Cross-Media Studies and Interdisciplinary Strategies

The issues, trends and special events of our time are simultaneously reflected in all or several of the mass media. Hence, whether the topic is the arms race, the promotion of a rock star, an advertising campaign, or sexuality and violence in the media, a cross-media analysis is required. The effective application of the key concepts of media depends on the integration of several media. A discussion of violence in the media, for example, might combine knowledge from history, literature, sociology, psychology, communications theory and linguistics.

Creative Activities

As well as being able to "decode" the symbols that dominate their society, students should be able to "encode" them. Just as we must integrate writing with the development of reading skills, we should integrate formal media analysis with media production. Thus, creative or production activities should be an essential component of media studies in the classroom. These creative activities can range from something as short and simple as sequencing a series of photographs to a project as complex as the production of a rock video. Many students will grasp the analytic material only if they have undergone production experiences.

Semiotics

Semiotics, the science of signs, is concerned primarily with how meaning is generated in film, television and other works of art, and how information is encoded in them. Some of the decoding/deconstructing activities in this guide use strategies from semiotics. This approach, which has had considerable influence on European academics and media teachers, is now coming into its own in North America. While it may appear to be intellectually demanding and somewhat abstract, it can yield many rewards for the dedicated media teacher. The following books are useful references in this area: Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972); James Monaco, How to Read a Film (London: Oxford University Press, 1982); Robert Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).

Reading the Media Environment

Each medium of communication has its own biases and ideology. When we interact with a medium of communication, we are influenced as much by the form of the medium as by its message. To explore this notion further, we should ask the following question about each communication medium: What would life be like without this medium? Finding answers to the following questions might also help us to better understand the effects of our interactions with our media of communication:

• How does the medium work (technically, physiologically)?
  
  
• When/how was it discovered/invented?
  
  
• How did its use develop (socially, economically, politically)?
  
  
• Who are its outstanding users? What do they communicate? How?
  
  
• What are the medium's present conventions? How did they develop?
  
  
• What are its present limitations? How are they best overcome?
  
  
• How does the medium affect its users, and how do they affect it?
  
  
• How have other media affected this one?

Further information in this area can be obtained from Marshall McLuhan, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan, City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media (Agincourt, Ont.: Book Society, 1977).

Alternative Points of View

As a counter to the mass media - which are generally conservative, and constitute a major industry in which the profit motive is paramount - teachers can show films and videos that present an alternative vision or a different kind of perception and experience to that of the mainstream media. These should supplement, rather than take the place of, the study of popular models. Many excellent narrative and documentary films by the National Film Board, for example, and by many experimental filmmakers and video artists will challenge students' ways of seeing the world. Of course, good literature and art will do the same. Certainly contemporary culture can be illuminated from many sources: by a small-circulation magazine with a distinctively alternative point of view; by a provocative CBC radio documentary; by a record of a contemporary fusion jazz combo, a small independent rock band, or the work of a performance artist/musician such as Laurie Anderson.