Abstract:

In the last twenty years, in Europe racism and xenophobia have known a new era of growth with intolerance finding a fertile ground in economic crisis and insecurity. While globalisation and immigration processes, neoliberal transformations of welfare states and shrinking labour markets are upsetting the ‘Old Continent’, political racist movements have (re-)emerged (Ranieri, 2016). Othering discourses are also echoed online and concerns are arising about their impact on young people. Indeed, as intense users of the Internet, arguably young people are exposed to discriminatory content while they start making sense of the social and political world around them. In this context, it becomes crucial for education to promote intercultural dialogue inspired by principles of equity, solidarity and social justice. This paper presents an approach to the design of media education activities for intercultural contexts and social inclusion. In particular, we will introduce and discuss the Media and Intercultural Education Framework (MIEF), a theoretical tool that we elaborated to support teachers and practitioners to define relevant objectives for media and intercultural education. MIEF is based on different research traditions. Firstly, it refers to media education studies, in particular to the works of Buckingham (2003) and Hobbs (2011), who indicate critical understanding and creative practices of media production as pillars for media literacy education. It also takes into account the contribution of Kellner & Share (2009), who emphasise the importance of questioning dominant media representations, values, and ideologies, and the critical multiculturalism perspective coming from Hooks (1994) and McLaren (1995). Finally, it incorporates civic values which are inherently linked to media education, evoking concepts such civic agency, participation, engagement, public sphere (Osler & Starkey, 2005). Along with MIEF, we will illustrate the related guidelines for design. These latter combine the principles of Universal design for learning with a more contextualized approach based on socio-cultural educational practices. Examples of activities will be provided to better explain how the guidelines may help teachers and educators to develop educational practices addressing intercultural issues through media literacy education.

References:
[1] Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education. Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. London: Polity Press-Blackwell Publishing.
[2] Hobbs, R. (2011) Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
[3] Hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Education as the practice of freedom. London: Routledge.
[4] Kellner, D. & Share, J. (2009) Critical Media Education and Radical Democracy, in M. W. Apple, W. Au & L. A. Gandin (Eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (pp. 281-295). New York and London: Routledge.
[5] McLaren, P. L. (1995). White terror and oppositional agency: towards a critical multiculturalism. In C.E. Sleeter, P.L. McLaren (Eds.), Multicultural education, critical pedagogy, and the politics of difference (pp. 33-70). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
[6] Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2005). Changing Citizenship: Democracy and Inclusion in Education. Berkshire, UK and New York: Open University Press.
[7] Ranieri, M. (ed) (2016). Populism, media and education: challenging discrimination in contemporary digital society. Oxon-New York: Routledge.

Keywords:

Critical media literacy, Discrimination, Young people, Intercultural education, Media analysis, Media production.