Media Literacy in Cinematic Society

This is going to be my last blog entry for this course. It seems that we jump over a variety of topics for three months in a congested classroom. The media literacy in this class has been like cultural studies. In this criticism about media-saturated society, Denzin says we inhibit a secondhand world that is mediated by cinema, television and calls it ‘cinematic society’. He continues to say that we have no direct access to the world, thus experiencing only its representations. It sounds very postmodern. Fragmented experiences with media constitute a reality in a sense that we make a sense out of the experiences. These experiences may not be congruent with one another and elicit our reflection in fluidity. If so, it is safe to say that media literacy takes another form of cultural studies.

Along with this course, I also taught two lab sessions of an undergraduate course. Teaching this course based on a Do-It-Yourself ethic was very enjoyable and rewarding. In particular, this is my first experience to teach at a university for a long period of time. Meeting fifty students once a week did not give me enough time to get to know individuals. But these students also had the same assignment of weekly blogging and I tried to incorporate most teaching/learning materials into the blog, so by reading their assignments and blog entries, I was able to build each character in the end of the semester. We did not have much time to discuss media related issues unlike this course, but I hope that these students came to understand our culture tangibly. I am happy to have had these two courses in parallel this semester.

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