This document discusses using media for social change through the concept of "mediaptation", which involves both adapting media practices and objectives to create change. It explores critical media literacy and proposes a framework of "dual adaptation", where media and objectives are adapted in both directions. Students are asked to discuss ideas for social projects that use media for change, and to consider how those ideas both adapt media and adapt objectives. The document emphasizes developing a critical, situated view of one's role and considering whose terms are being used when discussing media literacy and civic action.

1. Doing Mediaptation: Learning from the Protest Camp
Read,Write, Curate, Argue … then ACT (maybe) and if so, DOUBLEADAPT
So what counts? Longest ever presentation title?

2. julian@cemp.ac.uk
Twitter: @JulianMcDougall

3. Action plan signpost: What role do media play in this
challenge? Do they perpetuate a problem, can they
solve it?
You need media literacy to work this out.
BUT - in this session I want you to ‘DECONSTRUCT’ the
idea of media literacy itself. Its power dynamics.
In particular, you need to take a CRITICAL, SITUATED
view of your own ‘co-option’ into media literacy as an
agent for civic action and change. On whose terms?
You will be asked to reflect on your own developing
project ideas in response to the idea of MEDIAPTATION.

4. SAC14 first rough ideas: using Media for change | changing
media?
Speed employment app (Shanghai single parents)
Social network platform to monitor ethical hiring safeguards (Lebanon
social capital)
Social media / TV educational campaign on social protection (Mexican
child labour)
Pitch app to connect graduates to employers (Lebanon youth
unemployment)
NGO / cellular digital literacy programme + female interns (Palestinian
women in Lebanon refugee camp)
Soap opera storyline to raise awareness + connect to NGOs / support
groups (Indian maid / mother suffering domestic violence)
TAKE ONE (NOT YOURS). Discuss – DUAL APAPTATION?
(Adapting the change objective to fit with media / adapting media
practices).

5. Hypotheses for Critical Media Literacy – sidestepping the
schism

6. Framework for this (Milhailidis, 2013)

7. FACULTY: Media Literacy, the incomplete project?
A Habermasian nonsense experiment?
Generating our own aporias, at an impasse of our own making.
A Rushkoffion Big Blank?
The way out = a pedagogic shift.
Media Literacy ‘After the Media’
A shift to CURATION
A shift to POROUS EXPERTISE
A strategy of DUAL ADAPTATION

8. Legacies Tributes
Struggle

10. It’s Complicated: Machines of Loving Grace

11. It’s Complicated: Cave 2.0?

13. It’s Complicated: The joy of text

14. It’s Complicated: The story of .gif

15. It’s Complicated: The Return of Naked Ideology?

16. Either way …… always back to this ..
… to measure this

17. Curation Porous Expertise
But ….. Media Education is Awkward

18. Proposal for Untangling: Porous Dual Adaptation
Writer | Reader Media | Citizen Teacher | Student Expert |
Inexpert
Co-opting each other in pursuit of objectives
Managing and embedding ‘real media’
Creating own frames of reference (‘double articulations’)
Some forms of mainstream media policy are adopted and adapted at
protest camps. At the same time, protest camps create the power to
enforce their own standards on to the media, which has to adapt to
protest camps’ heterogeneity and refusal to speak with one voice.
Feigenbaum, Frenzel and McCurdy, 2013: 224.

19. So …. Powerful (Media) Literacy =
DUALADAPTATION from awkward education

20. Awkward Untangling
Which actions can be taught? How measured?
Young people are actively required to exercise their responsibility as citizens, yet
for many the traditional markers of citizenship have been ever more difficult to
achieve, and in this context, participation may not be a meaningful practice –
and MAY EVEN PROVETO BE AN OPPRESSIVE IMPOSITION.
Buckingham, Bragg and Kehily, 2014: 280

21. So what counts? (1) Knowing your “BIG OTHER”?

22. So what counts?
(2) Using theory?

23. So what counts?
(3) The Medium or the
Message?

24. So what counts? (4) Literate Frivolity?

25. So what counts? (5) Frivolistribution?

26. So what counts? (6) Fan Parody Meta Literacy?

27. Students: Discussion (GML context)
1. Parody as a media literate act of dual
adaptation?
2. What’s the critical bit?
3. Where does CHANGE come from?
4. Doing mediaptation for global change?

28. Back to SAC14 ideas: using Media for change | changing
media?
Speed employment app (Shanghai single parents)
Social network platform to monitor ethical hiring safeguards (Lebanon
social capital)
Social media / TV educational campaign on social protection (Mexican
child labour)
Pitch app to connect graduates to employers (Lebanon youth
unemployment)
NGO / cellular digital literacy programme + female interns (Palestinian
women in Lebanon refugee camp)
Soap opera storyline to raise awareness + connect to NGOs / support
groups (Indian maid / mother suffering domestic violence)
TAKE ONE (NOT YOURS). Discuss – DUAL APAPTATION?
(Adapting the change objective to fit with media / adapting media
practices).

29. FACULTY: Recommendations for Research
Untangle discourses
‘Pin down’ and untangle civic action criteria from
international MIL objectives – eg Unesco / Salzburg
GML
Map those to practice – pilot methodology
Full international study with refined methodology
Identify best practice in ‘civic capabibility’ (using ‘robust’
methods). This doesn’t naturally arise from MIL but has
‘conditions of possibility’.
Be clear (honest) about political goals – discuss.

30. Thanks for the invite and good luck!!