ABSTRACT

What can be more important for high school students than the study of popular media such as TV, film, and photography? For students are submerged in a sea of media images and representations that frame, to a growing extent, their conceptions of self and society. Yet schooling in general remains silent with regard to student media experiences. Media theorist Todd Gitlin writes (1985) that “the presence of the media is such that we don't reflect on the meanings or study them; we swim in them We swim in its world even if we don't believe in it” (333). Within this context, the important question to ask is not, What are the media doing to adolescents? but rather, What are adolescents doing with the media? Indeed, research indicates that most students have an active rather than a passive relationship with the media. Far from accepting what is offered to them wholesale, most make discriminating judgments, selecting those elements that speak to them and rejecting those that do not.