Dialectical Analysis of CBC Kids’ The Outlet

1. Dialectical Analysis of CBC Kids’ The Outlet Masayuki Iwase CMNS 428: Media and Education February 11, 2008

2. Objective • To examine how branding and learning/pedagogy work together at CBC Kids’ The Outlet. • Media education intervention about how these two seemingly incompatible tendencies operate dialectically in CBC’s appealing to kids. http://www.cbc.ca/kids/ http://www.cbc.ca/theoutlet/

3. Branding What is branding? • Branding is a company’s intention of obviating the distance between a producer and a customer by building customer loyalty through the association of its names with both the tangible and the intangible values involved in the purchase of a product or service that will satisfy the customer’s instrumental needs (Hills and Michalis, 2000, p. 480). • Intangible values a customer’s association of a company’s brand with values of an abstract character which induces the trust of the customer in the company. Hills, J., Michalis, M. (2000). The Internet: A Challenge to Public Service Broadcasting. Gazetta: International Journal of Communication Studies. 62(6): 477-494.

4. Branding cont’d In relation to public service broadcasters & the era of the Internet: • “‘Branding’ in an Internet world places increased emphasis on the quality of communication from the customer’s perspective. Therefore, insofar as they have a ready-made reputation, public service broadcasters will have an advantage. Traditional values of authority, reliability, speedy reaction to events and overall trustworthiness are likely to be of great value in Internet delivery of news and information. However this very advantage of a trusted brand name can cause problems for the public service broadcasters seeking to exploit that name for commercial purpose” (Hills and Michalis, 2000, p. 480-482). Hills, J., Michalis, M. (2000). The Internet: A Challenge to Public Service Broadcasting. Gazetta: International Journal of Communication Studies. 62(6): 477-494.

5. CBC’s Branding through Cyberspace Why is CBC actively involving in cyberspace (or the world wide web) today? • Difficulty in asserting cultural sovereignty through traditional media platforms (i.e., radio and broadcasting) • Government’smassive funding cuts • The CRTC exempting the Internet from its regulation • CBC must build and defend a competitive position for its brand in the unregulated space (=cyberspace) by ensuring its continuous relevance and public support in new media platforms (O’Neill, 2006, p. 182). O’Neill, B. (2006). CBC.ca: Broadcasting Sovereignty in a Digital Environment. The International Journal of research into New Media Technologies. 12(2): 179-197.

6. The Outlet The Outlet • Targeting young people or kids aged between 8 and 12 • Encouraging young people to “take over the CBC” • Activities offered at The Outlet: • Video Gallery • Submit a Video • How to Videos • My Two Cents • Mash-Up http://www.cbc.ca/kids/ http://www.cbc.ca/theoutlet/

7. Branding through The Outlet How does The Outlet work as a branded space? • With the activities, CBC provides young people (and/or their parents) with technical competences. competences  cultural capital • Cultural Capital: • Particular discursive resources, such as knowledge, tastes, or behaviors, which a person needs to lean and adopt in order to make distinctions between his/her own class (or status) and other classes cultural capital  learning capital

8. Branding through The Outlet cont’d Why is the cultivation of cultural capital significant? • To reproduce a so-called “digital generation” (Buckingham, 2006, p. 3) • To keep pace with the emerging what Manuel Castells calls “network society” characterized with informationalism and globalization (Hjarvard, 2003, p. 29) • To pursue future educational and labor market benefits • To meet the CRTC’s broadcasting policy: “be readily adaptable to scientific and technological change” Buckingham, D. (2006). Is There a Digital Generation? In D. Buckingham and R. Willett (Ed), Digital Generations: Children, Young People, and New Media. pp. 1-13. Mahwah, New Jersey: lawrance Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/B-9.01/bo-ga:l_I-gb:s_3//en) Hjarvard, S. (2003). A Mediated World: The Globalization of Society and the Role of Meida. In S. Hjarvard (Ed), Media in a Globalized Society. pp. 15-53. Denmark: Mus Tusculanum Pr DK ISBS

9. Branding through The Outlet cont’d Downside of the cultivation of cultural capital • Emergence of digital divide (with a table): • Young people whose parents have higher incomes are most likely to use the Internet • Upper middle-class young people are more likely to be technologically literate with adequate internet access (at home) • Young people whose parents have lower incomes and lower level of educational achievements significantly lack the access. • CBC’s branding strategy contributes to the potential source of inequalities and of the further perpetuation of existing class divisions in Canada.

10. Mash-Up Mash-Up: • A video or sound recoding created by digitally combining and synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two or more different songs Two ways of doing mash-up: • Magi-Nationmash-up • My Goldfish is Evilmash-up • Offering kids tools to produce mash-up by dragging and dropping pre-given selected clips, music and sound effects to the timeline to make a mash-up or their own. http://www.cbc.ca/kids/ http://www.cbc.ca/magination/ http://www.cbc.ca/mygoldfishisevil/

11. Mash-Up cont’d A quick in-class activity: • Produce actual mash-up!!! • Drag and drop selected clips, music and sound effects to the timeline…

12. Mash-Up cont’d Questions to be considered: • How would you evaluate the learning opportunities through our experience with producing mash-up? • How would you make a judgment of the relationship between branding and learning/pedagogy at Mash-Up or The Outlet as a whole?

13. End

14. Downside of branding through incorporating attractive popular cultural artifacts • Dominance of commercial forces in young people’s culture • Marketing opportunities and advancements for the game company • Certain moralistic messages or normative values embedded: • Latent masculine and feminine values  identity • Violence Short clips: http://www.magi-nation.com/home.html http://www.sardineproductions.com/en/projects/MyGoldfishIsEvil.html

15. Key Points • CBC operates as a commercial market enterprise capitalizing on young people’s cultural capital by getting them to informally experience technical training and video production for the purpose of ensuring Canada’s future high-skilled, technical labour necessary for keeping pace with the network society. • At the same time, CBC obviates the distance between its products and young customers and builds the latter’s brand loyalty toward CBC by means of incorporating attractive popular cultural artifacts.

16. CBC Kids as a Pedagogically Learning Place #1 Pedagogy • A method and practice of teaching • What pedagogies can we imagine through The Outlet website? 1. A so-called “protectionist” pedagogy??? • Teaching or training that segregates young people from any negative influences that arise from CBC’s branding strategy? ( Otherwise, they are commercially exploited and simply become passive victims of it.)

17. CBC Kids as a Pedagogically Learning Place #2 1. Protectionist pedagogy cont’d: • Len Masterman: • Is skeptical about young people’s (or students’) technical training (or video production) because it is “imitative,” which consequently becomes “unthinking process” (Buckingham, 2003, p. 124-125). • Argues that it is a form of cultural reproduction through which dominant practices become naturalized and through which the training becomes a kind of “ideological enslavement” that contributes to producing deference and conformity (ibid.). • Asserts that the only alternative is to encourage young people to produce “oppositional” texts that directly challenges, subvert, or deconstruct the conventional norms of mainstream media or the dominant ideologies (ibid.). Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Polity.

18. CBC Kids as a Pedagogically Learning Place #3 2. Pedagogy about the production of “subjectivities” of young people (which I would promote): • Significance: • The Outlet takes place outside formal educational domains or classrooms where traditional relationships of authority between educators and young people are maintained; where mechanical, rationalistic teaching and testing prevail; and where educators understanding of contemporary young people’s experiences with the media tend to be inadequate or outdated. • Importance of recognizing and appreciating young people’s own media experiences, preferences, etc.

19. CBC Kids as a Pedagogically Learning Place #4 2. Pedagogy about the production of “subjectivities” of young people cont’d: • Playful pedagogy: • Building the modalities of interpretation of, engagement with, and investment in the media with which young people grow up (Buckingham, 2003, p. 162) • Media production, in this respect, provides “a space in which [young people] can explore their pleasures and emotional investments in the media in a way that is much more subjective and playful” (ibid.). • Possibility for young people to explore and reflect upon their changing positions in contemporary media culture Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Polity.

20. CBC Kids as a Pedagogically Learning Place #5 • “A theory of pedagogy is ultimately a theory of activity -- or at least of process. It requires an attention to a dynamic relationships between ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ -- or between texts and their reading and use -- that does not simply invest power in one at the expense of other. Pedagogy focuses attention, not just on the learning that arises a result of transmission, induction, training, but also on the leaning learners might do by themselves and in their own right” (Buckingham, 2003, p. 396-397). Buckingham, D., Sefton-Green, J. (2003). Gatta Catch ’em all: Structure, Agency and pedagogy in Children’s Media Culture. Media, Culture, and Society. 25(3): 397-399.