The Critical Media Literacy Conference calls for proposals on the theme of “Critical Media Literacy in the Age of Neoliberalism”. The proposal submission deadline is: December 15, 2016.
In an era when global media conglomerates increasingly push for policies that expand their influence over world markets, every field of human activity, including education, is seen as a potential market. This shift has widely been attributed to the rise of neoliberalism, which we contend is not simply a way to classify state policies or a new phase of late capitalism but as Wendy Brown (2015) notes, “a governing rationality extending a specific formulation of economic values, practices, and metrics to every dimension of human life” (p. 30). With the accompanying deregulation of commercial media and communication markets and the proliferation of digital communication technologies, the pedagogical potential of media is profound. The pervasiveness of market ideologies, which have largely become ordinary across the dimensions of human life, intensifies the need for critical media literacies that urgently and critically redefine, redirect, and recreate notions of knowledge, truth, and justice. This multidisciplinary conference seeks educational leaders, future teachers, youth, liberal arts educators, media/communication scholars and others interested in understanding of the mass media and its influence on education and our every day lives. Promoting critical media literacy is essential to exposing social inequalities and fostering participatory democracy during the 21st century.
More information: http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/criticalmedialiteracy/