth of such opportunities, and can serve as a vital tool in helping educators connect the culture of the classroom to the larger cultural environment, where the quantity, diversity, and quality of message forms are likely to continue on their rapidly escalating course.
References
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About the Author
Renee Hobbs is an associate professor of communication and director of the Media Literacy Project at Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA. She is a coauthor of Elements of Language (Holt, Rinehart & Winston), the first English language arts textbook to include media literacy concepts fully throughout. She is also a cofounder of the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA), the nonprofit national membership organization that hosts the National Media Education Conference. Recently, in partnership with the Maryland State Department of Education and Discovery Communications, Inc., Hobbs developed Assignment Media Literacy, a comprehensive K-12 curriculum, which has been implemented by more than 2,000 teachers in the state. In the early 1990s, Hobbs established the Harvard Institute on Media Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been active in inservice teacher education, curriculum development, and research on the impact of media literacy instruction on the development of students’ academic skills. Reach her by e-mail at reneehobbs@aol.com.
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Citation: Hobbs, R. (2001, April). Classroom strategies for exploring realism and authenticity in media messages. Reading Online, 4(9). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/hobbs/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted April 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232