Week 11 - Article Review: Dafna Lemish Children Media – Global Perspective

This weeks’ article we review a book by Dafna Lemish. The article breaks down the book chapter by chapter and walks us through Dafna’s views on Children and Media. The Book seems to explore the impact of media on children and relies that the development of a child can’t be looked at independently of their social environment. It also explores how the changes in media provides an issue for many phases of life such as education, morals, and political issues.

After reading through what was mostly a summary of Dafna’s book in the article I came away with a few takeaways.

I would agree with Dafna on most statement such as patterns within children’s environment dictate their interaction with media, and that with media take place more and more of reading we must pay closer attention to screen content to assure children are consuming appropriate and beneficial information.

As media continues to develop we as educators need to take a more active role in being an educational source of information for students. Not only does this mean content but this refers to the critical thinking abilities we must teach students so as they consume media content. Students must be able to determine if they agree or disagree with the content of media as they develop into young adults and grow throughout their lives.

The one issue I had with Dafna’s book was the summary of chapter 8 as it refers to policy of broad casting. While I understand the importance of driving more “quality” content to children it also presents an even bigger social problem to me. Who determines the “quality” of media? This seems extremely troubling as whoever controls what is shown, played, shared, and ultimately consumed this can drastically skew the viewpoints of students. To you can’t implement policies on what you can and can’t broadcast in media or you start to hinder or infringe upon a particular groups viewpoints or message altimetry affecting their freedom of speech. This cannot be allowed to happen… it’s our right to be able to voice our opinions. The bigger this we as educators need to do is provide students with the tools and skill sets to determine what is “quality” media to them and let them consume it but also provide them with the perspective that other people my disagree with your view and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re right or wrong. We need children and students to be able to understand opposing perspectives and have a functional dialog to help advance society.