UNIT 9: The media

Taking part in democracy through the media

Introduction for teachers

1. We take part in democracy through the media

Taking part in society and politics is, essentially, communicating with others – receiving and giving Information through the media. Citizens who cannot communicate through the media cannot participate in society or in politics.

Media provide a multitude of modes of communication, and supply more information than ever before, but they also control what and how we communicate. We live in a media culture. Modern media-based and media-controlled communication poses a challenge for every individual.

On the one hand, the media offer fascinating opportunities for those citizens who have been educated in media literacy and who can therefore handle media critically and deliberately and can cope with the masses of information of very different types and quality.

On the other hand, media exclude from taking part all those who cannot afford to buy them, or who do not possess the skills to use them, or judge the quality of information.

2. Media literacy – a core competence in EDC/HRE

Media literacy is a, perhaps even the core competence in EDC/HRE. Teaching for human rights is directly linked to media literacy. The freedom of the media and the right of free access to information depend on the ability to exercise these rights. The unequal levels of media literacy in a society create a new dimension of unequal opportunities, and new forms of inclusion and exclusion.

This unit attempts to help the students to take one important step in developing media literacy. The students experience the construction of our image of reality through the media – as both the producer and the recipient of a media message. In different ways, both perform as gatekeepers and agenda setters, to the effect that our image of the world, and politics in particular, is based on, and shaped by media messages that come to our attention after having passed through two filters – the choices made by the producers and those made by us, the users of the media.

The unit focuses on one important aspect of media literacy: all media messages are constructed. There is a lot of potential for cross-curricular teaching, of language for example, to analyse the specific lan-guage used by the media (see materials for teachers 9A – Learning what to look for, Nos 1 and 2).

3. Outline of the unit

This unit focuses on the question of how gatekeeping and agenda setting through the media takes place. The students experience both the perspectives of media users and media producers by acting them out.

Lesson 1: We are the gatekeepers! We decide what we want to read.

Lessons 2 and 3: We are the gatekeepers! We decide what news the readers will be offered to choose from.

Lesson 4: Do we control the media – or do the media control us? Reflection.

In the first lesson, the students become aware of their role as gatekeepers on their own behalf. They make a choice between two different newspapers, and select one set of information and reject another. In doing so, they exercise their human right of free access to and selection of information.

In the second and third lessons, the students engage in the key task, a small project in which they produce a wall newspaper. Now they act as gatekeepers again, but this time from the sending rather than the receiving end. They exercise the human right to a free, uncensored press.

In the fourth lesson, the students reflect on their choices and discuss the power of the media – both as an instrument of communication and of power. They also become aware of the strong constructivist element in our image of the world, shaped by both the producers and the recipients of information.

4. Constructivist learning and instruction

This unit gives the students the time and liberty for constructivist learning. In the particular context of the media, constructivist learning directly corresponds to the construction of media messages through the media. A media message is constructed by someone else, with a specific interest and strategic intent in mind (“telling or selling”), and by the user.

The teacher presents the concepts of gatekeeping, agenda setting, media culture, freedom of the media and free access to information through instruction, linking them to the context of constructivist learning (see box with key concepts below).

5. The choice of the medium

This unit focuses on a classic print medium, the newspaper, which is not the first choice for many young people. So why should the students read and produce newspapers in this unit?

1. The first reason is a pragmatic one. Studying newspapers and producing a simple wall newspaper requires resources that are available everywhere, and can be provided on a low budget.
2. From a didactic perspective, a simple example works better in teaching the students a piece of media literacy. By writing texts by hand, by cutting, pasting and drawing, the students come back to the roots of media production. But even in the production of a simple wall newspaper, the basic phenomenon of gatekeeping by the editors is already there, and so is the principle of constructing an image of reality though the message.Of course, these basic aspects are present in all other media too – radio, TV, photography of all categories, the Internet-based modes of communication, SMS, etc. But all these media not only place higher demands on resources, and a more complex effort of media production, but also of media analysis, or deconstruction.
3. The newspaper-based approach follows the principle of the spiral curriculum in this EDC/HRE edition. The task that the students perform in this unit corresponds to that in unit 7 in volume III, Living in democracy, for lower secondary level. The difference between the units is the level of reflection that the students are capable of.

Key concepts

Gatekeeping

Only a small fraction of the information that is delivered daily to the news editors finally appears in print. The news editors filter out what cannot be reported. One criterion is whether this piece of information is newsworthy – is it relevant or interesting enough? Another is simply the space that is available. And a third criterion is what kind of balance the readers expect – between information and entertainment, between politics, business, sports, celebrity news, etc.

But the reader too filters out most of what the newspapers offer. We all know from experience that we usually pick out a handful of articles and stories, and finally discard the newspaper after having read 5-10°/o of what it offered.

This principle of gatekeeping also applies to other mass media – TV and radio, the Internet and books.

Agenda setting

The news editors strongly influence the political agenda. By bringing certain problems or scandals to the attention of the public, these issues are then discussed, and often policy makers must react in some way. Here again, the readers must play their part – how do they respond to the issues that are brought forward?

Media culture

We live in a media culture (see materials for teachers 9A). In the past decade, Internet-based forms of communication and transfer of information have emerged, supplemented by mobile phone technology, both of which appeal particularly to the younger generation. In addition, the process of globalisation has supported the increasing predominance of the media. The media messages have shifted from text-based to image-based Information, with a strong impact on communication and reading habits.

Free access to information and freedom of the press

European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10.1 (see student handout 2.6)

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. …”

See also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 (student handout 2.5).

Media producers and media users both exercise a fundamental human right. Censorship of these liberties makes the difference between dictatorships and democracies. These liberties and the technological revolution we have seen after the invention of the computer and the Internet, have given rise to the media culture we live in today. The experience is ambivalent, and typical for processes of modernisation: if we can handle the potential, we gain; if we cannot meet the demands, we lose. For this reason, media literacy is a key competence in EDC/HRE.

Competence development: links to other units in this volume

What this table shows

The title of this manual, Taking part in democracy, focuses on the competences of the active citizen in democracy. This matrix shows the potential for synergy effects between the units in this manual. The matrix shows what competences are developed in unit 9 (the shaded row in the table). The strongly framed column shows the competences of political decision making and action – strongly framed because of their close links to taking part in democracy. The rows below indicate links to other units in this manual: what competences are developed in these units that support the students in unit 9?

How this matrix can be used

Teachers can use this matrix as a tool for planning their EDC/HRE classes in different ways.

• The matrix makes teachers aware of synergy effects that help the students to be trained in important competences repeatedly, in different contexts that are linked in many ways.
• This matrix helps teachers who have only a few lessons to devote to EDC/HRE: a teacher can select only this unit and omit the others, as he/she knows that some key competences are also developed, to a certain extent, in this unit – for example, understanding the importance of media literacy, the exercise of basic liberties, and the tension between equality and liberty.

UNIT 9: The media – Taking part in democracy through the media

The producers and users of media as gatekeepers and agenda setters