Media Matters in South Africa. Selected Papers Presented at the Conference on Developing Media Education in the 1990s (Durban, South Africa, September 11-13, 1990).

Overview & Synopsis

This report contains a selection of contributed papers and presentations from a conference attended by 270 educators and media workers committed to formulate a vision for media education in South Africa. Pointing out that media education has been variously described in South Africa as visual literacy, mass media studies, teleliteracy, and film studies, or as dealing with educational technology or educational media, the introduction cites a definition of media education as an exploration of contemporary culture alongside more traditional literary texts. It is noted that this definition raises issues for education as a whole, for traditional language study, for media, for communication, and for understanding the world. The 37 selected papers in this collection are presented in seven categories: (1) Why Media Education? (keynote paper by Bob Ferguson); (2) Matters Educational (10 papers on media education and visual literacy); (3) Working Out How Media Works (4 papers on film studies, film technology, and theory); (4) Creating New Possibilities for Media Awareness (9 papers on film and television and 4 on print media); (5) Training and Empowering (2 papers focusing on teachers and 4 focusing on training producers); (6) Media Developing Media Awareness (2 papers); and (7) Afterthoughts (1 paper). Appendices include the Unesco Declaration on Media Education (1982), Recommendations from the Toulouse Colloquy on New Directions in Media Education (1990), and Resolutions and Conclusions of the First National Media Education Conference (Durban, 1990). Most of the papers provide their own bibliographies. (DB)