Response to Ofcom proposed strategy and priorities for the promotion of media literacy

Dr. Marie Gillespie, Open University
Prof. James Gow, Kings College , London
Dr. Andrew Hoskins, Swansea University

Q. 1 – Ofcom’s definition of media literacy

An understanding of the nature and power of visual media has long been under-rated in research into audiences’ short and long-term perception, although over the past decade, there has been an increase in work on distinctly visual research and visual methodologies. The term ‘audiovisual’ tends to obscure the particular problems posed by ‘reading’ visual images for audiences and researchers. Specifically, in relation to news images, relatively little is understood in relation to how these shape perceptions of events and the means by which particular images come to dominate news agendas.

Moreover, there is an implicit present in much of the consultation document, whereas a greater emphasis is needed on the importance of media literacy to a critical understanding of particularly television’s shaping of longer-term readings of events. Most potently this involves the use of visual images in framing and anchoring collective or social memories of events. There has been very little research into how individuals and audiences actually come to remember events and renarrativize the past through their media consumption (and memory of that consumption). Much more collaboration is needed between cognitive and social psychologists and those researching the media, in order to begin to identify a media literacy that is adequate to our intensely visual culture and to implicate fully the historical dimensions of the influence of the media.

For instance, what are the challenges for media literacy when the repetition and thus familiarity with a particular news images or set of images, can be said to diminish critical reading of those images? Particularly this is the case when those images once considered as shocking or disturbing have less impact because of their familiarity or similarity to other images (see Hoskins, 2004). In this respect, more needs to be explicitly included in why media literacy is important in terms of an ethics of viewing.

Q. 2 – Key roles of media literacy

To enable UK residents informed and equal access to and benefit from information from a full range of media, and to possess critical, creative, and cultural knowledge and skills in their reading of and engagement with the media, and to be empowered as citizen-consumers.

Q. 3 – Research, Connecting & Partnering/ Q. 4 – Priorities

We agree with Cary Basilget (bfi) that media literacy needs to be part of ‘literacy’, and one of the key difficulties in developing research, connecting, etc. is that the media is not accepted as stimulus or value in its own right (and particularly television), for example, in relation to ‘memory culture’ and history itself (see Shandler 1999). We support the idea that media literacy should be a more formal part of schooling and should not be isolated from the curriculum. However, an obvious partner (not listed in the document) would be the Higher Education section more broadly, and specifically those involves in the teaching of Media Studies. Newer Media Studies degree programmes do tend to have media literacy either implicitly or explicitly included in learning outcomes (e.g. BA Media Studies, Swansea University ). Moreover, schemes in partnership with degree programmes would provide more tangible and ongoing measures of media literacy within this sector at least, easily comparable year on year.

Q. 5 – Types and levels of media literacy skills/new communication technologies

Technological capabilities and digital competencies are vital for access to/management of new communication technologies. A real danger is that many of those with quite advanced technological competencies in relation to new media, notably the young, are also those with partially developed media literacies and also most vulnerable to the potentially adverse effects of inappropriate content.

The reality of new technologies is that some users, primarily younger, many form inherent groups, contributing at once to a strengthening of the self-identifying group fabric, but a weakening of societal coherence generally. This should not be understood simply as ‘older’ and ‘younger’ but in terms of the possibilities of inclusion and exclusion offered by the complex of new media and there interactive use. At the worst extreme, the recent discoveries of al Qa’ida use of mixed communications media indicate the potential for a self-referencing, self-reinforcing group to operate in a narrow and exclusive way while using and benefiting from apparently opening and widening possibilities of new media.

Q. 6 – Key barriers to achieving appropriate levels of media literacy:

• Differential access to new media (internet, broadband, wider digital tv content) based upon affordability (more promotion of ‘Freeview’ services is needed)
• Public stigma attached to need for ‘literacy’ in relation to mediums seen as functioning primarily for entertainment
• Difficulty in establishing common or ‘appropriate’ benchmark of/for media literacy, particularly when so many different organizations are concerned

Q. 7 – Groups with particular needs

There has been relatively little research undertaken on how different social, linguistic, religious and ethnic diasporic groups use news media in Britain and especially in times of political crisis (see for example, Gillespie, 2002 and www.afterseptember11.tv). Consequently, there is limited understanding of how multi-lingual news publics and other complex audience configurations in Britain read and manage these often competing ‘flows’ of news materials in multi-channel households.

These matters have become more urgent in the recent period in which terrorism and warfare have dominated cross-media news agendas at the same time as the number of news sources (particularly non-British) have proliferated. Furthermore, there has occurred an increasing cross-fertilization of news images between British news programmes and for example Arab news networks reporting globally on conflict in the Middle East .

Understanding the complex role of media and the requirement for media literacy and awareness is essential in a world where the competing discourse over security policy and security agendas, including framing the vital issues of legality and legitimacy and success and failure occurs only through the media. Whereas most people have clear reference points for domestic issues – house prices, inflation, jobs etc – security policy questions for the vast majority of the population only have reference points in the various communications media and the reporting and shaping of agendas and cultures.

These circumstances provide new challenges for the nature and levels of media literacy required including among different language communities and diasporic groups with potentially differential access to competing and conflicting news providers. Significant research is needed to ascertain the consequences of these transformations upon participation in political processes, notions of citizenship and collective identities and to assist in the promotion of media literacy adequate to a multi-lingual and multi-channel Britain (e.g. our own ongoing ESRC-funded research ‘Shifting Securities: News Cultures before and beyond the Iraq War 2003’ as part of the ‘New Security Challenges Programme’ – see http://www.newsecurity.bham.ac.uk/projects/ and www.mediatingsecurity.com (site available from Sept 2004).

Q. 8 – Other areas for conducting research

As above and security policy (see Gow 2004).

Q. 9 – Key initiatives, projects or resources

More links and work with Media Studies in FE and HE would be very useful (see answer to Q. 3/4 above).

Establishing links with ongoing and future ESRC and AHRB research initiatives could prove to be very productive.

Q. 10 – Common labelling system for audiovisual content

The shifting of the role of ‘gatekeeper’ (paragraph 60) from broadcaster and regulator to consumer is a worrying but probably an inevitable consequence of the mass proliferation of media entering our homes. The consultation document tends to presume pre-recorded material as the content of most concern relating to its proposal for a ‘common content (information) scheme’. However, one of the many challenges for such a scheme will come from the increasing proportion of real-time content (on the Internet as well as on TV) that is more difficult to pre-label. Some steps have already been taken by broadcasters to self-regulate, for example, some ‘live’ reality television programming is only ‘nearly live’ (i.e. transmitted minutes after being recorded) to prevent offensive or inappropriate material from being broadcast. However, some (and particularly in moments of crisis) television news tends to rely on genuinely real-time reporting. But with pre-recorded actuality footage there is a body of opinion that British broadcasters are over-cautious and are not ‘testing the boundaries’ (at least with respect of the former ITC operations) in their use of images of graphic scenes of war and violence. So, according to Martin Bell, for example, the censoring of images promotes violent actions as ‘an acceptable way of settling differences’ and serves to some extent to glorify war.

From this perspective at least, it may be construed that a widespread classification system for the electronic media could result in more restrained editing and a greater reluctance to be at odds with a code primarily designed for fictional and documentary programming. The development of a common labelling system would need to address the long-standing issues around the differential treatment of fictional images compared with actuality footage used in news programmes.

Electronic media and Ofcom’s responsibilities

The fact that Ofcom’s remit does not relate to print media is a significant weakness in its strategy for promoting media literacy. The interrelationship between the electronic and print media is of critical importance in the shaping of news stories and agendas, for instance, images are increasingly ‘remediated’ from one medium to another. Furthermore, the relative freedom of the press compared with broadcast media in adopting proprietorial biases requires different critical readings. The statement in the consultation document that refers to ‘opportunities to consider relevant cross media links in our work’ tends to presume these relationships, whereas they need to be made more explicit in relation to how audiences actually consume news, for example, in today’s media-saturated and inter-networked environment.

Notes

Notable exceptions are the contributions in Winograd, E. and Neisser, U. (eds.) (1992) Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of “Flashbulb” Memories, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Hoskins, A. (2004) Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq , London : Continuum.

Shandler, J. (1999) While America Watches : Televising the Holocaust, New York : Oxford University Press.

Gillespie, M. (2002) Audience Research Study, ‘After September 11: TV News and Transnational Audiences’ Project.

Gow, J. (2004) Defending the West, Polity: Cambridge .

Martin Bell interviewed on Channel 4 News, Channel 4, 1998.