While we might not be able to solve the violent conflict in the Middle East, we as media educators need to share our practice and be there for our learners. By connecting with our community of learners, asking critical questions, sharing needs and emotions as a group, challenging media representations, and fighting the spread of biases and prejudices, we can better understand, reflect, and eventually make a difference.
We can always go back to our five media literacy questions:
-
Who created the message?
-
What techniques were used to attract our attention?
-
What values, lifestyles, and points of views are represented?
-
How might different people interpret the message differently?
-
What was omitted from the messages?
Consuming news from legacy media or social media, these questions are a guide to better see the whole picture and can be useful when talking about it in the classroom. You can learn more about them HERE.
For those of you who want to practice how the Media Education Lab is addressing the Gaza-Israel conflict in the classroom, we offer this special webinar:
Date: Wednesday, October 18th
Time: 7PM EST.
Link that we discussed during this webinar:
- Sesame Workshop Statement: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sesame-workshop_our-hearts-are-with-israeli-and-palestinian-activity-7117884455947497472-oqZq?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
- Pete Davidson Cold Opening of SNL Oct 14, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqGs93VPuZw
- October 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict Map on Wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:October_2023_Gaza%E2%88%92Israel_conflict.svg
- Map of the Nakba by Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide
- The Israel-Gaza Conflict Escalates By Geospatial World https://www.geospatialworld.net/article/the-israel-gaza-conflict-escalates/
- Framing what's breaking: Empirical analysis of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya Twitter coverage of the Gaza-Israel conflict by Tala Majzoub https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/framing-whats-breaking-empirical-analysis-of-al-jazeera-and-al-arabiya-twitter-coverage-of-gaza-israel-conflict/
- X (Formaly Twitter) post with Rogers caricature https://twitter.com/social_brains/status/1713289076215001119/photo/1
- Nuseir Yassin & Alex Dwek talk about Peace https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7118865842896855040/
More resources:
PBS Students Reporting Lab StoryMaker Rapid Response: https://www.story-maker.org/library/rapid-response-how-war-in-the-middle-east-affects-american-schools/
Featured Speaker: Yonty Friesem
Yonty Friesem is the co-director of the Media Education Lab and an Associate Professor of Communication at Columbia College Chicago. Yonty is also the founding director of the MA in Media for Social Impact at the College and the co-founder of the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition. Yonty's work and research on youth media focus on advancing belonging, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion for all learners and educators. Yonty applies trauma-informed and healing-centered practices using media education as civic engagement.