(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
LOCAL YOUTH, GLOBAL EVENT: EXAMINING THE CELEBRATIONS AND
CONTROVERSIES OF THE VANCOUVER 2010 WINTER OLYMPICS THROUGH
THE LENS OF MEDIA EDUCATION
WENDY CHEN
Independent Scholar, Media Literacy Specialist
MA in Media, Culture and Communication – New York University
Abstract
Despite the pervasiveness of popular culture in our everyday lives, formal educational
institutions have yet to prepare students to critically respond to the media-saturated environments
they inhabit. The integration of media education into contemporary classroom curricula is crucial
for developing young people’s capacity to address the power of the media industries, especially
when they encounter direct representations of their own communities. This paper describes the
implementation of a photojournalism project at a secondary school in Vancouver, Canada, as
participants challenged the way in which news agencies, entertainment outlets, and advertising
companies branded their hometown as a world-class city and tourist attraction during the
Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Among the glossy images of Vancouver presented by the
mainstream media to the international community, very few competing messages, marginalized
voices, or diverse perspectives were able to emerge through the visual bombardment. This
project provided a series of capacity-building workshops which culminated in participants
producing their own images, revealing how a highly commercialized and globalized media event
is experienced locally and documenting their realities to be shared within the surrounding
communities. As an outcome, participants learned to creatively engage in social commentary
through digital photography, while enhancing their production theory and visual literacy skills. It
becomes evident that media education, made relevant to the lives and experiences of learners,
can have a profound impact on students’ ability to both question and create media depictions of
people, places, and events.
Introduction
________________________________________________
As the world watched the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics unfold, a group of Vancouver
secondary school students participated in a photojournalism project to explore issues of identity,
representation, and community in the midst of this international attention and the visual
bombardment of seductive city images. This project makes a case for studying the Olympics and
other global media events through the lens of media education, prioritizing the ways in which
506