Connecting Cultures

In the current hypermedia age, the borders of information are increasingly indistinguishable. There now exist few, if any, limits to how far, fast, and wide messages may travel. Across the globe--from the growth of community internet in rural Europe and the Middle East, (1) to the expansion of cell phone technology in India (2) and Africa, our media-saturated world is shrinking. At the same time, the convergence of media platforms has enabled access to information on a global scale. New media technologies have allowed for wide and unfettered consumption of information in many parts of the world. (3) Such progress has brought the world closer together. From recent public health scares, to the economic recession, and continuing efforts to combat climate change, we can no longer ignore the need to understand the role of information in defining issues globally. Beyond specific issues, the global expansion of media has allowed for new understandings of culture. Nations that are increasingly dependent on one another for economic, political, and social stability must, often cultivate public awareness of such relationships through media. This entails an understanding of cultures and communities far removed from physical and geographic familiarity. The current global media environment as a result, will continue to have significant effects on how individuals, societies, and nations view and interact with one another. Within this new landscape exists the opportunity for a new type of global citizenship: one that hinges on preparing future citizens for lives of inclusive and active participation in global dialogue. Writes UNESCO's Benito Opertti: The challenge is not just to provide criteria and instruments so the child or youth can critically face off to the media, but also to understand that the media contextualize and often determine the ways that people exercise their rights culturally, politically, economically, and socially. (4) What are the best practices for enabling new understanding of global culture through media? In the present, cultivating media literacy education for global audiences must embrace much needed educational responses to an increasingly borderless and open media environment. It is no longer an option to ignore the media's increasingly central role in framing identity. Media literacy can enable future generations to recognize both the power and potential of media to bridge cultural and ideological divides. DEVELOPING MEDIA LITERACY FOR GLOBAL AUDIENCES Media literacy, commonly defined in the United States as the ability to "access, evaluate, analyze, and produce all types of communication," (5) has been expanding worldwide. Across all levels of education, media literacy is increasingly seen as a core component in preparing the future public for active and engaged citizenship. While media literacy programs continue to grow within nations, few initiatives have collectively pursued curricular efforts that address media literacy on a global scale. Global media literacy, as developed in the context of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, not only seeks to enhance students' media analysis skills, but also their critical understanding of media's larger political, cultural, and ideological implications. (6) In this way, the Academy's approach to media literacy is based not on specific content, but rather on the application of content to specific cultural contexts. By shifting the focus from content to context, the dialogue initiated during the three-week program in Salzburg, Austria, approaches media from a cultural perspective. In a global setting finding common ways to discuss media is challenging because of its many diverse voices. The experiences of the Salzburg Academy have shown that attempting to analyze a specific message--whether about health, conflict, economy, or politics-- in a global context fails if it is not understood first in terms of where it originated, who created it, in what context it was created, and what values are associated with the message. …