From Classical Rhetoric to Citizen Journalist

In my engagement with our discipline,[1] social justice has always been the foundation stone, the defining raison d'être; but teaching and research haven’t rendered it sufficiently operational, not at the truth-telling, gut level. The resulting dissonance has pushed for change, even if glacial, stretching over a long career in education and literacy. About a decade ago, my own business card featured “liberatory education” (with a bow to Paulo Freire), but the gap between his call to praxis and my actual practice was almost mocking.

Going another twenty years back, I remember the resonant amen that involuntarily rose up when I read “The teaching of literature is a political act,”[2] because that declaration affirms life worth living. To a lover of narrative, Leslie Marmon Silko also struck the chord when she opened Ceremony: “I’ll tell you something about stories: They’re not just entertainment.” But these compelling assertions also heighten frustration because most classroom acts (such as the analysis of text and even performance of text) offered at best a limited approximation to real-life acts of liberation theology.

My service in residential treatment centers was on target but begged the question: how does this penetrate the totality of work? Surely Freire lived with more integrity in his enactment of literacy which connected land reform with peasants learning to read, even when his success meant political exile.

Liberatory education has translated into many academic projects (e.g., Giroux; Shor; Apple),[3] but such scholarly accomplishment doesn't resolve the tension for me. In addition to physical property (land, capital, and economic investments), equity demands attention to knowledge production and ownership. Freire modeled this by insisting that the peasant ask him an equal number of questions that he could not answer. Literacy education requires a more equitable distribution of authority/authorship than afforded in traditional, hegemonic practice. Yet even knowing that doesn’t translate us into liberatory praxis. We’re too imprisoned in a print-culture, educational system (which celebrates copyright, high volume publication, and individual authorship with close scrutiny for plagiarism).

Under this stress, to some extent I chose to separate from this profession that perpetuates inequities in knowledge (e.g., "merit" based on top-down conference presentation and high-volume refereed publication). Although I won’t elaborate it here, an option came from Jungian psychology which believes that an individual’s movement in consciousness connects with changes in collective consciousness. These changes can be accomplished outside the professional structure and I can view them as liberatory, but this was not entirely satisfactory. Something more was being conceived.

In recent years, while I continued struggling with literacy as conscientização (critical consciousness), a separate but compelling storyline was taking form. Surprisingly, digital media started taking up more and more space. And now, converging on the bridge, the light of their connection breaks out so “duh:” Citizen journalism. The term even gets elaborated in Wikipedia which notes that almost anyone wanting to take on social responsibility can take action through the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet.

I believe this construct of citizen journalism offers discourse a revolution (although ethical participation still requires commitment to social justice and desire to expand consciousness). For example, Jay Rosen revitalizes the construct of “audience” because blogs, podcasts, and digital media restore to the people what media magnates had misappropriated in their control of newspapers, radio, and television.[4] For this revolution to lead to positive change, educators must shift paradigms to a truly collaborative model and act as models of peace and justice. For learners who are already immersed in technology, if not addicted to it, powerful teaching is needed even more than before. Although social justice is certainly not the default theme for digital media, opportunities of access and collaborative engagement offer exciting alternatives to the dominant force.

Citizen journalism popped onto my screen, not through the power brokers in education or media, but through TweetDeck with an invitation to http://salaamgarage.com/. SalaamGarage is “a digital storytelling, citizen journalism organization that partners with International NGOs and local non-profits. Participants (amateur and professional photographers, writers, videographers, etc.) connect with international NGOs, create and share independent media projects that raise awareness and cause positive change in their online and offline social communities.” The SalamGarage blog shows examples and invites the reader to travel to India, Guatemala, and other places with an agenda that often means composing a social justice media project.[5]

Although not branded as such, citizen journalism now appears frequently on my radar. It’s trackable in the script for tonight's presidential address on education.[6] It’s connectable through corporate support for humanitarian projects.[7] Youth Noise and Link TV invite media production involving social justice with projects involving poverty, hunger, and health issues. One of my favorites shows a woman forced to leave teaching (due to the Taliban) and developing a beekeeping industry in Afganistan.[8]

The theme of citizen journalism and social justice can be developed in cutting-edge digital media work at the boundary of public education. Leadership has been provided by the MacArthur Foundation, often in collaboration with National Writing Project. Featured projects are happening in Philadelphia and in Chicago. A number of other projects are happening around the world.[9] The connection of literacy with digital media clearly marks the place for our writing project.

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[1] Naming the discipline remains elusive but the field has been named Rhetoric, English, Communication, Language Arts, etc.

[2] A.N. Applebee, Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English: A History, NCTE, 1974.

[3] An interesting website gives citations for these authors: http://florycanto.net/links/liberatoryeducation/libedbooklist.html

[4] http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SBQDeib1qw&feature=player_embedded

The 2010 World Humanitarian Day project is a collaborative film shot in over 40 countries in under 9 weeks, on a shoestring budget – with the goal of showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010. It was filmed by humanitarian staff and freelance filmmakers from around the globe (over 50 contributors in total) with all time donated.

[6] http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/13/remarks-president-barack-obama-prepared-delivery-back-school-speech “And the strength and character of this country have always come from our ability to recognize ourselves in one another, no matter who we are, or where we come from, what we look like, or what abilities or disabilities we have. I was reminded of that idea the other day when I read a letter from Tamerria Robinson, an 11-year old girl in Georgia. She told me about how hard she works, and about all the community service she does with her brother.”

[7] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/foundationnotes/Pages/melinda-gates-100902-view-change.aspx Melinda Gates, “To me, the stories I hear underscore the fact that, no matter how different people’s circumstances, we’re all linked by a common humanity. When I meet mothers, it’s clear to me that we all have the same goals: for our children to grow up healthy, and then get an education, so they can realize their full potential.

At the Gates Foundation, we think a lot about telling stories. One of our partners, LinkTV, is creating ViewChange.org, a multimedia website that uses stories to show how investments in global health and development are making real differences in real peoples’ lives. The website is scheduled to go live in November.

This summer, the ViewChange team launched a contest urging filmmakers to submit short videos about progress toward the UN’s Millennium Development Goals – global commitments to dramatically decrease poverty, hunger, and disease in the developing world. These films will be used to raise awareness, motivate action, and accelerate the world-wide movement for global equity.”

[8] http://www.linktv.org/youthnoise

[9] Links to MacArthur projects are shown first and then a variety of other activities that might merit exploration.

http://mediaeducationlab.com/powerful-voices-kids-program

Renee Hobbs at Temple U. The mission of the Powerful Voices for Kids program is to strengthen children's abilities to think for themselves, communicate effectively using language and technology tools, and use their powerful voices to contribute to the quality of life in their families, their schools, their communities, and the world. The program consists of these components:

• a staff development program for educators;
• a month-long summer enrichment program for children;
• a program for gifted & talented students;
• measures of student learning and program effectiveness;
• research/assessment tools to measure media literacy learning;
• in-school and afterschool mentoring.
• parent and community outreach.

http://iremix.org/

Digital Youth Network in Chicago. The DYN model focuses heavily on the sixth- to eighth-grade experience through explicit connections to school-based curriculum, interest-based clubs that require youth to use new media literacies in order to participate, and remix competitions and “open shop” times (both virtual and place-based) where youth are supported in using new media literacies to explore their own questions and push their imaginations.

http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/

Carnegie-Knight Institutions (including UMCP) for Journalism work:

http://content.hks.harvard.edu/journalistsresource/ig/

The goal of the instructional component of this website is to provide journalism educators with material that can help their students to develop knowledge-based journalism skills. The student assignments are designed to inform and deepen the reporting of policy issues by connecting it to scholarly policy-based research.

Great topics for reporting:

http://content.hks.harvard.edu/journalistsresource/pa/environment/

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/148/engage-01sj-biennial.html?partner=homepage_newsletter

Creating Digital Worlds of the Future By: Michael Silverberg September 1, 2010

Under the theme "Build Your Own World," more than 100 artists are creating fanciful universes in the hopes of prompting civic engagement at this arts-and-tech biennial in San Jose. We peeked at six intriguing projects.

http://www.youthmediareporter.org/2010/08/global_kids_ucreate_project_ex.html

Global Kids (New York, NY), a strength-based youth development organization with over two decades of experience working with young people and technology, constantly seeks new ways to explore and answer these questions with diverse groups of youth. This article describes a pilot project that linked youth detention centers with community libraries in two cities, to work specifically with incarcerated youth and new learning technologies.

http://www.meetmeatthecorner.org/about

MEET ME AT THE CORNER, Virtual Field Trips for Kids, is a dynamic, interactive site, which encourages individual expression and participation through video submissions from children worldwide. Through these video pod casts we hope to create a community of children, who learn the art of self-expression and storytelling through video.

In the beginning, the video pod casts highlighted the people, events and history of New York City. As this site grows through children’s submissions, we hope to highlight the people and events of other towns, cities and nations. To date we have video podcasts from California, Colorado, North Carolina, Texas, and Maryland. We are always open to the people and events in your corner of the world.

http://www.space2cre8.com/

Glynda Hull, UCBerkely. Most recently, with colleagues from India, South Africa, Norway, Australia, and Singapore, she has developed a social networking site, space2cre8.info, which links youth around the world and fosters the exchange of digital artifacts.

http://newlearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/student-centered-learning/online-learning-for-disaffected-youth.html Notschool.net and http://www.comein-project.eu/index.php

http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net/index.html

http://www.aberth.com/blog/

Digital storytelling, participatory media and easing access to mass media for public expression from Wales BBC.

Revision & Digital Media

(Note: please see http://vimeo.com/14125482 for the digital project that is the topic of this blog.)

Bonnie Kaplan—“bless ‘er ‘art” interjects a voice, probably echoing from my mother’s culture, as I begin to tell of my meeting with Bonnie some months ago. I’m a bit surprised at that voice and those words but guess they want to affirm at the outset Bonnie’s good heart in relation to what happened then and since then. Bonnie had wanted to tell me something for a few weeks, but she’d waited for a time when she could read the dynamics of face-to-face interaction. I’d sent her my latest digital creation, which she’d acknowledged; but the claims of our growing friendship were urging her to go further. I like to imagine that that impulse comes from more than the personal, and I believe our interaction and collaboration inheres in the responsibility toward professionalism and even in the ethic of social justice that inspires my commitment (and that of many others, including, I believe, Bonnie) to the work of the National Writing Project, particularly that involving digital media.

So Bonnie had waited until we were talking face to face at the NWP 2010 Spring Meeting in DC to respond more fully to my digital story* “On Knowing.” I’d mostly thought I was done with that project, but something had lingered from the composing, nagging, something unarticulated that I couldn’t quite push away. I was telling myself that I felt pretty good about it, but I detected in Bonnie’s uncharacteristic restraint that there was some feedback I hadn’t yet heard. While we’d exchanged comments on each other’s work a few times, we’d stayed mostly in the polite zone. Now, bless her heart, Bonnie wanted to risk telling me something that I really needed to hear, that is, if my expedition in digital media was going to move ahead.

So in the hotel lobby after the Friday morning sessions, Bonnie said something that synopsized in my memory as: “You’re a deep thinker, Joseph; and that music you put on for background stinks.” She mentioned other particulars, both positive and negative; but that music part grabbed my attention and joined up with that internal nagging that I’d tried to ignore.

Although the critique hurt a little, I respected Bonnie’s judgment in general, and in particular concerning music. After all, she cared enough to be studying classical guitar. After our conversation, she caught her train back to NYC and I left wondering about it all. Other priorities intervened, but the need to revise “On Knowing” persisted. Any still moment might be filled with a question like: In addition to convenience and copyright-free, why had I pasted that frolicky number on top of my voice-over? The stink of a cover-up was in the air.

In time, the wonderful Summer Institute closed, and the space seemed sufficient for revision. I forced myself to listen to the work and dove deeper into the motivations inherent in the process of its creation. Insights began to open offering the gift of revision in its genuine sense. First, the music just plain didn’t fit as background; it interfered just as Bonnie accurately pinpointed. The words and the music were discordant in tone, and consequently meaning was getting lost. I began to see that this was sabotaging my whole project. And I suspected, the damage probably wasn’t limited to one project because that kind of shadowy action tends to permeate in different degrees until it is brought into conscious thought and action.

Most of us don’t like to hear our own voice when we begin to put voice over or to use video in which we’re speaking. When Bonnie told me straight up that the music was getting in the way of what my digital media potentially offered, of what my distinctive voice had to say, I was put on the road to realize that I was hiding behind a screen of pleasant noise in the genre of shopping mall muzak or disneypark lala. Ouch. That’s something I want to revise.

In my long engagement with rhetoric, I’d struggled often with style. At first, I’d demanded that style never dominate “content.” Over time, I admitted the falseness of the dichotomy, and I began to discern the shrill ugly tone in my insistence. I came to realize that I agreed with the classical premise I’d been taught in grad school: “style is the (hu)man.” Put into contemporary language, any separation of style and content fractures integrity. And I believe that the power and right of rhetoric vests in integrity.

The discordance, then, between the music (as one aspect of style) and the words (as one aspect of the human) increased in significance. Why would I make digital media that way? I came up with two possible reasons beyond the superficial not liking of the sound of my voice: 1) I was somewhat embarrassed with the serious nature of what I was presenting and feared that I'd sound too much like a sermon; and 2) I wanted to cover over or distract from issues with organization. What if the piece wasn’t really coherent? What about the lack of unity? Were subparts effectively subordinated? Was I too preachy?

After taking some time to absorb this discovery which involved conceptual revisioning, I went back to the piece and managed to reconstruct it, to revise in practice. Although more could be done, I focused on getting rid of the soundtrack. I added brief lead-in and closing from what I’d recorded of a good friend playing guitar. But for most of the seven minutes, I chose to leave my bare voice out there. It seems that’s what has to be done if I’m really going to get further in this digital media work. If it’s received as too preachy, I hope some friends will help me learn to tell it differently. Similarly with the organizational difficulties, I’m going to have to put it out there and be willing to learn, to revise, and to welcome more constructive criticism.

As evident in this account, I learned more and more about revision. I already knew that it was much more than the reductionist editing routines; but I hadn’t appreciated so fully the variety of more substantive acts of revision: to see again, to re-see after being seen, to make a new vision. The resources of digital media open doors to the value of re-visioning through this capacity to see again and again, to be seen by others, and to make changes that offer improved visions built on increased insight and consciousness.

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* Although “digital story” is the term typically used for what we’re doing (with Photostory, imovie, movie maker, Pinnacle Studio, and Final Cut), I don’t think the process nor the product fits sufficiently with “story.” I have great affection and respect for “story,” but the form of what I’m doing in digital media production spreads out, octopus-like, outside the perimeters and expectations of narrative.

Also, the dismissive attitude that many academics turn toward “story” doesn’t do justice to the work or the form of digital media. We could redefine the scope of narrative, along the lines of David Boje, but I prefer the open search for another emergent construct, like Gee’s “DMAL (digital media and learning).

Convergence Culture

I just finished reading Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old & New Media Collide (2006; updated 2008). As one who entered digital media late and from classical rhetoric, this book worked extremely well for playing catch-up, especially about the rich texture of participatory culture. Baffled by the appeal of contemporary media (Survivor; American Idol: and the Matrix), I eagerly soaked up his interpretation of these which explained them in the context of "large scale collaborative knowledge communities" that were made possible with the web. His elaboration of trans-media storytelling further brokered the transmutation of what I value in rhetoric and narrative into the contemporary media with open access not only to spectatorship but also to production and to community. I already liked Harry Potter but came to appreciate even more its relationship to how "kids are mapping out new strategies for negotiating around and through globalization, intellectual property struggles, and media conglomeration."

Perhaps most importantly, Jenkins avoids the polarizing tendencies typically found around media activity and criticism. His conclusion and afterword reach toward the best of what has compelled me toward a lifetime of engagement with rhetoric and symbolic action. As suggested above, his depth accounting conveys the resurrection of hope and the potential for democratic activity through the grassroots engagement in media production and publishing about both personal and social matters. But he also shows the limitations of this ground-up dimension. Although he doesn't label it as such, the king archetype is needed to balance the everyman/woman/child. The final answer is not to abolish mass media because it potentially offers a public space needed for a world vision (to which Jenkins references Habermas). This balance connects with his title: convergence culture.

The bulk of the book, however, focuses on the popular voice, sometimes referred to as the "fan." The significance of Jenkins' work can be seen in this paragraph from his conclusion (p. 267). In it, he also venerates the timeless essential place of story.
"Fans reject the idea of a definitive version produced, authorized, and regulated by some media conglomerate. Instead, fans envision a world where all of us can participate in the creation and circulation of central cultural myths. Here, the right to participte in the culture is assumed to be 'the freedom we have allowed outselves,' not a privilege granted by a benevolent company, not something they are prepared to barter away for better sound files or free Web hosting. Fans also reject the studio's assumption that intellectual property is a 'limited good,' to be tightly controlled lest it dilute its value. Instead, they embrace an understanding of intellectual property as 'shareware,' something that accrues value as it moves across different contexts, gets retold in various ways, attracts multiple audiences, and opens itself up to a proliferation of alternative meanings."

I don't believe our children automatically develop into "fans" of the quality Jenkins just named, and I don't believe their unguided engagement in Web 2.0 makes us into persons characterized by these values either. Transformed teaching and teachers are vitally needed to meet the opportunity provided by the convergence culture. Jenkins' book calls us toward an "achievable utopia." Supporting teachers to be able to play their role in this demands a comparable act of accomplishment. That's what I believe we are about in our projects around Digital Media and Learning and in our work with the National Writing Project.

the description

This is my first attempt at blogging. Like most of these technologies, the way to get it seems to be mostly about diving in. With this one, I went back to my mostly abandoned website (dochorsetales.net) which is still up but hasn't been added to for a couple of years. I had a section called "third space" which came from persons like Homi Bhabha who seems to be reworking the notion of the public sphere where we can work toward social truth, toward the advancement of collective consciousness. These abstractions float around too uselessly but how else do we try to move the almost mindless cruelties and the almost blind subservience to dictatorships of arrogance, literal-minded conservatism, and liberal naivite? So this is the "description" to start with:

Maybe this is the "third space" that overlaps what is too personal to share and what is too public to explore the edge of consciousness? I want to dissolve boundaries separating spheres of literacy consciousness, dressage, and poetry-narrative; that’s why DocHorseTales.