The Handbook of Media Education Research

Divina Frau-Meigs, Sirkku Kotilainen, Manisha Pathak-Shelat, Michael Hoechsmann, Stuart R. Poyntz, Divina Frau-Meigs, Sirkku Kotilainen, Manisha Pathak-Shelat, Michael Hoechsmann, Stuart R. Poyntz

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119166924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Over the past forty years, media education research has emerged as a historical, epistemological and practical field of study. Shifts in the field—along with radical transformations in media technologies, aesthetic forms, ownership models, and audience participation practices—have driven the application of new concepts and theories across a range of both school and non-school settings. The Handbook on Media Education Research is a unique exploration of the complex set of practices, theories, and tools of media research. Featuring contributions from a diverse range of internationally recognized experts and practitioners, this timely volume discusses recent developments in the field in the context of related scholarship, public policy, formal and non-formal teaching and learning, and DIY and community practice. Offering a truly global perspective, the Handbook focuses on empirical work from Media and Information Literacy (MIL) practitioners from around the world. The book's five parts explore global youth cultures and the media, trans-media learning, media literacy and scientific controversies, varying national approaches to media research, media education policies, and much more. A ground breaking resource on the concepts and theories of media research, this important book:

• Provides a diversity of views and experiences relevant to media literacy education research
• Features contributions from experts from a wide-range of countries including South Africa, Finland, India, Italy, Brazil, and many more
• Examines the history and future of media education in various international contexts
• Discusses the development and current state of media literacy education institutions and policies
• Addresses important contemporary issues such as social media use; datafication; digital privacy, rights, and divides; and global cultural practices.

The Handbook of Media Education Research is an invaluable guide for researchers in the field, undergraduate and graduate students in media studies, policy makers, and MIL practitioners.

Part I
Global Youth Cultures

Stuart R. Poyntz

1
Micro‐Celebrity Communities, and Media Education: Understanding Fan Practices on YouTube and Wattpad

Michael Dezuanni

Introduction

This chapter considers changes in children's and young people's opportunities for participation with digital media technologies and the implications for media education. In particular, it argues that the emergence of digital platforms over the past decade has promoted new entertainment forms that require ongoing revision of media education's content and form. Numerous media and communications scholars (Jenkins 2008; Hartley 2010; Papacharissi 2010; Burgess and Green 2018; Cunningham and Craig 2019) have argued that digital platforms provide greater opportunities for both vernacular and professional media production, and more participatory and socially connected audience practices. Therefore, the emergence of digital platforms challenges how researchers have understood media industries and audiences in the past, and how to teach about them. An example of these changes is the rise of social media entertainment (SME) on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, and on lesser‐known platforms like Wattpad.

According to Cunningham and Craig (2019), SME's attractiveness to audiences contrasts in fundamental ways to Hollywood‐produced media entertainment. For example, a key SME attribute is the emergence of the internet micro‐celebrity, a figure who contrasts with the traditional media celebrity or star, particularly with regard to the kinds of relationships they develop with fans (Abidin 2018). This is just one example, albeit an important one, of how the digital media environment and technological innovation have altered young people's participation in entertainment and communication in recent years. It is within this context that the goals, content, and expected understandings generated by media education programs should evolve to address changes in media industries and audience practices.

The argument developed in this chapter mainly responds to the version of media education that has become formalized through school curricula produced for the Australian education system. Media education curriculum policy has developed in a multitude of ways internationally, and other countries' approaches may be more responsive to changes in young people's digital media practices than is the case in Australia. Furthermore, around the world, many different approaches to “media education” and “media literacy” have been developed by government‐sponsored programs, through charities and foundations, and through youth organizations that are possibly more agile and responsive to digital media than school‐based curricula. Equally, this is not to give the impression that media education in Australia is somehow unresponsive to digital media. Of course, many Australian media teachers develop highly sophisticated educational programs that directly respond to developments in young people's digital media practices. However, when media education becomes formalized through curriculum, there is a danger that it is less able to respond to changes in how young people experience media in their everyday lives. Therefore, if media education is to make an impact wherever it is being implemented, ongoing research is needed to accurately understand young people's media experiences. Furthermore, there is a need to develop curricula that are responsive to these experiences.

To explore the impact of technological change on media industries and audience practices, and how these changes recast children's and young people's media experiences, it is revealing to explore case studies of how fans interact with SME content. One example is a micro‐celebrity called StacyPlays, who is a Let's Player from Utah in the United States. StacyPlays has attracted 2 million subscribers and 802 million views on YouTube by making videos of herself playing Minecraft (www.minecraft.net). Let's Plays are a highly popular YouTube genre in which video game players record themselves playing a game, while they simultaneously record a voice‐over commentary. StacyPlays is one of about 10 “family‐friendly” Minecraft Let's Players who have formed a loose micro‐industry producing content for children. Although she is by no means the most popular Let's Player in this category (for instance, DanTDM has over 22 million subscribers), she is particularly interesting to consider because her content is thematically organized around friendship with pets and animals, which has a special appeal for children.

This chapter provides a thematic analysis of fan comments made on one StacyPlays video. In addition, an analysis of fan fiction about StacyPlays circulated on the self‐publishing platform Wattpad is considered. Together, these commenting and writing practices enable fans to construct communities that are largely socially supportive and affirming of both Minecraft play and fan adoration for Stacy. The chapter illustrates that the relationship between StacyPlays and her fans, the opportunities they have to interact with her, and how they participate online represent ways of participating with media that were not as common in the pre‐digital era. These practices are not necessarily new or unique to digital contexts: scholars such as Fiske (1992) and Jenkins (2013) clearly established that participatory cultural practices were a significant feature of fandom in the pre‐digital era. However, as Jenkins suggests (2013, p. xxiv), digital platforms make it easier for a greater number of young people to take part in participatory media forms, bringing these practices closer to the center of everyday media practice.

Beyond the Pre‐digital Media Curriculum

Film, media, and communications scholarship has explored new industry and audience practices, but the translation of this research into a formal media curriculum at the school level has been very slow, at least in Australia. Children's and young people's evolving media experiences in digital contexts present a particular challenge for media education in formal educational settings. It is not easy for education systems and policy‐development processes to keep pace with changes in digital media, or research about it. One reason for this lag is that all curricula, including media education curricula, necessarily become systematized as they are defined within formal schooling. Although he is referring to the situation in the United Kingdom, David Buckingham's comments about media education reflect the Australian media education context. He argues that media education is relatively well established in the UK, suggesting it is “guided by a fairly coherent conceptual framework, and there is a good sense of what works in the classroom” (Buckingham 2016, p. 171).

Buckingham's point is that over 30 or so years, a consensus has emerged among educational authorities and teachers about media education's content and form. Buckingham recognizes, though, that media education may need to evolve to respond to digital media. One way to consider the tension between “settled” media curriculum and young people's digital media experiences is that the “trade‐off” for predictability is less flexibility in what the curriculum can promote as core knowledge. As Deng and Luke (2008) suggest, “In theory and practice […] curriculum entails the normative selection, classification, and framing of knowledge from the archive of human knowledge.” Highlighting normativity is important because it suggests formal curriculum results from consensus about what is selected and accepted as core knowledge, which aspects of that knowledge are promoted and assessed, and how teachers frame knowledge as important (or not).

What ends up as official knowledge in the media curriculum, translated through “teacher knowledge” (Shulman 1987), constitutes what we understand to be media education's disciplinary subject matter. The knowledge base that supports media education has historically been informed by film, media, and communications research and the processes and conceptual frameworks developed within those disc...