1) Narrative
If I were the instructor of DCNM Class, I would discuss the following narratives for my students:
How Women Are Using Technology to Advance Gender Equality and Peace By Danielle Robertson, Mena Ayazi
The narrative talks about the changes that the digital media has brought to the women in the regions of conflicts like those of Afghanistan or Sudan. It talks about the how promising has media been proven in reducing social barriers for women. It has mentions of examples like a Radio Station with women as its Radio Jockey educating other women in the region about their rights. It also talks about how Twitter and Facebook worked as media in bringing changes in women. The narrative also discusses the threats of technology based on gender. For example
it explains how the Absher was used by men in Saudi Arabia to track women, which can give the students the idea that changes are accompanied by negatives too along with the positives. Later on, it discusses way forward for what efforts have been made to reduce these negatives. This narrative thus can give students a broad overview of Media and the changes on Gender Divide.
2) Paper
Coming to the Paper, which is usually knowledge heavy but which gives something new and exclusive, I came across a paper titled “Environment and the Media” by Gesa Luedecke and Max Boykoff
The paper discusses different roles played by the media, some as Watch dogs, some as Lap dogs and some as Guard dogs. The paper discusses the power of media in policy making, decision making, etc and how media hold perception power among the masses, be it flyers, radio or newspapers, news channels. The recent bend of media towards climate change has brought the attention of whole world to it. It has embedded the roots of climate change in every social, cultural, political and economic dimensions. The paper discusses the origin of the topics like rising CO2 content because of furnaces in the world, increase of global mean temperature, etc. It talks about how can a man bite dog (i.e Human response to the media coverage) and the research on Media Coverage of Climate Change and its public response. Thus the paper can give students altogether a good perspective of media, public reaction and its research.
3) Textbook
The textbook that I would recommend for the students as one of the readings would be Gender and Media – Representing, Producing and Consuming by Tonny Krijnen and Sofie Van Bauwel
Few of the important reasons behind choosing this textbook for a quick experiment are:
1)The textbook discusses about research on topics like ‘Why do we worry about boys playing too much Video game while girls play just as often’, ‘Why do some TV genres have the label masculine (or) feminine’ and other such questions.
2)The main purpose of reading is not to get answers for these questions, but to observe how effective are the answers to these questions and what impact can it create on the reader, thus it is a kind of experiment. What all tools the author uses to present their point of view. The textbook is of hardly two-hundred pages, so a quick and interesting experiment can be performed.
4) Digital Material
In the Digital Material section, I would prefer showing my students a video ‘How are the media covering climate change? – The Listening Post’ by Al Jazeera English.
The video shows how had media covered various events that directly or indirectly have effect on climate change. The video starts with showing of media coverage on United States’ withdrawal from Paris Agreement. Then it shows how all the media attention gets directly focused on climate change. It shows how does differential media reporting on climate shocks affect the gradual changes occurring. The video also addresses about negligence over solutions for climate justice. I think that the video would make understand the students
about the importance of value-education in media coverage.
