Examine the Impact of Representation in Digital Media
Once relegated to the sidelines of core curricula, digital media is becoming increasingly essential to education. From oral to text-based communication, from broadcast to webcasts, it has done much to shape the way we learn, live, and imagine our futures. In its role in shaping identity — both individual and collective — digital media has become one of the most powerful educational forces in contemporary culture. In our ever-expanding, ubiquitous multi-media driven society, culturally-relevant digital media presents a strategic opportunity for educators to engage in anti-oppressive education. It may be used to both amplify positive online interactions, and to address exploitative representations of certain groups.
All too often, stereotypical representations of people are propagated in the media that we consume. Take for example, the limited and stereotypical representations of Black and Indigenous girls circulated through social media. These representations constrain not only the world Black and Indigenous girls envision for themselves, but also the resultant perceptions and actions of members of mainstream society, whose primary exposure to Black and Indigenous girls is through these media channels. How then, can we as educators, change similarly oppressive narratives?
Dates
July 13-17, 2020
Neville Scarfe Building | Map
1007-2125 Main Mall, UBC Vancouver
Learning Objectives
This Institute takes a deeply critical approach to culturally-relevant media literacy, toward the goal of participant empowerment.
- Students will critically examine the impact of representation in digital media, reflecting upon the learning possibilities created by the digital media that we consume and create.
- Through the examination and creation of media artifacts, students will recognize and produce anti-oppressive, inclusive messaging across media platforms, in a variety of educational contexts.
- Viewing digital media as an agent of transformation, students will consider their approach to digital media, to consider the myriad of ways culturally-relevant media and production may be used to increase empathy and understanding in their own learning environments.
Instructor
An educator and scholar with over 15 years of experience, teaching students from kindergarten to post-secondary, Dr. Kisha McPherson teaches courses focused primarily on social justice, equity in education, media, and cultural studies. She joins the MET program as a full-time lecturer in 2020.
She completed her PhD in education at York University in Toronto in 2019. Maintaining her passion for social justice, Dr. Kisha McPherson’s dissertation focused on the impact of education policy, teachers, media, and contemporary representations of Blackness on the identity and education of Black girls in the Greater Toronto Area. She is interested in developing anti-oppressive pedagogies to support teaching and learning, and her research is aimed at integrating strategies for using technology to advance social justice education.
Dr. Kisha McPherson has extensive experience in academic and community-based research. Her most recent publication focuses on Black girl’s activist networks and the use of technology to resist negative representations of Black girls in the media.