Pause for Thought: Media Literacy in an Age of Incessant Change

我们生活在一个快速技术变革的时代。在我们日常生活中留下印记的平台、设备、应用程序和其他媒体形式似乎以令人眼花缭乱的速度出现，然后以令人眼花缭乱的速度过时。这给我们今天研究和教授媒体的人带来了特别的问题。尽管我们可能会努力跟上这种变化的步伐，但我们的理论概念似乎总是落后于媒体和通信技术的最新发展，以及由这些发展产生的日常实践。当我们无法准确预测两年后哪些媒体形式将占主导地位，也无法预测这些媒体将伴随的社会和文化变化时，我们如何制定一套全面的媒体教育课程？这些挑战不仅限于媒体研究教育，而且象征着更广泛的社会和文化变革。对日益匆忙的日常生活节奏的压力和不安是现代生活的长期特征，但在数字、网络媒体系统的加速逻辑几乎渗透到我们体验的方方面面、以市场为导向的效率和生产力口号不仅决定我们的劳动，而且决定我们的社交和休闲时间的时候，压力和不安变得尤为尖锐。不断加快的技术发展速度影响着我们所有人，其结果是，媒体素养--尤其是我们个人如何在超媒体世界的波动中驾驭--不仅仅是一个仅限于大学机构设置的问题，而是一个更广泛的公众关注的问题。在这种背景下，我们认为，与其被当代媒体快节奏的周期所阻碍，媒体研究实际上可以帮助理解和挑战这种对当代性的痴迷。该项目的目标是创建一个跨学科网络，主要由主要在英国的学者、作家、艺术家、媒体从业者和行业专业人员组成，他们投资于媒体素养的未来，他们可能既受益于并有助于制定适合我们快速变化的媒体格局的分析、创意实践和教学策略。在这样做时，我们希望突出这样一个事实，即媒体研究涉及多个学科，并适用于广泛的行业。媒体教育不仅仅发生在教室里，而是在一个被媒体技术饱和的世界里，是生活的日常特征。我们希望从学术和非学术的一系列观点和方法中，拓宽可以被认为是‘媒体研究’的范围。我们相信，媒体研究--不再局限于广播媒体的传统边界，而是关注当今我们周围的所有设备、平台、应用、网络和基础设施--能够为我们这个以技术为中介的世界提供一个独特的视角，基于人文学科反思的、关键的资源。通过两个研讨会和一个学术研讨会，我们的网络将讨论、制定和发布新的战略，以谈判和抵制在这个高速社会中普遍面临的压力、焦虑和障碍，产生一个对话，认真对待批评理论和批评教育学在反思媒体素养方面的持续重要性。我们认为这个网络是一个机会，可以激发对媒体理论、媒体实践(包括但不限于各种形式的艺术实践)和媒体研究方法的持续重要性的挑衅性、创造性的建议，提高人们对媒体研究和更广泛的人文学科为理解高速社会而持有的关键工具的认识，并促进不同参与者之间的意外相遇。

We live in an age of rapid technological change. The platforms, devices, apps, and other media forms that leave a mark on our everyday lives seem to emerge and then obsolesce with dizzying rapidity. This poses particular problems for those of us who study and teach media today. As hard as we might try to keep pace with such shifts, our theoretical concepts will always seem to 'lag' behind recent developments in media and communications technologies, as well as the everyday practices that arise from such developments. How are we to formulate a comprehensive curriculum of media education, when we cannot accurately foretell what media forms will predominate in two years' time and have no chance of predicting the social and cultural changes that will accompany these media?Such challenges are not confined to media studies education, but are emblematic of much broader social and cultural transformations. Stress and unease over the increasingly hurried tempo of everyday life are longstanding features of modern existence, but they have become especially acute at a time when the accelerated logic of digital, networked media systems works its way into almost every aspect of our experience, and the market-oriented watchwords of efficiency and productivity determine not only our labour, but our social and leisure time. The ever-greater pace of technological development affects all of us, and the consequence of this is that media literacy - and in particular, the question of how we as individuals can navigate the fluctuations of our hyper-mediated world - is not an issue merely confined to the institutional setting of the university, but constitutes a broader public concern. In this context, we believe that rather than being hampered by the fast-paced cycles of contemporary media, media studies can actually help understand and challenge this obsession with contemporaneity.The goal of this project is to create an interdisciplinary network of principally UK-based scholars, writers, artists, media practitioners, and industry professionals who are invested in the future of media literacy and who might both benefit from and contribute to the formulation of modes of analysis, creative practices, and teaching strategies appropriate for our rapidly shifting media landscape. In doing this, we wish to foreground the fact that media studies is implicated across numerous disciplines and applicable to a wide range of industries. Media education does not occur solely within the classroom, but is an everyday feature of life in a world saturated by media technologies. We hope to broaden the scope of what might be considered 'media studies', drawing from a range of viewpoints and approaches both academic and non-academic. We believe that media studies - which is no longer limited to the traditional boundaries of broadcast media, but instead concerns the full gamut of devices, platforms, apps, networks, and infrastructures that surround us today - is able to provide a unique perspective on our technologically-mediated world, grounded in the reflective, critical resources of the humanities. Through two workshops and an academic symposium, our network will discuss, formulate, and publish nascent strategies for negotiating and resisting the pressures, anxieties, and hindrances that are commonly faced in this high-speed society, producing a dialogue that takes seriously the continued importance of critical theory and critical pedagogy in reflecting upon media literacy. We see this network as an opportunity to inspire provocative, creative proposals responding to the continuing importance of media theory, media practice (including, but not limited to, various forms of artistic practice), and media research methods, to raise awareness of the critical tools that media studies, and the humanities more generally, hold for understanding the high-speed society, and to facilitate unexpected encounters between diverse participants.