This study centres on the psychological effects new digital media, like the internet and cellphones, have on adolescents. Although the internet has enormous benefits, it also poses a host of risks that can make adolescents vulnerable to victimisation and/or developing associated psychosocial problems. Characterisations of adolescents’ social relationships in the internet medium, as well as the investigation of the continuity between digital media literacy and online social behaviours, carry high relevance for developmental psychology. It is during the adolescent period that peer interactions arguably hold the greatest importance for individuals’ social and behavioural functioning. Using a logic model for evaluation, the researcher conducted an exploratory research study on digital media use among adolescent learners aged 13 to 15 years to determine whether schools could guide them to think critically for themselves about the entire realm of these new media. The data were gathered from school principals, teachers, parents and learners from three secondary schools in Gauteng Province, which were purposely selected to represent different socio-economic circumstances. A total of 230 people (n=230) participated in the research. Mixed research methods were employed in this study. The quantitative research methods supported the qualitative research methods. The literature review suggested that current media literacy education, which forms part of the Life Orientation curriculum, does not enable learners to think critically or make informed choices about their behaviour in the digital world – because it incorporates neither ethics nor responsibility. One of the main aims of the study therefore was to investigate the importance of expanding existing media literacy education, namely by incorporating two additional learning categories in the curriculum: Digital Safety and Security, and Digital Citizenship. These additional learning categories were introduced in the form of lessons by the teachers participating in the study. A think aloud strategy was used whereby learners verbalise what they were doing and learning while engaging in the digital media literacy lesson activities. The learners’ verbalisations were used to ascertain what learning was occurring in the classroom. The experimental group demonstrated an increase in critical thinking from pre- to post-evaluation. This research therefore proposes that the signature element of intervention strategies for inappropriate online behaviour be to create a “culture of critical thinking”. This implies greatly reducing the risks cyberspace pose, and at the same time enhancing adolescents’ abilities to use it in ways that create and deepen healthy relationships – in the digital as well as the real world. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

Muslims have the starring role in the mass media’s curriculum on otherness, which circulates in-between local and global contexts to powerfully constitute subjectivities. This study inquires into what it is like to be a female, Muslim student in Ontario, in this post 9/11 discursive context. Seven young Muslim women share stories of their high schooling experiences and their sense of identity in interviews and focus group sessions. They also respond to images of Muslim females in the print media, offering perspectives on the intersections of visual media discourses with their lived experience. This interdisciplinary project draws from cultural studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and post-reconceptualist curriculum theorizing. Working with auto/ethno/graphy, my own subjectivity is also brought into the study to trouble researcher-as-knower and acknowledge that personal histories are implicated in larger social, cultural, and historical processes. Using bricolage, I compose a hybrid text with multiple layers of meaning by juxtapositing theory, image, and narrative, leaving spaces for the reader’s own biography to become entangled with what is emerging in the text. Issues raised include veiling obsession, Islamophobia, absences in the school curriculum, and mass media as curriculum. Muslim females navigate a complex discursive terrain and their identity negotiations are varied. These include creating Muslim spaces in their schools, wearing hijab to assert their Muslim identity, and downplaying their religious identity at school. I argue for the need to engage students and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on difference via auto/ethno/graphy, pedagogies of tension, and epistemologies of doubt. Educators and researchers might also consider the possibilities of linking visual media literacy with social justice issues.

The changing role of literacy in primary education, with its emphasis on the acknowledgement of the learner’s values, beliefs, culture, background and language is the focus of this study. The research was concerned with understanding the literacy practices of Foundation Phase Grade 3 teachers who are able to intentionally promote and mediate literacy acquisition among their learners. A qualitative design was used to describe the approaches of effective literacy teachers. The research study discovered that while the teachers made use of a number of teaching methods that underpinned a de-contextualised and constructivist approach, a socio-cultural approach to literacy was lacking. The results call for a broadening of the definition of literacy; one that acknowledges the socio-cultural background of the learners in developing a literacy disposition that prepares learners for a changing world. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Didactics)

This study combines analytical and narrative modes of historical enquiry with educational policy sociology to construct a history of media in education in Scotland. It uses the development trajectory of a single case, media education in Scotland's statutory education sector, to deconstruct and reconstruct a history of the institutional relationship between the Scottish Film Council (SFC) and the Scottish Education Department (SED) that stretches back to the 1930s. Existing literature describes media education in Scotland as a phenomenon located in the 1970s and 1980s. This study disaggregates media education discourse and dissolves chronological boundaries to make connections with earlier attempts to introduce media into Scottish education in the context of Scotland's constitutional relations within the UK. It employs historical and socio-cultural methods to analyse the intersections between actors and events taking place over six decades. The analysis and interpretation of the data is located in three time periods. Chapter 3 covers the period from 1929 until 1974 when, on the cusp of the emergence of the new texts and technologies of film, the SFC was established to promote and protect Scottish film culture and audio-visual technologies. During this time, the interdependence of teachers, the film trade and the educational policy-making community led to the production, distribution and exhibition of new and popular forms of text to national and international acclaim. By juxtaposing public and private documents circulating on the margins of statutory education, this chapter generates a new understanding of the importance of film and its technologies in Scotland in the pursuit of a more culturally relevant and contemporary model of education. It also describes how constraints upon Scotland’s cultural production infrastructure limited its capacity to effect significant educational change. In the 1970s, cultural, political and educational ferment in pre-devolution Scotland, created a discursive shift that gave rise first to media education and then to Media Studies. Articulating documents with wider discourses of educational and cultural change and interviews with key players, Chapter 4 describes a counter-narrative gaining momentum. The constraints of the practices of traditional subjects and pedagogies combined with the constraints on Scottish cultural production gave shape and form to the media education movement. Significantly for this study, the movement included influential members of Scottish education’s leadership class. Between 1983 to 1986, the innovative Media Education Development Project (MEDP) aimed to place media education at the centre of teaching and learning in Scottish education. This was fully funded by the SED, managed by the Scottish Council for Educational Technology (SCET) and the SFC and implemented by the Association for Media Education in Scotland (AMES). The MEDP overlapped briefly with another initiative in SCET, the Scottish Microelectronics Development Project (SMDP). During this period, Media Studies enjoyed rapid success as a popular non-advanced qualification in the upper secondary and further education sectors. Media education, however, did not. Chapter 5 explores the links between the MEDP and the SMDP through the agency of three central actors: SCET, the SFC and AMES in the context of a second term of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. This study concludes that between 1934 and 1964, the SFC was a key educational bureaucracy in Scottish education. The SFC’s role as an agent of change represented the recognition of a link between relevant and contemporary Scottish cultural production and the transformation of statutory education. Between 1929 and 1982 three iterations for media and education in Scotland can be discerned. In 1983, the MEDP began a fourth but its progress faltered. The study suggests that if a new iteration for media and education in Scotland in the twenty-first century is to emerge, an institutional link between media culture, technology and educational transformation requires to be restored.

Diploma thesis "School media - press, radio, television, internet: on example of regions of Olomouc and Ústí nad Labem" deals with school media production of pupils and students of primary and secondary education focusing on the Czech environment. The whole issue is framed within media literacy, media education. Moreover, the interpretation accents with its direction of production. The most important chapters of historical-theoretical part introduce the outline of the school media development from the beginning till nowadays. Practical part characterizes school media in the regions of Olomouc and Ústí nad Labem. The research survey is mainly focused on the occurrence of school media production, forms of their outputs and characteristics of individual types of school media. What is more, the survey is also interested in current trends in publishing of school and class magazines and their theme and genre profile. Survey summarizes reasons, which impedes realization of school media production. Finally, on account of compile findings and data, it deduces a school media typology, criteria of their possible categorisation and includes them into the media system. As a result, the diploma thesis is a contribution to a study of school media and presents the platform from which it is possible to stem from during...

Text in English / Born at a time of abundance of technology, including new media, e-teens have their lives woven around the use of new media technologies to the extent that they virtually do everything with the aid of these technologies, including learning, playing, socialising and communicating. E-teens, besides, demonstrate marked expertise in the use of these technologies. Although there have been various studies done on this group of users supported by models and theories on the use, gratifications and appropriation of new media technologies, the premise of this study was on two assumptions. First, there are limited studies that have been conducted in the sub-Saharan African context, especially, Ghana. Second, most available theories and models that guide the study of e-teens’ use, appropriation and the use of new media technologies are generalized and do not sufficiently highlight the unique attributes and gratification needs that are tied to their developmental stage. In light of these assumptions, the study was undertaken to provide empirical evidence on the types of new media e-teens have access to; the types of new media used by e-teens in their scheme of things and e-teens’ purposes for using new media. It also sought to find out the gratifications sought and obtained from the use of new media technologies by e-teens; the key features of new media appropriation and experience among e-teens and to identify the features of new media technologies which are most appealing to e-teens. The other objective, which serves as the main contribution of this study, was to develop a conceptual model representing new media use and appropriation among e-teens, thereby filling the theoretical or conceptual gap that exists in this context. The study adopted a quantitative approach whereby data was collected using close-5ended questionnaires. The target population were teens from age 13 to 19 in senior high schools in the Greater Accra region of Ghana, selected using a simple random sampling. The results of the study show that, overall, the most popular new media technology that e-teens had access to and owned was the smartphone. Leading among the apps that e-teens found to be appealing were educational, entertainment and information/news, with communicative and participatory features of new media technologies appealing to e-teens highly. Also, educational, sociability and social inclusion, respectively, were the most popular gratifications sought and obtained by e-teens. It is submitted that social inclusion, educational and sociability gratifications are considered to be directly in line with the unique developmental needs of e-teens. However, it is recommended, among other things, that educational use of new media, which was one of the strong points for new media use, should be further encouraged as new media provides borderless opportunities forlearning. The researcher believes that the conceptual model for e-teen use and appropriation of new media technologies provide a firm ground for further research on topics related to this subject matter. To provide support and substance to the e-teen model, other researchers are encouraged to test and extend it where necessary. In conclusion, the findings provide evidence that new media technologies are highly appropriated by e-teens because the technologies help them meet their unique gratification needs. Therefore, the study recommends that, although new media use among e-teens can be encouraged, it is important to ensure proper usage, which will not be detrimental to them. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

Abstract: During the past decade, media researchers have intensified the study of media scandals and the role of journalism as an institution that holds social actors responsible for malfeasance and wrongdoings. On a micro level of analysis, the main attention has beendirected towards the journalistic interview and its use to promote the impression of guilt and journalistic neutrality. However, such studies have not been able to address the editing dimension of TV journalism that transforms conversation to another type of communicativepractice – that of communication through TV-flows composed of speech sequences, pictures,and sounds. This doctoral thesis develops a theoretical framework for analysis of the functions of editing inthe process of guilt attribution by journalistic TV-flows – e.g. investigative TV reporting. The purpose is also to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between the communicative competences of viewers and the contextualization of speech acts through the composition of TV-flows. The developed perspective consists of three parts: 1) A division of viewers’ reception of TV-flows in two types of interpersonal relations (to a speaker and to the composer) that involves six levels of cognitive activities. This division is based on the Habermasian notion of communicative rationality; 2) An intent-model, that lists communicative intentions expressed by the composer when speech sequences are merged and pictures are inserted; 3) A guilt-model, that encompasses guilt as a mental structure of ontologically separated elements (e.g. deed,intention, norm) and the associative relations that the viewer uses to create a meaningful whole– a fabula of guilt. The conveyed analysis of three cases of investigative reporting illustrates how the developed framework can be applied in the study of guilt attribution. The analyses also describe several compositional strategies by which the viewer is encouraged to make certain meaning, evaluate, and judge. The strategies concern the following areas: promotion of certain understanding of speech, promotion of certain evaluation of the validity claims, and promotion of certain understanding of the speaker’s intentions. Also strategies of positioning of the reporter in constructed discourses, that enhance the impression of her performances and argumentation, are explored. Furthermore, the composer’s strategies for masking intentions to interfere with the speech acts, by increasing intent ambiguity, are described. The guilt-model is used to understand the workings of the TV-flow on an overreaching level of meaning (the fabula level). Here, the analysis explains the interplay between portrayed intentions and acts, and the different ways in which condemning norms can be activated and highlighted. Furthermore, the model explores the possible employment of categorization in theprocess of guilt attribution (e.g. when properties of an individual are transferred to a group). In sum, this thesis contributes to a new way of understanding the reception of current affairs programs and TV journalism, as relation building between composer and viewer, by means of contextualization of speech acts.

Adolescent perspectives on health and the social and literate values of their health related behaviours require exploration and examination in health literacy, as knowledge gaps related to the constituents of health literate practices, and the functions and acquisition of health literacy exist in the literature. Research addressing this was approached based on socio-cultural and socio-ecological principles using a collective instrumental case design. Participants were new adolescent mother aged 15-18 recruited from 4 different community/education programs around Victoria, BC. Data was collected over a four month period, and consisted of individual and focus group interviews, journals, and researchers’ observations and field notes. Findings show that participants’ health behaviours changed significantly in tandem with their identities, the groups they associated with, and the social contexts they moved within. Findings indicate that identity, informal social environments, and unconscious cognitive process and psychosocial needs play a role in adolescents health literacy and literate practices.

This diploma thesis focuses on Media Education in English language classes. The first section introduces media in general and deals with media education and its place in Framework Educational Programme for grammar schools. Next part monitors the ways of using media education in other school subjects and describes methodology itself. On the basis of this knowledge some of the methodological books are analysed. The last part of the first section introduces advertisements and their main characteristics. The second section presents a project of media education which is called Advertisement and Slogan. The project was prepared to be used in three English lessons. The structure, aims and methods of each of them as well as lesson plans and the process of each lesson are described in detail. The final part is devoted to students? and teacher?s evaluations.

The changing role of literacy in primary education, with its emphasis on the acknowledgement of the learner’s values, beliefs, culture, background and language is the focus of this study. The research was concerned with understanding the literacy practices of Foundation Phase Grade 3 teachers who are able to intentionally promote and mediate literacy acquisition among their learners. A qualitative design was used to describe the approaches of effective literacy teachers. The research study discovered that while the teachers made use of a number of teaching methods that underpinned a de-contextualised and constructivist approach, a socio-cultural approach to literacy was lacking. The results call for a broadening of the definition of literacy; one that acknowledges the socio-cultural background of the learners in developing a literacy disposition that prepares learners for a changing world. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Didactics)