An accessible introduction to understanding the current media environment and the culture it contains, this book provides an indispensable guide to dynamic media literacy in the digital environment.
Katherine G. Fry draws from philosophies of technology and communication, from media ecology, critical cultural theory, and critical pedagogy to explain the dimensions of media environments. Fry introduces an essential dynamic media environment model that can be used as a framework for understanding global social challenges. The model extends media literacy education and practice by de-centering media messages, instead explaining media as environments – as cultures created by and within our dominant form of communication. Exploring progressive education philosophies that advocate inclusion, independence, empathy, and critical thinking toward problem-solving in a rapidly changing world, this book includes media literacy examples, global case studies, exercises, and learning tools to facilitate learning the full scope of the current media environment. This book explores how the digital communication environment operates on many dimensions so that we, as citizens, as players within the shifting digital environment, can act to shape it.
Essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies, media literacy, and media education, as well as other disciplines where media is used as a lens to examine issues within society.
Table of Contents:
1. Expanding the Scope of Media Literacy 2. Media as Environments 3. Content in the Dynamic Media Environment 4. Context in the Dynamic Media Environment 5. Power in the Dynamic Media Environment 6. Paradigms in the Dynamic Media Environment 7. Media Literacy Pedagogy Today 8. Applying the Dynamic Media Environment Model
About the Author :
Katherine G. Fry is a professor in the Department of Television, Radio & Emerging Media at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Constructing the Heartland: Television News and Natural Disaster (2003) as well as numerous other works in media literacy and media ecology. Fry co-founded the New York City-based media literacy non-profit organization, The LAMP (www.thelamp.org). A Fulbright recipient to Turkey, she has also lectured internationally.
Review :
In Dynamic Media Environments, Katherine G. Fry makes a compelling case for media literacy pedagogies and practices that embrace mediated environments and media ecologies. This text breaks important ground in evoking power, place and paradigms to bring critical media literacy practices into focus in formal and informal learning spaces. Fry's model reflects the media realities that guide daily life in local and global contexts and offers a series of media environment approaches to media education practice. This text is foundational for media studies, communication and media literacy educators around the world. - Paul Mihailidis, Professor, Civic Media & Journalism, Emerson College, Boston, USA
In Dynamic Media Environments, Katherine G. Fry, one of our leading media literacy scholars and practitioners, provides an important new approach to media education. By contextualizing media literacy through a synthesis with media ecology, the study of media as environments, she delivers a much-needed and long-awaited breakthrough, one that is nothing short of revolutionary. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with understanding media, and especially anyone concerned with teaching about media in the 21st century. - Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, USA
