Libro

MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
Strategies, Debates and Good Practices
Keywords: Identity, intercultural dialogue, media literacy, participatory culture,
pop culture
Videos
NEW YORK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8
BANGKOK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MPYZGWZF9E
New Port http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRqns2xtTYc&feature=related
Newark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U7kuqow3gg&feature=related
Section I. Media Literacy and the Study of Culture
Before proceeding with the analysis of our case studies and showing the
potential of media literacy to foster intercultural dialogue via the products of
media and pop culture, it is important to acknowledge the frameworks used for
this project. Lankshear and McLaren (1993) define critical media literacy as one
“directed at understanding the on going social struggles over the signs of
culture and over the definition of social reality –over what is considered
legitimate and preferred meaning at any given historical moment” (p. 424). To
speak of dialogue between cultures one must first understand the meaning of
culture and of dialogue and investigate the power relationships invested in intercultural
communications. This paper maintains that critical media literacy is one
strategy to learn about intercultural communications and understand the shared
signs that make up the meaning systems of our culture.
We speak of ‘meaning systems of culture’ in that meaning and culture are not
biological and must not be recognized as fixed sets of indisputable rules valid
throughout time. As Stuart Hall maintains (1997), “meaning does not inhere in
things, in the world. It is constructed, produced. It is the result of a signifying
practice –a practice that produces meaning, that makes meaning mean” (p.24).
In line with Hall, culture is envisioned in this paper as a hybrid space of social
struggles where multiple culture genres clash and meaning is continually
negotiated and created. Signifying practices and systems of representations
construct the cultures we live in. Sharing and exchanging cultural codes across
countries through mediated forms of communication, appropriating and
understanding them collectively is what allows intercultural communication to
take place.
In this paper we will explore the codes exported from United States to Thailand
and shared cross-culturally by Thai people. As Bill Nichols suggests in
discussing the work of semiotician Roland Barthes, we must envision film and
media productions as “art objects and indexes of culture at the same time”
(p.478). The study of popular culture blends the pleasurable experience of
reading and making art, and learning about the signs that build up our cultures.
Applying media literacy strategies to the process allows us to critically analyse
how the narratives, systems of representations and soundtracks of media
productions reiterate or shape and transform cultural conventions. Digging
within and socially reading texts and images, allows for a political, historical and
anthropological investigation of the “map of meanings” in cultures.
44