Making Visible the Invisible: The Role of Editing in Media Analysis and Language Arts

Journal of Media Literacy Education, Dec 2010

By John Golden, Published on 09/10/13

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=jmle

Making Visible the Invisible: The Role of Editing in Media Analysis and Language Arts

The National Association for Media Literacy Education's Journal of Media Literacy Education Voices from the Field: Making Visible the Invisible: The Role of Editing in Media Analysis and Language Arts John Golden 0 1 0 Portland Public Schools , Portland, OR , USA 1 Media Education Lab. Copyright and Fair Use. Temple University - Introduction we need to look at media products is to look closely Editing is probably the most important ….no, at their construction and ask questions about how they that’s not right. Too boring for an opening. How about have been edited in order to create particular effects. this... In order to understand the role of editing in me- Most media editing is benign, like the revising of my dia analysis, we must …nope, no good either. Let’s see. first paragraph or the cutting out of bloopers, but someCome on, you can do this. In any media product, edit- times the addition of an interview of a particular celebriing is like the thief wiping down his fingerprints before ty or the insertion of a specific song can carry important leaving the scene of the crime. Better, but a little too messages intended to influence our consumer, political, harsh? Analyzing media without understanding editing and personal decision making. We have to be able to is a bit like analyzing a novel without understanding the ask ourselves the following questions about any media alphabet. Yeah, perfect! product: why am I seeing this, what is included in what I If all goes well with publication, the editors of am seeing, what is excluded, and what are the effects of this journal will have eliminated any sign of my strug- these choices? It is unnecessary, according to the NAMgle to write the opening line of the article, and only the LE Core Principles of Media Literacy Education, to ask last complete sentence in the paragraph above will ap- IF a media product has a bias (trust me, it does), but the pear in the final draft. The reader, then, is left with the better question to consider is, “WHAT the substance, impression of my easy eloquence and (hopefully) de- source, and significance of a bias might be.” cides to continue reading the rest of the piece because Because it is considered a field of study and not a they’ve concluded I may have something interesting to discipline, media literacy does not always seem to have say. But how did you, the reader, come to this conclu- a permanent home anywhere in the curriculum. Sepasion? And would you have felt the same if not for the rate stand-alone media literacy courses are rare, and its editing? What if you’d seen how I struggled? key concepts tend to be spread throughout a variety of According to the core principles put forward disciplines: Health, Social Studies, Language Arts, Vidby the National Association for Media Literacy Educa- eo Production, Journalism, Fine Arts, and so on. tion (NAMLE), media literacy “requires active inquiry I am a high school English teacher, and in my career, and critical thinking about the messages we receive and I have found that the concept that “all media are concreate.” Too often, we do not actively consider how structed” and all of the NAMLE Core Principles infuse specific media messages are constructed and for what perfectly in everything I am expected to do with my purposes. There are creators behind the production Language Arts standards. Students use similar deconof newspaper stories, music videos, movies, and yes, struction strategies for taking apart a print advertiseeven articles in journals about media literacy. And the ment as they do with a short story by Hawthorne. In creators of these media products have points of view, fact, my main goals as an English teacher are to give my values and purposes that might not be so apparent on students the power to analyze critically a wide variety the surface. So, one of the most important ways that of types of text (print, visual, audio, digital, and others) and to create texts that effectively communicate their Part One: Getting Started points of view, which sounds a whole lot like what me- Step One: dia literacy educators seek to do. The first place I ask students to begin consider The classroom-tested activities that follow ad- ing the role of editing is right in my own classroom. dress these overlapping NAMLE Core Principles and One of my favorite activities is to give a digital camera Language Arts goals by making students aware of the to one student and ask him or her to take pictures for the effect of the often-invisible editing and construction whole period. The student should take as many pictures that occurs. When they understand these effects, stu- as possible of me, other students, objects around the dents can become active and critical consumers of the room, etc. At first, the other students and I are clearly media messages that they too often receive only pas- posing for the camera, but after a few minutes and a sively. They need the power not only to read and inter- hund (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=jmle

John Golden. Making Visible the Invisible: The Role of Editing in Media Analysis and Language Arts, Journal of Media Literacy Education, 2010, pp. 6, Volume 2, Issue 2,