“Does Any Youth Just Get to Tell a Story?” The Possibilities and Challenges of Educating Youth in the Production of Critical Media

• In Event: The Role of Media in Educational Reform Discourses

Abstract

Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in a youth media organization, this paper explores the deeply contextual and cultural character of literacy as it examines the beliefs about the democratic and civic potentials for non-commercial media production and distribution that guide this organization and its work. This paper highlights the different meanings that guide staff and youth participation in producing non-commercial social advocacy media. My research finds that youth perspectives on the utility of their media literacy practices both reflect and contest facets of a market-centered mindset that privileges the commercial, individual, and private. This paper raises questions about the deeper aims and purposes of education and the meaning(s) inherent in the practice of education for social transformation.

Author

• Amy J. Bach, The University of Texas - El Paso