2013 Summit Programme - The Centre for Excellence in Media ...

PARALLEL SESSION 3: Thursday 19th 15.30 - 16.10
TRANSMEDIA:
Media literacy – yesterday’s ‘really important idea’
Richard Wallis
Cantor
9129
abstracts
Although the notion that people should be educated about media has a long
history, rarely has it received much sympathetic attention by UK governments.
Yet in the early years of New Labour, the concept of media literacy emerged
from obscurity, was adopted by policy-makers, and within six years had become
enshrined in law. Media literacy, according to Estelle Morris, the Education
Secretary of the time, was ‘a really really important idea’.
However, by the end of the New Labour era (well before the reactionary curriculum
reforms of the Coalition government that followed), it was clear that media
literacy had not been prioritised in the way that might have been expected.
Moreover, a lack of clarity about its meaning, and its breadth of application,
seemed to have rendered it no longer politically useful. There were also structural
reasons why it was never embraced with any degree of alacrity.
The focus of this paper is to present some of the ways in which the notion of
media literacy was positioned in education policy thinking under New Labour;
whereabouts in the curriculum it may have been found; and ultimately why it
failed to flourish.
Keywords: media literacy, media education, media policy, New Labour,
DfES.
Richard Wallis is a Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University where he
teaches media production. He is an Associate Senior Producer and former
Head of Twofour Learning within the Twofour media group.
Media Education Summit 2013 27