From Media Literacy to Media Competence : overcoming the structuralist perspective

1. From Media Literacyto Media Competence:overcomingthestructuralistperspective University of Prishtina May 2012 Univ. Prof. Dr. Thomas A. Bauer University Vienna / Austria thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

2. MEDIA LITERACY – THE EDUCATIONAL ANSWER TO MEDIA EFFECTS Individual-oriented Concepts: Compensate media effects with educational counter-effects: Awareness Approaches: • Protect and Prevent: avoid opportunities concept • Critical Content Analysis: critical distance concept • Do it yourself Experience Concept: disenchant concept • Reflect your context of life Concept: ethnomethodological concept Society-oriented Concepts: Make Media Literacy a Public Value From affirmative / repressive usage of media to emancipative use of media (H.M. Enzensberger, B. Brecht, Frankfurt School) • From socialized usage of media to social use of media (Cultural Studies – e.g. Stuart Hall: encoding-decoding model: patterns of reading) thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

3. MEDIA LITERACY – THE COMPETENCE CONCEPT The didactic media education concept (following D. Baacke): Media Competence a Case of Communication Competence (architecture: language- communication – media) • Media Knowledge (Understand media - Education • Media Analysis (Penetrate media - Sovereignty • Media Critics (Be aware of media - Emancipation • Media Creation (Do the media - Active Participation thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

4. MEDIA LITERACY – THE COMPETENCE CONCEPT The Habitus Concept of Social Competence (following P. Bourdieu – Habitus, Social Capital, and N. Chomsky – Generative Grammar Concept): • Ability: (technical, analytical. critical, cultural (soft) skills • Capacity: cognitive capability understanding complexity: Knowledge • Motivation : intrinsic interest in realizing the eventual, social and cultural environment: creation motifs • Responsibility: the individual and the society are facing the charge of quality and culture of societal communication thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

5. MEDIA UNDER THEORETICAL CONSIDERATION: GRADES OF MEDIA COMPLEXITY MEDIALITY: THE SOCIAL AGREEMENT ON MEDIA SOCIAL PRACTICE MEDIA SYSTEM: SYMBOLICALLY MEDIATED INTERACTION MEDIA ENVIRONMENT MEDIA SYSTEM / MEDIA ORGANISATION THE MEDIA :TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE THE MEDIUM: APPARATIVE DEVICE HIGH GRADE of Complexity LOW thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

6. MEDIA CULTURE – THE MEANINGFUL ENVIRONMENT FOR MEDIA SOCIETY In a media- and knowledge society context: Understanding the reality needs to understand media Understanding Media: • In a context of social studies media is used as a term of observation: normatively, critically, analytically • In a context of cultural studies media is a term of contextual description: Mediality – The Modus of Constitution of Society • Mediality: The Cultural Environment of Social Practice • Media Education: A Competence Motif of Self-responsible (democratic, civil) Society thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

7. COMMUNICATION-CULTURE-SOCIETY SOCIABILITY CONCEPT INTERPRETATION PRACTICE OBSERVATION ANALYSIS SOCIETY How should society understand itself? What are the criteria of becoming a society? What are the connectivities of action organizing a society? What are the characteristic phenomena? thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

8. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA SOCIETYSOCIAL- & CULTURAL SCIENCE ISKOWLEDGE BUILDING BETWEEN SENSE AND EXPERIENCE normative-hermeneutical approach: Interprets the use of media as means and agency of cognitive, affective and active participation in public discourse and in societal conversation in order to get connected and synchronized with different and professionally based interpretations of events and decisions that are publicly supposed to be meaningful for personal and public management of life thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

9. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA SOCIETYSOCIAL- & CULTURAL SCIENCE ISKOWLEDGE BUILDING BETWEEN SENSE AND EXPERIENCE critical- emancipative approach: reflects the use of media as an open source space of taking and giving contributions to the generalized interpretation of experience in order to multiply your and other’s view of world - thus becoming your own actor in constructing the reality thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

10. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA SOCIETYSOCIAL- & CULTURAL SCIENCE ISKOWLEDGE BUILDING BETWEEN SENSE AND EXPERIENCE empirical- analytical approach: Analyses the use media observing the relation of action and structures as a source of experience, of inspiration, of setting agenda and as a generalized frame of reference for public knowledge in order to get connected to the generalization of behaviour thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

11. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA SOCIETYSOCIAL- & CULTURAL SCIENCE ISKOWLEDGE BUILDING BETWEEN SENSE AND EXPERIENCE pragmatic approach: Analyses Media in the interest of getting out how to use it as a resource of information and what is publicly supposed to be news in order to gain a preferred position within the social structures of competition for (active or passive) public attention (market) thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

12. UNDERSTANDING MEDIALITYSOCIAL- & CULTURAL SCIENCE ISKOWLEDGE BUILDING BETWEEN SENSE AND EXPERIENCE Cultural approach: turn from structural / functional analysis to a contextual (integrated) interpretation (Cultural Studies) • Usage of Media as frame / reflector of people’s search for models of styling (conceptualizing) their life according • to stories and discourses (traditions, narrations, news) • in order to get connected and referred to social bodies (identity-building, community-building) . thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

13. UNDERSTANDING MEDIAThe Cultural Studies Thesis Communication & Culture – two sides of one coin • Communication defines the development of culture  • Communication is the context of action, through which connections of meaning get created and exchanged • Culture is the connection of giving meaning to action (also to the use of media as a way of appropriation of reality • Culture is the societal basis for content and form of communication thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

14. UNDERSTANDING MEDIAThe Cultural Studies Thesis • The media discourse mediates the every-day-discourse and milieu-discourses: there is no media-free existence of any discourse • All meanings and significations we are using origin from institutions of valuating the experiences – media mediate them in media discourse • Discourses are not individual creations, but socially produced. In order to understand actual connections we re-take already learned (culturally established) discourses  • The question is not, what is the media impact on discourses, the question is, how discourse rules effect the use of media  thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

15. CULTURAL PERSEPCTIVES OF MEDIALITY Media - Identity : How to save/develop the authenticity of real self under conditions of mediated relation? Media - Ecology : How to save/preserve the „nature“ of interpersonal communication before technical alienation? Media Competence: How to use media as an agency of realizing individuality under conditions of a media organized society? Media Culture: How does the everyday usage of media effect the culture of sociability? Media Learning: What attitudes are we able to develop, in order to create an societal learning process out of it (media competence)? thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

16. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA COMPETENCECompetence Models in general • Competence - a normative term: is directed to social agreements of social and individual values • Competence - a critical term: is directed to distinguish between systems demands and Lebenswelt-consciousness • Competence – a pragmatic term: is directed to the possibility of learning and of development. thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

17. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA COMPETENCECompetence Models in general MAKE YOUR LIFE MEANINGFUL AND MINDFUL PRACTICING IT IN CONTEXT OF SOCETY -THE CONCEPT OF REFERENCE FOR MEDIA COMPETENCE LIFE - Reality: mostly determinated by it‘s structural conditions (ressources) Practice: mostly determinated by conditions of competence (social intelligence) Consideration: mostly determinated by communication / relationship: • Other-related (socialisation: dependency) • Self-related (individualization: difference) • Event-related (eventuality: fatalism) • Change-related (challenge: emancipation) thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

18. UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCEwhere does the imagination come from? Competence is not a natural quality, but is a category of the cultural interpretation of human attitude in relation to the natural, cultural, social, technical and symbolic environment. It says that mankind is able and capable to organize its position in relation to the environment in a cultural manner - thus forming personality and individuality in order to become an identifiable part of it. - cultural-anthropological interpretation - psychological interpretation - educational interpretation thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

19. UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCEwhere does the imagination come from? • Anthropological interpretation The Competence term represents an anthropological interpretation of risks and chances of surviving by means that are only given to mankind: making decision by free will and by reflection - using means of intelligence, notion, cognition and consciousness. Within that tradition competence is a dimension of human performance of life that has to be supposed to be anyone’s own. Competence values in that frame above all others is: advantage privilege thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

20. UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCEwhere does the imagination come from? • Psychological interpretation: • Competence of personal life depends to certain extent from different pre-conditions of socialisation: family structure, personality structure, culture of relationship. Media Competence is not a special competence, but more the reflection of understanding one’s personal life styling under socio-cultural frame conditions: The social climate. thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

21. Understanding Competencewhere does the concept come from? • Psychological interpretation: • Values of Competence within psychological interpretation are: authenticity, open mindedness, distinctiveness, reflexivity, critical distance against yourself and critical closeness o others • Development of competence needs a socio-hygienic climate – in individual but also in societal dimensions. Non-hygienic climates lead to strategies of simulation and compensative inscenation of performing one’s own life or the life of the society/community/organization. thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

22. UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCEwhere does the imagination come from? • Educational interpretation: Competence always has been a goal for education and pedagogy insofar educational and learning programs aims to bring young people to the state of ability, capacity and responsibility in all socially relevant fields of behaviour. Education works theoretically and practically in the direction of an idealtypical assumption of an individual and tries to challenge the learning capacity of individuals according to a system of socialisation. thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

23. UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCEproblems behind these interpretations • Models of identity are not sacrosanct and could change (cf: J.Habermas) • Models of social order are constructions and could be deconstructed (cf: M. Foucault) • Models of education of intelligence are often focused on cognitive capacities (cf: J. Piaget) • Models of socialisation are often too mechanistic: To compensate the dilemmata of the society on shoulders of individuals of the upcoming generation might be a cynical way to demand competence from youngsters within a social environment with weak competence culture. thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

24. UN DERSTANDING COMPETENCEMEDIA COMPETENCE AS A CULTURAL CAPITAL • The Media environment is a complex environment: • technical, cultural, political, social, behavioural and economic structures are mixed and organized to a system for its own quality. • Living with and in media environment challenges skills of distinction, of differentiation and of decision of individuals insofar the media system represents and mediates other environments: public spheres, politics, education, art, religion and church-life, scenes of diverse communities, fiction, faction, entertainment, conversation, discourse and discussion, advertisement and models of personal life styling. thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at

25. UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCEMEDIA COMPETENCE IS INDIVIDUAL GOOD The term of competence includesaspects: • Ability (to know what operations and how to do them in case of – skills) • Capacity (to have the cognitive, affective and active means and preparedness: skills) • Responsibility (to be conscious of what it means for oneself and/or for others: consequences and possible effects • Morality (to be aware of the implicated values when making personal decisions) • In media knowledge, media participation and media usage thomas.bauer@univie.ac.at