Democracy in Theory and Practice

Rationale

"You might peek into your kid's room, and your kid is on MySpace and they're talking on the phone and they're texting and IMing and there's music coming from the iPod — basically, you're seeing kids who are so technologically adept that parents don't quite know what to do about it." Larry D. Rosen

"Google has utterly infiltrated our culture. It is a ubiquitous brand, used as a noun and a verb everywhere from adolescent conversations to scripts for Sex and the City" Siva Vaidhyanathan

To what extent does the Internet threaten or promote political and commercial freedoms? What does uncensored gossips on such social network sites like MySpace, YouTube, or Face Book have to do with democratic practices? How are global electronic technologies allowing the voice of youth to influence global, social, economic and political developments? Will the digital divide prevent some of my economical disadvantages students from having a voice in our new digital democracy? These are some of the questions I posed after I attended a presentation by Siva Viadyanthan during a University Pennsylvania Humanities "Forum on Origins". Vaidhyanathan a media scholar and cultural critic is involved in some fascinating work on what influence Google and global electronic technologies have on reading, writing, publishing as well as social and political practices. While attending this forum, in February 2008, I scanned the audience and noticed very few people of color, and got the sense, that although the presentation was talking about the role of open source and the freedom of information, the audience was pretty closed to privileged academics and their associates. Although I attended racially isolated public schools while growing up and I am African American like most the students, by virtue of my affiliation with the Teacher Institute of Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania and my educational background, I am tenuously a part of this privileged class, that often seems far removed from many of my students. As I left this forum, I asked myself, how I could help make topics about Google, electronic technologies and democratic practices relevant to my sixth grade students.

Media literacy is a critical component of making education practical for the information saturated and wired generation of students I teach. Vanessa Domine, a media education expert notes that:

Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, produce and communicate using a variety of media technologies. It implies a broad view of communication technology to include computers, the Internet, T.V. video, film, books, photographs, radio, audio tapes video games, poster, billboards, and even clothing. ²

One overarching concern for teachers trying to integrate media literacy into the social studies core curriculum is how to explore the contradictions between democracy and consumer culture? According to Cornell West in Democracy Matters, market driven media leads many young people to think that life is basically about materialism and social status. ³ Providing students a lens to explore media technologies' democratic uses and its underlying economic modalities is critical to improving students' media literacy skills.

Using media literacy to explore free speech and democratic practices will allow my students to engage in discourse about topics that resonates with their personal experiences. Many of my students have MySpace or Face Book pages and informally talk about "what's hot" and "what's not" on other students' pages. Cyber bullying is one of the disconcerting issues that have arisen as a result of students starting vicious rumors online. Therefore, it becomes critical that students understand rights and responsibilities of using media technologies. The following questions were modified from a standard media literacy curriculum which could serve as inquiry points regarding media technologies' social, economic and political implications: ⁴

• Who created the Internet and who sponsors its?
• What is the purpose of Internet?
• Who is the targeted audience and how are websites tailored to their audiences?
• What are the different methods used on MySpace and Google to inform, persuade,
• and entertain?
• What messages are communicated or implied about certain people, places, events
• and lifestyles, over various media technologies?
• How credible is information on search engines?
• How do rumors and gossip circulate on the social networking sites?
• Who is responsible for the actions of children on the Internet?

Google and Democracy

Having students explore the role of media technologies play in democratic forums and commercial enterprises will lead them to understand the effect Goggle has in our global place of ideas and commodities. The plan is not to vilify Google as evil and commodity driven, but to come up with rubrics to appreciate its searching capacity and democratic nature. By asking students to study, analyze search engines, and create arguments for and against using them, it will help them become critical consumers of information.

Many of my students rely more heavily on commercial search engines than libraries - our librarian was cut from our school budget- when conducting research. Betinna Fabos, a media studies scholar, illustrates how many educators are teaching students to evaluate websites as follows:

By turning students into librarians, they (educators) surmise, they will enable them (students) to weed out "untruthful" web content on a page by page basis. Typical teaching go like this: government sites (e.g.,www.nih.gov) tend to be objective; commercial sites (e.g. obesity.com) tend to want to sell you something in addition to offering often helpful information; homebuilt websites authored by individual people, especially those identified by a tilde (~) (e.g. www.uni.edu/~faboo), tend to be factually misleading or incredibly biased. Pages with grammatical errors, no dates, and strong opinions are especially suspected. ⁵

Free Speech and its Cyber Implications for Students

The First amendments states "that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights could not imagine how peer-to-peer communications and uncensored gossip would play out in our media driven world today. When the founding fathers were establishing the Bill of Rights, certain groups were not even taken into consideration, namely women, non-white men, and children. Fortunately, our society has evolved and is more inclusive. However, the question of students' rights needs to be carefully considered when planning lessons that involve inquiry on the role free speech plays in the cyber world. According to David Hudson, a first amendment research attorney, students do not forsake their constitutional rights when they enter classrooms. The US Supreme Court has recognized that "students in school as well as out of school are 'persons' under our Constitution." ⁷ This means that my students have the right to express themselves in a variety of ways. However, my students do not have unlimited First Amendments rights. Often my students do not understand that they do not have the same level of rights as their parents or teachers. School safety and education of students take precedent over students' free speech.

Many of my students are turning to the internet to express themselves in variety of ways. The US Supreme Court has said that "students generally have broad freedom to express themselves on the Internet on their own time, using their own off-campus computers". ⁸ Some students at my school have been suspended for using computers at school to send vulgar messages, downloading pornographic sites as well as for cyber bullying conducted off school grounds. Part of the challenge of this unit is not to sensationalize the negative uses of computers and internet, but to offer students ways of coping with violations both in school and outside of school. An educator who appeared on the Frontline program "Growing Up Online", offers a simple slogan to teach younger students how to deal with inappropriate internet uses, "Stop, Block and Tell". ⁹ My students need ways to combat the misuse of cyber speech and develop more empathy when using the Internet and social networking sites.

Social Networks, Internet Safety and Polarization

Using media literacy to explore social networks will allow students to engage in academic discourse about topics that resonate with their personal experiences. Having discourse about Internet safety and privacy is often overlooked in many social studies classrooms. But many of my students and their parents are concerned about being targets of Internet predators. In March 2006, federal prosecutors in Connecticut charged two men with using MySpace to contact youths with whom they later had sexual contact. Following Congressional hearings about online sexual predators, MySpace hired a safety czar to improve the site's protections for young users. Twenty middle school students in California were suspended after participating in a MySpace group where one student allegedly threatened to kill another and made anti-Semitic remarks. In Kansas, authorities arrested five teenagers after one of the suspects used MySpace to outline plans for a Columbine-like attack on the boys' school. ¹⁰ Through engaging in deeper inquiry about social networks and its complication I believe students will be able to make more effective decisions on using social networking sites and media technologies as well as using their voices to address issues of online social justice.

Social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook provide a forum for my students to meet and communicate with students of similar interests and background. My students are increasingly using media technologies to shape their identities and expand their social networks. However, this creates the risk of polarizing my students who already attend racially and economically isolated schools. Case Sustein, a Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago notes some implications of group polarization on the Internet as follows:

The phenomenon of group polarization has conspicuous importance to the current communications market, where groups with distinctive identities increasingly engage in within-group discussion. If the public is balkanized, and if different groups design their own preferred communications packages, the consequence will be further balkanization, as group members move one another toward more extreme points in line with their initial tendencies. At the same time, different deliberating groups, each consisting of like-minded people, will be driven increasingly far apart, simply because most of their discussions are with one another. ¹¹

The Internet is now providing a forum where my students extend the "cool kids or geeks sections" in the cafeteria, beyond the school walls into their virtual world. This further isolation can present interesting challenges in schools. Students can form cyber gangs or outcast groups which prevent students from crossing social boundaries. In some ways cyber polarization creates more permanence than school cafeteria cliques. When students go home and turn on their computers and see hurtful sayings or images on their social networking pages, the home which may have been a refuge is not even safe grounds. The "sticks and stones" follow you home.

Interestingly, many young people have found ways to create multiple identities in the real and virtual world. Some youth use the internet to develop coping skills and create new personas. A female teenager, featured on "Growing Up On Line", who was teased and isolated at her school, used social networking sites to create a new "gothic diva" personality. Her online postings alarmed her school administrators and parents, but got her acceptance from a community of similar "gothic" teens online which in turned resulted in her peers at school seeing her in a more favorable light. ¹² My challenge as a classroom teacher is to encourage my students to mix-up their internet and media technology exposure. I therefore, will encourage my students to view websites that are different from their typical online media exposure. Furthermore, I should help my students understand the positive and negative impact social networks, group identity and social isolation has at school, home and in virtual communities.

I plan to use media technologies to engage my students in inquiry and conversations about free speech and safe internet practices while simultaneously teaching reading, writing and critical thinking skills. Ultimately using media literacy should improve my students' abilities to negotiate the standard reading, writing and social studies curricula mandates. Pennsylvania State Academic Assessment standards for 6th grade are provided in appendix # 1.