Paul Mihailidis

Exploring Curation as a core competency in digital and media literacy education

In todays hypermedia landscape, youth and young adults are increasingly using social media platforms, online aggregators and mobile applications for daily information use. Communication educators, armed with a host of free, easy-to-use online tools, have the ability to create dynamic approaches to teaching and learning about information and communication flow online. In this paper we explore the concept of curation as a student- and creation-driven pedagogical tool to enhance digital and media literacy education. We present a theoretical justification for curation and present six key ways that curation can be used to teach about critical thinking, analysis and expression online. We utilize a case study of the digital curation platform Storify to explore how curation works in the classroom, and present a framework that integrates curation pedagogy into core media literacy education learning outcomes.

A tethered generation: Exploring the role of mobile phones in the daily life of young people

The increasing global ubiquity of mobile phones has called into question their efficacy as dynamic tools for engagement and participation in daily life. While there is little argument in their growth as primary communication tools, scholars have actively debated their role as conduits for dynamic and diverse, information flow. This study explores how an international cohort of university students uses mobile phones for daily communication and information needs. In spring 2012, 793 students from 8 universities on 3 continents participated in a 24-hour mobile tracking exercise and reflection to answer the questions: How are college students using mobile phones for daily communication and information needs? and, how do college students perceive of the role of mobile phones for communication and information needs in their daily lives? The findings point to a population tethered to their mobile devices primarily through social networking apps, to the extent that they find it increasingly difficult to distinguish relationships that exist in their pockets from those that exist in their physical surroundings. While the participants acknowledged the diverse and participatory capacity of mobile devices, their dependence on the phone for connecting to peers left them skeptical of the phone’s efficacy for productive connectivity, vibrant communication, and diverse information consumption in daily life. The study concludes with suggestions for more inclusive and active engagement in the dynamic potential of phones that are not necessitated by a response to large-scale political or civil injustices.

Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy

The ubiquitous media landscape today is reshaping what it means to be an engaged citizen. Normative metrics for engagement—voting, attending town meetings, participation in civic groups—are eroding in the context of online advocacy, social protest, “liking,” sharing, and remixing. These new avenues for engagement offer vast opportunities for new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning about political engagement in the context of new media platforms and technologies. This article explores digital media literacy as a core competency for engaged citizenship in participatory democracy. It combines new models of engaged and citizenship and participatory politics with frameworks for digital and media literacy education, to develop a framework for media literacy as a core political competency for active, engaged, and participatory citizenship.

The civic-social media disconnect: exploring perceptions of social media for engagement in the daily life of college students

The emergence of social media tools and technologies to facilitate daily information and communication needs has called into question the relationship between these new spaces and traditional formulations of engagement in daily life. Recent scholarship has exposed both the newfound connectivity that social networks provide, and at the same time questioned the value of these spaces for meaningful participation in social and civic life. This study attempts to provide an insight into the perceptions of young adults toward their social media habits and dispositions. In the 2010/2011 academic year, a survey was administered to over 800 university students, asking about their social media habits across six categories: news, politics, privacy, leisure, education, and relationships. Additionally, focus groups conducted with 71 study participants explored how students saw the role of social media in their personal and civic lives. The results show a population that increasingly uses social media spaces and for all information and communication needs, but that conceptualizes these platforms as primarily social outlets. The emerging disconnects located in the survey and focus group exploration recommends further inquiry into how social media can be positioned as an inclusive tool for engagement in daily life.

Spreadable Spectacle in Digital Culture: Civic Expression, Fake News, and the Role of Media Literacies in “Post-Fact” Society:

This article explores the phenomenon of spectacle in the lead up and immediate aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Through the spread of misinformation, the appropriation of cultural iconography, and the willing engagement of mainstream media to perpetuate partisan and polarizing information, the proliferation of populist rhetoric, polarizing views, and vitriolic opinions spread. Revisiting the world of critical theorist Guy Debord, this article argues that the proliferation of citizen-drive spectacle is unique in its origination and perpetuation, and a direct result of an increasingly polarized and distrustful public spending an increasing amount of time in homophilous networks where contrarian views are few and far between. We apply the frame of spreadable media to explore how citizen expression online initiated, sustained, and expanded the media spectacle that pervaded the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The conclusion of this work argues that media literacies, as a popular response mechanism to help cultivate more critical consumers of media, must be repositioned to respond to an era of partisanship and distrust. We present a set of considerations for repositioning the literacies to focus on critique and creation of media in support of a common good, and that can respond meaningfully in an era of spreadability, connectivity, and spectacle.

From Information Reserve to Media Literacy Learning Commons: Revisiting the 21st Century Library as the Home for Media Literacy Education

Media literacy, while growing considerably during the past three decades, remains on the margins of educational establishments in the United States. Its interdisciplinary nature and broad definition have caused some confusion as to how best it can be utilized in school systems. At the same time, the school library has had to reinvent itself rapidly for a digital media age. Reconceived as a “learning commons,” the school library of the twenty-first century is no longer seen as simply a repository for information, but as a center for knowledge. This article will outline a framework for the media literacy learning commons designed to help students navigate information in a digital age. The school library, repositioned in this way, can excel as a place where students are free to express, explore, and empower themselves to become more active and engaged participants in their daily lives.

Civic Media Literacies: Re-Imagining Engagement for Civic Intentionality.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the structural constraints of contemporary approaches to media literacy in the face of increased partisanship, tribalism, and distrust. In the midst of a renewed call for media literacy initiatives that respond to the increasing levels of distrust in both legacy and grassroots media, this paper argues that media literacy interventions must be re-imagined as intentionally civic. A new set of emerging norms of digital culture further put into question the relevance of long-standing approaches to media literacy pedagogy and practice. This essay puts forward a new set of constructs that position media literacy initiatives to ‘produce and reproduce the sense of being in the world with others toward common good’ (Gordon, E., and P. Mihailidis. 2016. “Introduction.” In Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice, edited by E. Gordon and P. Mihailidis. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2). These constructs – agency, caring, critical consciousness, persistence, and emancipation – reframe media literacy as relevant to the social, political, and technological realities of contemporary life.

Digital curation and digital literacy: Evaluating the role of curation in developing critical literacies for participation in digital culture

Despite the increased role of digital curation tools and platforms in the daily life of social network users, little research has focused on the competencies and dispositions that young people develop to effectively curate content online. This paper details the results of a mixed method study exploring the curation competencies of young people in digital culture. Forty-seven college students from two institutions in the north-eastern United States used the social curation platform Storify to curate essays on the topic of income inequality. Their curated stories were coded to explore for narrative development, consistency, sourcing, analysis, and content type. Regression models were used to assess clarity and balance of the curated stories, and a detailed questionnaire explored dispositions towards curation as a relevant and effective mode for engagement in digital culture. The paper argues that curation can enhance core media analysis and storytelling skills, and an understanding about the role of peer-to-peer platforms and collaborative spaces in digital culture. The results advocate the utilization of student- and creation-driven pedagogies that embrace curation as core digital and media literacy competencies for young people in daily life.

Civic media art and practice: toward a pedagogy for civic design

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. --- Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor

Theorizing Journalism Education, Citizenship, and New Media Technologies in a Global Media Age

This essay details the results of fifty-four open-ended interview questionnaires with university-level communication students from eleven countries, exploring the opportunities and challenges for journalism and news in participatory democracy. The study participants were enrolled in a three-week summer global media literacy program, at the end of which they were asked to complete an open-ended survey questionnaire, asking about the role digital media technologies and social media platforms have on journalism and its role in a participatory democracy. Results highlight a general negativity toward the growing influence of new media technologies in journalism with regard to objectivity, autonomy, balance, and depth, juxtaposed with the embrace of the same technologies in contributing to greater citizen participation, voice, and inclusion in journalism and news flow. This divide raises questions around the relationship between journalism, journalism education, and technology in the context of participatory citizenship. The study concludes by recommending a more integrative model for journalism education than presently followed that addresses the disjuncture evidenced in this study between professional notions of journalism and participatory citizenship in the digital age.