Skip to main content

Bournemouth University

BU Research Blog

Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University

  • Home
  • RDS Team
    • Faculty-Facing Staff
    • Funding Development Team
    • Project Delivery and Research Governance Teams
    • Research Excellence Team
  • Clinical Governance @ BU
  • Research Ethics @ BU
  • REF 2028
    • BU REF 2021 Code of Practice
    • Declaration of Staff Circumstances
    • BU’s Unit of Assessment Teams
    • REF FAQs
    • Archive – REF 2014
      • BU REF 2014 Code of Practice
      • REF 2014 Frequently Asked Questions
        • REF 2014 Overview
        • Staff eligibility
        • Mock REF 2014 (REF preparation) exercises at BU
        • REF 2014 Assessment of outputs
        • REF 2014 Staff selection
        • REF 2014 Equality and diversity
  • Impact
    • Partnerships & collaborations
    • Working with businesses
      • Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF)
    • Communicating your research
    • Influencing policy makers
    • Public engagement
      • Quick guide to public engagement
    • Student engagement
      • Stages of engagement
      • Case study: Sean Beer
      • Case study: James Gavin
      • Case study: Anna Feigenbaum
  • Research Toolkit
  • Research Lifecycle
  • Policy
  • PGR
    • The Doctoral College Team

September 13, 2016

Why media literacy is a zombie policy

BU research, open access, Public engagement, Publishing Pengpeng

on behalf of Richard Wallis, Faculty of Media & Communication, Bournemouth University.

wallis-blog

There’s something reminiscent of the zombie in the UK’s policy for education about media.  To the surprise of many, media literacy is enshrined in law (Communications Act 2003), and Ofcom has a statutory responsibility to ‘promote’ it.  But media literacy as imagined by the policy makers who put it into statute, is long dead.  The stalking corpse that is occasionally identified as such, is likely to be one of a rag-bag of policy priorities that have, from time to time, inhabited and reanimated the cadaver.

This is the conclusion that David Buckingham (Loughborough University) and I have come to after an extensive examination of media literacy policy in the UK since the end of the last century.  Having previously described its policy’s journey into legislation, this new article  explores what has happened since, looking particularly at how Ofcom came to define it, and ultimately, how the elasticity of this term came to be its undoing.  We argue that over time, media literacy has been progressively reduced in scope, and in the process, its broader educative purpose has become marginalized.  Today, if not altogether dead, the policy is governed by entirely different priorities to those imagined at its birth – the gloomy fate of the undead.

Richard Wallis & David Buckingham (2016): Media literacy: the UK’s undead cultural policy, International Journal of Cultural Policy, DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2016.1229314.

Article available at :http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/24724/

 

Tags: open access

Related Posts

  • BU Briefing – Media literacy: The UK’s undead cultural policyNovember 23, 2017
  • Tessa Jowell’s farsighted vision for media literacy was ahead of its timeMay 20, 2018
  • CEMP report for LSE Media Policy blog on Global Media Literacy AllianceJuly 21, 2016
  • Media Literacy vs Fake News – recommendations from CEMP researchJuly 22, 2019

BU staff can login below:

Other services

Don’t miss a post!

Subscribe for the BU Research Digest, delivered freshly every day.


 

Recent posts

BU research Funding opportunities EU
  • SPARC Seminar: Cities of (physical) culture 25/09/23September 22, 2023
  • Forecasting UK Carbon Emissions: The Next 5 to 10 YearsSeptember 22, 2023
  • 'Thank you' written in gold with gold confetti around Postdoc Appreciation Week: Anastasia VayonaSeptember 22, 2023
  • Conversation article: Bidenomics – why it’s more likely to win the 2024 election than many people thinkSeptember 22, 2023
  • We need policy and evidence to help change TV work cultureSeptember 21, 2023
  • 'Thank you' written in gold with gold confetti around Postdoc Appreciation Week: Dr Aralisa SheddenSeptember 21, 2023
  • Wellcome trust ECR awardSeptember 10, 2023
  • Time for Something New?September 7, 2023
  • British Academy Small Grants WorkshopSeptember 1, 2023
  • Development fund from the British Academy ECRNAugust 2, 2023
  • BA Seed funding call NOW OPENAugust 2, 2023
  • The call for the next round of BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants will be opening soon.July 28, 2023
  • BU policy update for the w/e 22nd September 2023September 21, 2023
  • HE policy update – summer catch up September 2023September 18, 2023
  • Association to Horizon Europe – Agreement in Principle ReachedSeptember 7, 2023
  • Webinar – ERC grants 2024September 5, 2023
  • BU FoodMAPP reseachers host partner secondment from Institut Lyfe, LyonAugust 14, 2023
  • Two papers based on ERASMUS+ exchangeAugust 8, 2023

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics

AHRC Brexit BRIAN BU research clinical research CMMPH collaboration collaborative research conference congratulations Dr. Pramod Regmi Edwin-blog-post ESRC EU event Events funding funding opportunities Fusion Fusion Investment Fund Health horizon 2020 HSC impact innovation knowledge exchange media midwifery Nepal nhs NIHR open access Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen publication public engagement publishing ref research Research Councils research professional RKE development framework RKEDF social sciences training widening participation

RSS Research Information Network

  • Physical Sciences Case studies: information use and discovery
  • Information handling in collaborative research: an exploration of five case studies
  • Information literacy monitoring and evaluation
  • Data centres: their use, value and impact
  • Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications

RSS UKRI

Browse all our categories
  • Awarded & submitted bids
  • BRIAN
  • BU Challenges
  • BU research
  • BU2025
  • Business Engagement
  • Centre for Excellence in Learning
  • Clinical Governance
  • Coffee Morning
  • conferences
  • COVID-19
  • data management
  • Delicious links
  • Doctoral College
  • ECR Network
  • EPSRC
  • ESRC
  • EU
  • Events
  • Featured
  • Featured academics
  • Festival of Learning
  • Friday profile
  • Funding opportunities
  • Fusion
  • Fusion Investment Fund
  • Fusion themes
  • Global engagement
  • Grants Academy
  • Guidance
  • hate crime
  • HE-BCI
  • HEIF
  • HSS Our 9 Research Entities
  • humanities
  • Impact
  • Industry collaboration
  • Info Days
  • innovation
  • international
  • Knowledge Exchange
  • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
  • Knowledge Transfer
  • Knowledge Transfer Partnership
  • mrc
  • News from the PVC
  • nhs
  • NHS
  • open accecss
  • open access
  • parliament
  • Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
  • PG research
  • policy
  • Post-award
  • Postgraduate Research
  • pre-award
  • Public engagement
  • Publishing
  • R & KE Operations
  • REF Subjects
  • Research assessment
  • Research Centres
  • Research communication
  • Research Concordat
  • Research Ethics
  • Research Ethics Panels
  • research governance
  • Research Integritiy
  • research integrity
  • research methods
  • Research news
  • research opportunities
  • research staff
  • Research Supervision
  • Research themes
  • Research Training
  • RKE development framework
  • staff profile pages
  • Strategic Investment Areas
  • Student Engagement
  • student research
  • the conversation
  • Training
  • UKRI
  • Uncategorized
  • Vitae
  • Women's Academic Network
  • writing
  • Twitter

© Bournemouth University 2023. All rights reserved.

  • Charitable status
  • Website privacy & cookies
  • Copyright and terms of use