Mediating Culture: Media Literacy and Cultural Awareness The Representation of Race and Ethnicity in Maya and Miguel

Abstract

Building on theories of adolescent learning, including cognitive, personal, social, and moral development, this chapter considers how using media literacy techniques to analyze a children’s television program can create wide-awake, active learners while dissecting media messages. By analyzing children’s television for its portrayal of race and ethnicity, this chapter will explore the role media play in children's understanding of people and cultures outside of their own. A textual analysis of episodes of Maya & Miguel, the chapter describes the depiction of several cultures found represented on the program including White, Asian, African, Dominican, and Mexican and how race, ethnicity, and culture is framed in the television program.

Some theories suggest that television is a primary tool in the socialization of children. Children are attracted to the animation in cartoons, the colors, the movement and the easy-to-follow simplicity of the dialogue. Given the impressionable nature of children, it is possible that they begin to act out the biased nature of the cartoons they watch. Thus, considering their vulnerability, information literacy is relevant to discerning media messages. In this way, information literacy converges with media literacy and visual literacy. Guiding children to interrogate what they view is critically important especially when they are at an age where they can be easily influenced by misinformation or dominant messages. Additionally, the volume of information is steadily increasing in the 21st century as are the modes for accessing, creating and manipulating information. Thus, this work will demonstrate how promoting participatory learning by objectively viewing media and exercising reflective thinking will be important components of children’s education in this millennium.

Citation

Kinsky, E.S. and Smith, D.C. (2013), "Mediating Culture: Media Literacy and Cultural Awareness The Representation of Race and Ethnicity in Maya and Miguel ", Developing People’s Information Capabilities: Fostering Information Literacy in Educational, Workplace and Community Contexts (Library and Information Science, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1876-0562(2013)0000008010