Media Education and the End of the Critical Consumer

In this article, David Buckingham addresses the challenges media educators face in dealing with postmodern media culture. Buckingham begins by outlining the nature of contemporary developments in children’s media environments and how these relate to broader changes in their social status. He argues that these developments represent a fundamental challenge to the modernist project of media education, with its emphasis on the production of critical consumers. Buckingham then moves on to draw on his own empirical studies of media classrooms in the United Kingdom. He deals first with the issue of identity formation and the implications of current changes for teaching about representation. Second, he considers the role of play, particularly in relation to students’ media production, and the potential limitations of a more ludic, or playful, approach. Buckingham then addresses the difficulties posed by students’ use of parody, both ideologically and in terms of learning. Finally, he considers a more comprehensively postmodern approach to media pedagogy. Ultimately, Buckingham suggests that the modernist project cannot simply be abandoned by media educators, but that it does need to be comprehensively reconsidered in light of contemporary developments.