Abstract:

This paper will address the challenges and possibilities associated with teaching undergraduates to become effective, confident and critical “global citizens” through the practices of “citizen journalism.” The primary example addressed will be the Weave (www.weavenews.org), a co-curricular public intellectual project created by students in a seminar on Global News Analysis at St. Lawrence University with the general goal of spotlighting, in blog format, current stories that are not receiving sufficient attention from the mainstream news media. Grounded in the emerging academic field of Global Studies, the project draws on the example of similar projects at other universities; on the work of global dialogue projects such as Dropping Knowledge (www.droppingknowledge.org); scholarship offering critical analysis of the political economy and ideological role of the mass media; and emerging work on “citizen journalism” and the new media technologies and forms on which it relies.

After situating the Weave within these wider structural contexts, the paper will proceed along two main analytical tracks. First, drawing on qualitative data derived from several years of teaching the Global News Analysis seminar, it will address the particular pedagogical challenges associated with this seminar, starting with the challenge of promoting critical understanding of both “the news” and the news media in a culture where basic knowledge of how the media actually function is often lacking. An additional challenge concerns preparing students to become bloggers who are capable of articulating intelligent, well-informed perspectives on issues about which they previously may have been relatively ignorant.

Second, drawing on the author’s experience as primary director of the Weave, the paper will address the pedagogical benefits of such a project. In addition to promoting media literacy, such projects offer students the opportunity to combine critical discourse analysis with the active practice of becoming a participant in public debates about important global issues. Similarly, they provide students with training in techniques of basic independent media production including website development, blogging, editing, video production, and organizational development. As such, they play a key role in the broader work of Global Studies education and its overarching goal of fostering a critical, praxis-oriented consciousness of global processes, hierarchies, and struggles for social change.

Keywords:

Media, pedagogy, globalization, blogging, activism, praxis.