The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Concepts in Media Pedagogy

Here’s a paper that I wrote together with an Austrian colleague, Theo Hug as a chapter inMediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences (K.Lundby, ed.). It explores the definition and practices of “media literacy” in the context of recent developments in the sociology and theory of media in Europe. Central to these developments is the idea that changing communication media are absolutely foundational to culture and education. They cannot be separated from even the most basic understandings of epistemology and cognition. Following McLuhan (right), this paper argues that media (whether print, television or the “mixed media” of the Web and Internet) set the parameters for the institution of schooling, the dynamics of individual development and even the character of knowledge itself. Special thanks go to Michael Molenda (Indiana U.) for his permission to use his systems diagram of the “student academic learning model” in the paper.