This dissertation investigated the media literacy experiences of middle school students enrolled in a Texas school. The literature review suggested that middle school students may be overlooked as a distinct population in media literacy research. The primary guiding questions for this inquiry were (1) How is media literacy exhibited by middle school students within a formal school context? (2) How does an elective film and media class impact middle school students' media literacy? And (3) How do middle grade students' responses to media correspond with theoretical models for media literacy? The phenomenological research methodology included a reflective analysis of students' textual responses to non-print media clips (N=24) and a reflective analysis of follow-up personal interviews with a smaller group of middle school participants (n=5). A questionnaire completed by participants provided descriptive statistics about the sample group. Additionally, theoretical models of media literacy were used to evaluate participants' media responses in relation to theoretical constructs for media literacy. The findings resulted in 11 emergent themes which can be used to further discourse about media literacy and its role in middle school curriculum. The dissertation includes implications for educators based upon the emergent themes, as well as recommendations for further research.

This paper is a synthesis of research that presents and reflects on the possible benefits of integrating media information literacy and critical thinking into the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum with the intention of facilitating for students' development in their critical thinking and media information literacy when engaging with English-language social media content. English is of major significance in the Swedish society and students get some of their news feed from social media in the English language along with their native language of Swedish. The aim of this paper is to investigate which strategies are currently used to promote students’ critical thinking and media information literacy when engaging with English-language social media content as well as which potential strategies which could possibly be incorporated by Upper-Secondary school EFL teachers in Sweden. Relevant academic articles were analysed showing various findings such as 1) the general importance of critical thinking and media literacy skills, 2) the importance of incorporating media information literacy in teacher training and practice, and lastly 3) the continuous development of critical thinking and media information literacy by age throughout the schooling years. This is an important field to continue to study in order to transform teaching practices and materials with the inclusion of media information literacy and critical thinking in the teaching of EFL in Sweden. In a wider perspective this can be seen as one of many tools to strengthen the state of democracy in Sweden.

This qualitative study aims to look at how the knowledge and awareness regarding source criticism is seen amongst media students attending their first year at Linnaeus University. Our theoretical base includes to explain what source criticism is, about media literacy, the power media has in the Swedish society, the effects that media can create, and the effects of internet. This study consists of eleven interviews where knowledge and awareness regarding source criticism are in focus. Our interviewees have contributed with diverse reasoning and thoughts, which will be presented closer in this study. A central part of this study also contains questions about the reasoning of the eleven media students regarding source criticism in relation to their career choice and position in society.Our result shows that the knowledge and awareness regarding source criticism amongst the eleven students are high, however they also express that this might not be the case amongst the population in general. All interviewees testify that source criticism is a subject that affects and that it is a high possibility it does not get the attention it deserves.

The focus of the study is to understand the efficiency of Vodacom and Tigo Television animation advertisements from the perspective of university students with and without education in media analysis in Tanzania. Vodacom and Tigo television animation advertisements have been introduced in Tanzania; however, there is little research about the effectiveness of the advertisements for market purposes of the commodities.   The overall aim of the study is to investigate university students’ media literacy, their interpretations, and alternative perceptions about Vodacom and Tigo television animation advertisements. The theoretical framework focuses on social action theory which is based on exploring meanings that audience create from the texts they consume from media. The empirical basis of the study consists of interviews and questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered to two separate survey groups of 20 university students each. While one group consisted of students educated in interpreting media, the other group comprised of students not educated in media analysis. In order to achieve the aim of the study, a triangulation method was used to provide a broader and deeper understanding of respondents’ perceptions of the animation TV advertisements.   Based on the qualitative approach, five themes were found and regarded as respondents’ views and perceptions. Findings obtained through the quantitative method showed that respondents with media education had positive perceptions of the advertisements and could interpret and understanding them. While students without media education had negative perceptions and most of them could not interpret and understand the advertisements. Further research that will include a diverse sample population from different community groups is suggested.

Ubiquitous media communications technology necessitates democratic and critical media literacy education for developing an active 21st century polity. This study analyzed the context of democratic and critical media competencies in national curriculum standards across Australia, England, and the United States. This, based on Lefebvre’s (1991) conception of conceived space, where standards operate as manifest educational policy and as a basis for establishing good practice. The study employed a multi-theoretical approach to textual analysis, within Bereday’s (1964) comparative structure of inquiry. A critical policy lens supported the contextualization of ideological influences that frame democratic and critical media literacies in standards, per Bay-Cheng, Fitz, Alizaga, and Zucker’s (2015) neoliberal subscales. A purposive sample of civics and citizenship, English/English language arts, and media arts/studies was employed. Differences across three main indicators were identified: socio-cultural and youth-based concerns, personal growth via media production and other skills development, and reasoning and communication skills improvement. The neoliberal influences on curricular standards were subsequently explored across three emerging themes: identity politics, problem-based and critical inquiry experiences, and the inclusion of digital new media in curriculum inquiry. Though recognized in the countries’ standards as multifaceted and complex, each obfuscates identity in some way. Both England and the United States inadequately confront race, class, gender, socio-economic status, cultural commodification, and youthbased issues. Though not overtly neoliberal, the Australian standards present identity hegemonically. The role of media is somewhat siloed from the curriculum’s conceptions of identity and active citizenship across all three countries. The English standards are least adept at developing learners’ understandings of the influence of media on identity development, whereas both England and the United States over-emphasize text to the neglect of new media understandings. An apolitical view of media literacy, accompanied by techno-economic terminology, is pervasive in U.S. standards. Despite a counter-critical approach to the framing of its curriculum priorities, Australia presents the most balanced view of democratic/critical media citizenship. England’s standards reflect neoliberal-communitarian citizenship and largely neglect critical questioning. Whereas the United States takes a similarly cosmopolitan view of citizenship to Australia and England, the standards fail to comprehensively explore the links between digital democracy and political engagement. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This dissertation is an ethnographic engagement with the social and political space of Afghanistan and how it has been shaped by the intensities of warfare in the last decade, with a focus on the realms of language, representation and economy. Taking Kabul as the panoramic ground of profound social and epistemological transformations, the dissertation traces a crucial shift beginning in 2011-2012, from a highly speculative war economy (a “green zone economy” that privileged the commodification of language and culture and the privatization of war, with crisis as an alibi for governmentality) to one based on equally speculative practices of prospecting for natural resources in the Afghan underground: where an estimated three trillion dollars’ worth of copper, gold, iron-ore, marble and oil & gas is presumed to lie in wait. I illustrate the nuanced epistemological concerns and political contestations that stem from an Afghan effort to distinguish between sources of violence and sources of economic value (especially in the aftermath of Kabul’s demilitarization) in a milieu where foreign militaries presuppose that civilians and insurgents cannot be distinguished, except through the medium of war-time translation and collaboration. The twin concern with generalized forms of death dealing and tragedy, on one hand, and the moral and political exigency for Afghans to distinguish between a world of appearances and one of essences (the Islamic and Quranic interpretation of zahir (exterior/surface) and batin (interior/ground), on the other, opens onto a set of epistemological concerns undergirded by several oppositions, which I argue, are central to American war making. I illustrate that the movement between these artificial binaries (Persian/Pashto and English, literacy and illiteracy, rationality and irrationality, repetition and transformation) inspires aspirational fantasy on an economic frontier and invests some Afghans (especially those who speak English and are literate) with the power of calculative reason (aql) and understanding (fahm and dânish), while condemning those who are illiterate (and sometimes those who only speak Persian and/or Pashto) to forms physical supplementarity and crisis--from literally being expendable prosthetic bodies (human body armor) to the breakdown of meaning in incestuous relations and the intensification of moral crisis. In this context, conventional writing and the felt lack of its absence illustrate for us the logic of war in more consequential ways. The belief that writing is the domain of what can be known (rationally understood) and universally applied invigorates the ideology of literate persons and war-time collaborators with shocking breadth and tenacity. It organizes antagonisms between persons and structures forms of death-dealing. I trace how the production of a binary around literacy and illiteracy produces, even in moments of technological acquisition, the retrospective fantasy that orality is not only the prior but also the locus of unfettered subversion and ignorance of the law. This misrecognition of linguistic diversity as lack comes to inform, in contexts of unprecedented transnational war-time activity, the charge that Afghans are beholden to an excessive localism that fuels the predicaments of the Afghan State and errors of judgement (such as incestuous transgressions, and suicide bombing) which would destroy society altogether. The issue of vulnerability to ideological suasion and excess emerges alongside these presuppositions. It informs the belief that the incapacity to exercise reason (due to illiteracy) renders Afghans vulnerable to diverse forms of propaganda and the inability to distinguish between the world of appearances (both technological media images and the Islamic notion of the zahir (surface manifestation)) and reality. I trace these complexities through a series of intense contact points where these oppositions come into play and determine forms of access and violence 1) in translational contexts during combat missions where linguistic transformation results in deadly misunderstanding 2) in familial contexts and contestations over property, where the failure of interpersonal and extrajudicial mediation results in mass murder 3) in courtrooms where failed suicide bombers (who did not detonate out of technological error or because they were attacked by members of the Afghan National Police) are subject to the limitations of oral testimony and to the belief that photographic evidence proves that they will repeat their crimes if released from prison 4) instances of incest that arise out of illiteracy and, when exposed, generate moral crisis 5) the production of zones of exteriority and interiority (especially in Kabul’s Green Zone) that rely on phamakological inclusion and reproduce the literal supplementarity of Afghan bodies 6) the attempt to find the “real” sources of economic value as part of a multi-national gold and mineral extraction endeavor—the continuation of an obsession with the Afghan ground that has a long imperial history from the 1800’s onwards (when it was assessed through botanical, railway and coal prospecting missions). Together, these sites and the consideration of the earthen terrain alongside the terrain of rationality and linguistic difference situate us in the midst of wartime catastrophe. They foreground the fantasy that rationalism is the sine qua non of modernism, and the belief that literacy is the basis for reflective and intellectual thought, and for being human. But what they also disclose for us is that in its absence you can (and sometimes must) die.

This research investigates the responses of three individuals engaging with the Super Mario World (SMW) platform videogame glitches, and how they learned to solve the problem without formal help. This investigation was chosen because it explores connections between media literacy, critical thinking, and play in adults in the context of responding to unexpected technological errors. At the core of this study is the question of how encounters with arbitrary glitches can motivate and elicit critical thinking. Following a case study model, data were collected as the three subjects played SMW and encountered glitches. Questions regarding the (glitchy) game play experience were addressed in the first interview immediately following. The subjects were asked to create a visual essay and keep personal journals, which were gathered after 30 days, and a second interview at that time focused on the overall experience. Several results emerged from the data. Each of the subjects identified and solved for glitches in a way that suggested critical thinking processes. In addition, they all reflected in various ways on the challenges that glitches presented, making connections to larger issues and their everyday lives. The data also showed the importance of memory in these processes. The results suggest that while subjects approached and solved a technological glitch in SMW game play, they simultaneously acquired, developed, and—at least for the duration of the study—sustained new literacy skills and expanded their proficiency with critical thinking. This holds some potential implications for the value of incorporating glitch experiences both inside and outside the classroom, suggesting that videogame play—and particularly glitches in play—can be considered valuable opportunities for learners and teachers alike.

Over the course of the past 15 years, college student populations as well as information technologies have undergone dramatic changes. Today’s college populations are more diverse as women, minorities, non-traditional students and veterans are the fastest growing populations. Additionally, the number of people enrolled in colleges has gone from 4.9 million in 2000 to 20.2 million in 2017. Simultaneously, the growth and proliferation of information technologies have changed the ways information is consumed and social relationships formed. The Internet, and discursive spaces that are specific to it, allow people to learn at their own pace, connect across national borders, and experiment with identities. This dissertation worked towards understanding how various college populations interact with online spaces, particularly asynchronous online spaces such as Reddit, Quora, Amazon product reviews, and various other spaces. The qualitative data collected for the dissertation included a survey of 84 participants and interviews with 12 participants. The data were analyzed using a theoretical framework based on Socio-Cultural Theories of Literacies, Critical Media Studies, and Postcolonial Theory. Findings and implications of this dissertation show a need for increased involvement in critical media literacies education of college students, and a need for educators to build culturally responsive, civic-based, and globally minded curricula rooted in student information technology usage.

<p>This thesis aims to examine how teachers who teach the Swedish subject, uses film in their education. The survey was given to 30 of these teachers in Nykoping, half which are working in junior high schools, and half which are working in high schools. One important</p><p>condition to this works implementation, is the existence of the widen text concept that points to that all media is a concept that can be read and analysed. This is the attitude that The National Agency for Education aims at in different govern documents. The National Agency for education also request teachers to give the students tools to the media literacy that the society demands. To be able to interpret and analyse film is part of this media literacy. This papers result is that the majority of the selected group are showing film in their teaching, however not more than once or twice per year. The premier reason to why they are showing film is to complement their literature education and to create a foundation for discussion.</p>

This thesis aims to examine how teachers who teach the Swedish subject, uses film in their education. The survey was given to 30 of these teachers in Nykoping, half which are working in junior high schools, and half which are working in high schools. One important condition to this works implementation, is the existence of the widen text concept that points to that all media is a concept that can be read and analysed. This is the attitude that The National Agency for Education aims at in different govern documents. The National Agency for education also request teachers to give the students tools to the media literacy that the society demands. To be able to interpret and analyse film is part of this media literacy. This papers result is that the majority of the selected group are showing film in their teaching, however not more than once or twice per year. The premier reason to why they are showing film is to complement their literature education and to create a foundation for discussion.