Deconstructing Popular Identities Through Critical Media Literacy

• In Event: Popular Media Culture, Hip-Hop, and Mexican Corridos: Honoring Young People’s Multiple Literacies

Abstract

In a society consumed by ever-increasing media and technology, it is imperative that public schools provide its students with the skills and tools necessary to analyze, interpret, deconstruct, and construct popular media images and messages. As Alim (2011) points out, “... school culture has been eclipsed in kids’ lives by media culture” (p. 238-239). Consequently, it is the role of educators to engage with popular media in the classroom, not simply for the sake of student motivation, but for the purpose of supporting students in meaningful literacy practices. This paper explores the use of critical media literacy (Kellner & Share, 2007) in a public New York high school English elective class entitled “Hip-Hop Literature and Culture,” investigating students’ written and verbal responses to the use of hip-hop texts in order to make sense of how students understand and respond to the media that surrounds them, and how academic engagement with such media impacts their understandings of self, culture, and society.
This qualitative case study was conducted over the course of five months. As a teacher-researcher, I collected data through audio recording of class discussions and students’ written reflections. Thematic coding of the data revealed that the participants were continuously undergoing the process of identity construction and performance, that they were at varying levels of awareness of this process, and that their identity performance and understanding of self was either directly or indirectly connected to the ways in which they positioned themselves within popular culture.
Since “we learn a lot about the world and ourselves in dialogue with others,” (Hanley, p. 540) young people need supportive, dialogic spaces to examine the interaction between popular media, society, and individual identity. The use of critical media literacy in an academic context works to support students in the process of identity negotiation, while opening up possibilities for new and multi-layered identities. Young people, whether consciously or not, actively rely on popular culture to make sense of their world (Dimitriadis, 2009), and they construct their identities in order to fit within it. As a result, it is imperative that school curriculum reflects the significance of popular culture in students’ lives and creates safe spaces for students to interrogate, challenge, and deconstruct the meanings, messages, and representations reflected within popular media.

Author

• Lauren Kelly, Teachers College, Columbia University