Media Democracy Classroom Activity
Two comparative class activities for grades 9 and up.
The activity is designed in done in two parts to demonstrate two different models for a media system: democratic and competitive. The idea to go through each process and compare the method and results. If you do have enough time to conduct both, we suggest focusing on the democratic method to prove that it is possible.
Feel free to modify and adapt the activities to suite your classes needs and style. Send you comments, questions and suggestions to mail@jasondiceman.com I would be more then happy to help you with designing the activity for your class. I also volunteer to help conduct class activities in the Toronto area.
Divide students into groups, (our example assumes a class of 27):
Media companies:
4 - Commercial Media #1: “Mega Media Inc.”
4 - Commercial Media #2: “Everything Communications Inc.”
4 - Commercial Media #3: “Local News Inc.”
4 - Public Broadcaster : “The Classroom Broadcasting Corporation”
1 - Community Media: “Struggling Station Co-op” (choose a critical student with good writing skills)
1 – Advertiser of houses, cars, and technology,
1 – Advertiser of make-up, fashion, fast-food, and candy
1 – Advertiser of vacations, banks and credit cards
7 – Consumers/Workers
Explain to the class that each media company is to produce zines (b/w and/or colour printouts stapled together). Zines are like small and cheap magazines. Talk about how they are just using zines to demonstrate a media system that usually uses much more expensive technology, like TV, radio, and newspapers.
To pay for the printouts the media companies need to get money. The commercial media companies will get all their money from the advertisers. The Public Broadcaster will get part of their money from advertisers and partly from a tax on consumers. The community media will get her/his money from volunteer donations from consumers.
(Use pennies or fake money)
Give advertisers enough money to make around 10 colour prints and 17 b/w prints. Give consumers enough money to make 2 colour prints and 7 b/w prints. You can proportionately add more money for prints if you are willing to give more time to the activity.
Explain that advertisers will compete for “consumer eyeballs”. They will buy advertising space in newsletters trying to get their ads viewed for the most seconds by as many consumers as possible. They will use cutouts from magazines to make their ads.
Each media company should make a zine filled with “entertainment and information” for consumers. They should design the zine with blank ad spaces they will then sell to advertisers. Suggest that they make the magazine very exciting and interesting to attract the most consumer attention, that way they can demand the most money for their advertising space, and make the most money. They can use any pictures and text they find on the Internet, (this simulates syndication).
The Public Broadcasters is not competing to make the most money, but they do want to make good quality zines for the consumers and need to pay for their prints. They can take some content from the web, but they have a mandate of making some original content for the class.
The community media person has to produce all their content themselves and has a mandate to serve the class community, and cannot sell advertising space.
While the media companies are producing their zines, consumers should gamble on competitive games (this simulates the market economy).
Each of the advertisers should have short meeting with each of the media companies (except the community media person) and arrange to buy space from each of them. Advertisers should try to guess which zines will be the most popular with consumers and give less money to less popular zines. Advertisers should also budget their money to last through multiple rounds of zine production.
At this point, you the teacher are the government/media regulator (e.g. CRTC, FCC, OffCom, etc). You approve the content of zines and make sure nothing slanderous or profane is published. You should also collect a small tax from each consumer to pay for the public broadcasters expenses.
The community media person should also be given a few moments to beg for donations from consumers to pay for her/his zine.
One at a time consumers will view zines by running into the room and browsing through any zines that attracts his/her interest.
All the advertisers and one member from each media company will watch the viewer very carefully and silently note the amount of time each consumer views each pages which ever zines they look at. Another member from each media companies is allowed to talk about their zines to persuade consumers to view their zine.
Using the numbers from advertisers and media companies chart approx how many total seconds were spent viewing each page.
Discuss: What kind of content was in each zine and which pages got viewed the most?
Repeat the entire production, advertising, regulation, tax, donations, viewing and charting process to mature the system and recognize patterns. Three generations may be enough, but more generations will more clearly establish common media patterns and provide opportunity for discussing common media issues. You may also want to allow students to change roles every few generations.
When the advertisers run out of money, tell the consumers that they must now become workers and go out in the field and gather stones. When they return, acting as a CEO, give the workers some money for their stones, (this maybe a good opportunity to demonstrate and discuss income inequality).
Then remind the consumers of all the stuff they need for their modern lifestyle, and ask them to buy all the advertisers products. Use the stones they gathered to represent each of the consumer products they buy. Give some of this money to the advertisers and continue the process.
Over generations, give students opportunities to alter the system.
· let commercial media companies know that they can work together if they think they can make more money;
· let advertisers and media companies make other kinds of deals, like incorporating the product into the content.
· Give more or less taxes to the public broadcasting corporation,
· Invite advertisers to start putting their ads in other places then in the media, like in the playground, the cafeteria, the classroom walls and even on each other.
· Allow consumers to spend more time viewing the media.
After several generations, pattern should arise that allow you can use to discuss a variety of media issues:
· The use of recognizable celebrities
· Sexy, dramatic, funny, violent, and other kinds of spectacular content
· The trend towards visuals more then text.
· The different kind of stories discussed by each media company, especially in relation to consumer products, classroom politics, useful information and entertainment.
· The trend towards simple and concise messages.
· The saturation of advertising
· Media concentration (i.e. the merging of companies)
[This activity does deal with subscription fees, non-advertising sponsorship deals.]
Explain to the students that a newsletter is like a small newspaper that provides information about an organization to its members. Hand out examples of real newsletters if possible (e.g. from companies, unions or associations.) In this case, the organization is the class and the students are the members.
Explain that their newsletter should contain:
· A few main longer articles
· Several short articles
· Possibly images either by themselves or with articles.
The articles should discuss issues that are important and useful for the class and avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.
Also make sure to stress that no one person or group has ownership over an idea. Discuss the idea of collaboration rather competition and group ownership.
· Role of media
· Give suggestions examples
· More context of importance
· Advocate...
Collect students into small groups of 3-6. Ask them to elect a secretary to take notes. Instruct them to brainstorm on what topics they think the newsletter should discuss.
After 15 minutes, have one student from each group read their list of topics to the class. Make a large chart of all the topics at the front so all can see. Make sure not to note the names or give credit to specific students. Stress group authorship. Group duplicates and very similar topics as a single topic. Give each topic a number and a brief discussion to better clarify its meaning.
Ask each student to think about all the topics and to write down on a small piece of paper the numbers of six topics they think are the most important, useful, constructive for the class.
Have another student (not the secretary) from each of the original groups collect and total the number of votes each topic received within their group.
Have one student from each group read out their total results and write them down on the large chart. Add up the totals.
Using the popularity of each topic as a guide, allocate an appropriate length for each topic (e.g. the most popular topic could get 500 words, while the least most popular only get 100.)
Brainstorm in their small groups
List all the points at the front.
Volunteer/lottery Writers to Topics
The request students to volunteer to write articles.
Lengthy articles should have more authors (i.e. authorship teams).
Images and also be suggested in this process.
Two or three students should also volunteer to be responsible for layout and printing.
All students should be asked to donate what they can; minimum $0.25, maximum $2 to pay for printing.
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Activity: Producing Commercial Newsletters
Activity: Producing Traditional Public Service Newsletters