Hi, I’m Alex Ho, and I’m an Ed.M. student at the Arts in Education program in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. My interest in civic media stems from assisting at an after school program at Philadelphia’s public radio member station WHYY, where we guided high school students to make documentaries and news stories.
Prior to that, I had come from a film/media/communications background during undergrad, and I initially approached my position as a media educator with a focus on the formal and technical elements of quality media production. By the end of my experience at WHYY, I had modified what I initially thought were the key skill-sets that needed to be learned to be an effective media producer, moving from an emphasis on technique to an emphasis on content and critical thinking skills. I also grew more interested in engaging my student’s media consumption habits, and making sure that the assignments and projects that we set out for our students had a relevance to their lives and allowed them to think about and use media more critically and effectively.
Our 10-point exercise put into stark relief the chasm between what we would like civic media to be and what it often is. We decided that civic media was participatory, until the argument was made that not all civic media is participatory in practice, subsequently changing our core principle to “aspires to be participatory”. We also had difficulty with “civic media fights against social inequality” and “civic media challenges people to rethink social structures”. I believe the first drafts of these principles were to the effect of “civic media promotes social equity” and “civic media alters social structures,” but the group decided these were overstatements. Sorting through the idea of civic media versus the reality of civic media is one goal of mine for the class.
I agree with and was happy with the seven principles that our class came up with. I felt that principles 8 and 9 were fine to kick off, as I’m not so sure that media can be self-critical and iterative, so much as people can be self-critical and iterative about the media they consume and produce. Principle 9 similarly seemed less about people’s engagement with media than about the nature of the media itself. However, I would still argue for my group’s contribution, principle 7, which initially stated something like, “Civic media educates and empowers consumers to be creators.” I feel strongly from my experiences, first as a film studies student and then as a media educator, that in order for our seven principles to apply to the reality of civic media, there needs to be a means for people to learn how the media they consume is produced and there also needs to be a means for any one person to potentially be a media producer. Even with the ever more participatory nature of new media, I am concerned with the “digital divide” both in terms of access and in terms of media literacy. I believe that education is a key component of civic media.
Another goal of mine for the class is to understand the role of entertainment and gamification in civic media. Where in civic media is there a space for play, if any? Does civic media extend to web series that are not overtly political, but still give voice and expression to marginalized communities. What is civic media’s relationship with the entertainment industry’s media landscape?