In my courses, it is all about the message.
The Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University is an integrated school of communication, and has been since 1989. The program supports the notion that communication professionals need not only to be competent writers, speakers and technicians, but also effective communicators who are well-versed in the context, theoretical grounding and history of their work. Students in the Elliott School take a series of core classes that stress public speaking, writing and visual literacy skills, as well as research strategy, theory, history and law. I hold a doctorate in mass communication, and I worked as a print journalist and a freelance Web designer before I went back to graduate school. My research focuses on the role of media in building community, and I tend to take a long-term view of that role. I am an historian as well as a new-media expert.
I teach courses in visual technologies, media studies, history and theory, and writing. In all my classes, I emphasize the same thing: Messages we encounter in the media landscape are both shaped by cultural forces and interpreted by cultural forces, and individual gatekeepers — my students, the future communication professionals — can make a difference in the way messages are sent, received and interpreted. Our students will help to shape the future media landscape, and it is important that they understand their roles in that process.
In the core visual literacy class, we talk about images. We discuss the social, cultural, historical, ethical and technical aspects of a variety of image types, ranging from typography to digital media. We review a variety of images, and we talk about how they’re constructed by the image makers and interpreted by the image viewers. We discuss stereotyping and the power images have to emblazon meaning in the minds of viewers.
As a part of this discussion, we view a variety of images that could be interpreted as “stereotypical” of the LGBT community — and other groups — and we discuss how they are constructed. We also discuss how the images can be interpreted. Invariably, the discussion gets heated, as some students share what they “know” based only on what they have gleaned from media images, while others counter with their lived experiences. We discuss a core truth: For some, media images provide the first and only experiences many of these students have ever had — that they know of — with people who do not come from the same background or share the same experiences they do. For some, this means that what they know about the LGBT community comes through mediated imagery.
We address the challenges that fact provides to future media professionals. This means, I tell them, that we must be more vigilant about the way we shape messages. We, as media professionals, need to recognize our inherent biases and try to construct messages that fairly represent every person or group that we encounter. And we need to recognize, as media consumers, that the images we see every day may not accurately reflect the people within them.
It’s probably idealistic. Many students get it, but a few do not. It is always worth the effort, though.
