Teaching about power and empathy in multicultural societies

From Firenze University Press Journal: Media Education

Elizaveta Friesem, Columbia College Chicago

This essay describes the sequence of three activities (from one U.S. university course) that aimed to (1) increase students’ awareness about social injustices, (2) help them develop their empathy to see the complexity of these injustices, and (3) consider ways to change the social system through civic dialogue.

The first activity was designed to explore the dynamics of cultural appropriation using principles of media literacy education and the concept of power.

The second activity complicated the picture by encouraging students to reflect on the importance of empathy. Students discussed how empathy can substitute blame in conversations about cultural appropriation.

The third activity connected empathy to practices of nonviolent communication (developed by Marshall Rosenberg) and Kingian nonviolence.

As a result, students were able to dis-cuss how these principles can be applied to cultural appropriation, especially when media technologies are involved.

The importance of social justice education is well known (Adams & Bell, 2016). Scholars and activists point out that inequalities and imbalances of pow-er persist even in seemingly progressive societies (e.g., DiAngelo, 2018; Godbole et al., 2018). These problems are often seen as connected to the media (Dines et al., 2017). Therefore, media literacy education is believed to offer effective strategies of dealing with social injustices (Funk et al., 2016).

More specifically, critical media literacy aims to challenge the power imbalances by revealing how communication through technology feeds into the unfair social system.Within the frameworks of social justice education and critical media pedagogy, individual disadvantages are seen as determined not by the underprivileged individual’s actions but by larger forces at play. These forces function through social institutions, through the multitude of meanings taken for granted and reinforced by our seemingly benign everyday actions (DiAngelo, 2018). At the same time, according to the theory of hegemony (Marco, 2016) and system justification theory (Jost & Andrews, 2012), the status quo is reinforced through people’s invisible everyday actions, even when these people are less privileged within the system. These interpretations suggest that the shift of the status quo might be achieved when the complexity behind systemic problems is acknowledged.

Analyzing media texts and practices allows educators to bring to the surface the hidden meanings that contribute to the persistence of the status quo (Buckingham, 2019; Hobbs, 2011). In particular, one can ask questions about taken-for-granted values embedded in media texts, platforms, and practices; about techniques that attract attention of audience members and often silence their critical thinking; about a variety of possible interpretations; and about relevant omissions. Accord-ing to some scholars (Friesem, 2018; Hobbs, 2011), media literacy should include self-reflection, a skill that would be especially helpful for exploring the abovementioned complexity of the status quo.Without the addition of self-reflection, important conversations about the media may result in simplistic blame (Sternheimer, 2013). The addition of self-reflection suggests that, same as we want to know how and why media messages created by others are constructed, we should explore our own involvement with mediated communication (Friesem, 2018). Awareness about systemic problems needs to be meaningfully connected to self-awareness (Banaji & Greenwald, 2016), which is a basis of empathy. Martin Luther King Jr. himself spoke on the importance of using empathy to combat even the most serious social flaws. King believed that the purpose of nonviolence is to reach understanding with our opponents because humiliating them would not bring real justice to the world (King, 2010). King drew his inspiration from the pacifist movement of his time, which was rooted in teachings of Mohandas Gandhi. This Indian activist also influenced the approach called Nonviolent Communication (NVC) developed by Marshall Rosenberg (2015). Both King’s and Rosenberg’s strategies emphasize the need to overcome blame and look for ways to connect with people whose actions we want to challenge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/me-9097

Read Full Text: https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/med/article/view/9097