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Consequences and coincidences: A case study of experimental play in media literacy

As opposed to conventional accounts that discuss youth community projects in general terms, the distinctive focus of this article is its detailed discussion of creative media literacy in action by providing an in-depth analysis of a specific youth media project that Sobers led involving children from three Bristol schools. Using a simple device of playing Consequences - with each school producing a different section of a film - the project enabled the participants to explore the varying possibilities of story choice and narrative structure, regarding themselves as film-makers using film as a communicative and aesthetic medium. The resulting composite film was screened at Watershed Cinema in Bristol (November 2004) and the article discusses the ways in which audiences read films, creating their own connections and interpretations and the dynamic exchange between producers and audiences. The article argues for the importance of promoting media literacy in an era when digital technologies allow greater participation in media production, demonstrating the ways in which it enables enhanced learning in non-arts subjects and encourages writing skills and sensitivity to registers of spoken language. It contributed to an emerging area of research focusing specifically on informal community and educational media activities and their consequences, promoting its centrality within the broader frameworks of community research and ethnographic enquiry.

The article has been widely cited, including: Rössler et.al., ‘Children’s Film in Europe: A Literature Review’, German Children’s Media Foundation, (2009) p.127; Martens, ‘Evaluating Media Literacy Education: Concepts, Theories and Future Directions’ in The National Association for Media Literacy Education Journal, vol. 2, no.1 (2010), p.10.; Ashley et al., ‘Developing a News Media Literacy Scale’, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 2:1 (2013).