Welcome to Literacies, a four-part audio series where we talk to experts about why media, data, information, and financial literacies are critical skill sets for modern life. Each installment will be a fast-paced and engaging dive into what it means, how it impacts you, and things you can do to skill up.
Ep. 1, Media LiteracyAir Date: October 22, 2024, 12 noon CST
In this episode, Katherine Hicks takes over as guest host while the series' regular host, lisa Hooper, participates in the conversation with Dr. Muira McCammon. According to The National Association for Media Literacy Education, Media Literacy is the "ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication (Media Literacy Defined)." In our conversation, we hone in specifically on the theme of Analyze. In fact, this episode's launch on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, is timed to coincide with the daily theme of Analyze during International Media Literacy Week. See what else is going at Tulane during Media Literacy Week on our event webpage.
Literacies, a 4-part Audio Series
Episode 1: Media Literacy
Aired 10/22/2024
[musical introduction]
Katherine Hicks: You're listening to literacies, conversations about literacies that can change your life. In this four-part series, we're talking to experts about why media, data, information, and financial literacies are critical skill sets for modern life.
We'll give you a quick dive into what it means, how it impacts you, and things that you can do to skill up. This episode is all about media literacy. To talk about media literacy, I'm joined by two guests, Dr Muira McCammon and librarian Lisa Hooper.
Muira McCammon: My name is Muira McCammon, and I am a professor of platform studies at Tulane’s Department of Communication. I also hold a courtesy appointment with the Law School here, and I teach classes that relate to emerging technology and internet law. My… the research that I do is primarily on how government agencies and democratic institutions in general have attempted, and often failed to rely on corporate social media platforms to communicate with public.
Lisa Hooper: All right, and I'm Lisa Hooper. I'm head of Media Services here at Tulane University Libraries. And so in that role, it starts out as buying film for faculty and students to use in their teaching, learning, and research. And so I have seen it transition, or have been part of the transition from DVDs, which used to be super easy to get and provide access to within the library framework and academic framework, to streaming film, which is a really interesting, increasingly complex task, and that is my entry into media. And I think we're going to talk a little bit later about platform power and how streaming film impacts how we can interact with it in very weird ways.
Katherine: So the National Association of Media Literacy Education defines media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act. This is obviously a very broad definition that encompasses many things.
Dr. McCammon, your research focuses on internet law and digital culture. Can you talk about what that means in relation to media literacy?
Muira: Sure, you know, part of what I do as an educator at Tulane is to try to think through different types of data that users of platforms create when they log on to places like Instagram, WhatsApp, and so part of what I do in my class is trying to figure out how to talk about that data and also how to go looking for it online. And I'm also thinking about data through the lens of public records requests, it's still possible to use something called the US Freedom of Information Act and public records requests more broadly to understand how public institutions, government agencies, how are those agencies relying on platforms to get the word out about what they do.
Lisa: I sort of heard you say the word data and access to data and access to information thinking about access to streaming film. And our streaming film platforms both academic, but especially the commercial ones. So, Netflix are the ones that comes to everybody's mind, but we also have Hulu and Disney Plus and Amazon Prime and a host of others, right? And so thinking about how those platforms use data, the data they collect, what they the data they have access to, compared the data us as users have access to, and we have these, this huge data asymmetry going on there that all influences what we can do, how we can control our own access to what we see and how we interact with it.
So when, when I'm thinking about data asymmetry and the streaming film platforms, so when we think about when we log in and we create those initial profiles, they are gathering information, which to us, we tend to give away really easily, like, this is me, this is my name, this is where I live, these are my topical interests. But then again, every time you click on a film description, they are gathering data. And then, if you watch it, how long did you watch that film? And so as you watch more and more films, and as you click through all of that data is being gathered and scooped up by these big platforms, and then it's being used to try and get a sense of how is this person feeling today. And based on what we think this person is feeling today, we are going to feed them, or sort of surface, films and content that we've tagged as meeting that feeling. And so that sort of means they know a lot about us, we know very little about them. We have little to no control over our data, and they are making decisions for us about what we want to see, and in that manner, controlling what we can even see.
Muira: Yeah, and I think that it's important to remember, even though platforms maintain and exert a lot of power over our daily lives, they evolve and they change and they can be I think it's important to think of them as dynamic.
Researchers are doing a lot of really meaningful work to think about internet history, essentially how platforms have evolved over time. And you know, there's an effort even, for example, to keep track of how terms of service agreements on some of the platforms you mentioned have evolved. One case study that I bring up a lot in my own class: there was a person who had subscribed to Disney Plus and Disney used the fact that this gentleman had agreed to their Disney Plus terms of service as a sort of a legal tactic to try to basically exert their power, not just online, but offline.
And so when we're talking about platform power, I think it's important to remember that we are also at a time of turbulence, experimentation, where platform companies (not just Disney Plus) are trying to figure out what they can squeeze into a terms of service agreement. And we as users have to be particularly proactive, it's no longer just about reading the fine print, right? It's also about making sure that the fine print doesn't change, you know, in the in the darkness of the night, in the middle of a update.
So, part of what I think a lot about in my own research is what methods can we – we as users, we as students of the internet – what methods can we use to keep track of platform companies and the different business decisions that they are making along the way?
There is a really wonderful cohort of researchers in communication studies, who have essentially committed themselves to analyzing platform governance and how it changes over time, basically, how do the rules and regulations that you know, Tiktok and Twitter and other companies that they're creating, how does that change the potential of what we can do online.
And you know, to get back to your point, Lisa, you know, I'm also thinking about the fact that platforms are also reckoning with what types of relationships can make them money, a thing so simple as password sharing, for example, might be an ingrained part of Tulane students' daily lives, but is something that many platforms are considering coming down on users for because when you share passwords, you make it harder for streaming companies to make money off of subscriptions, right?
Lisa: And that was really in the news, especially with Netflix. When they came down hard on password sharing, they made it much harder, and not shockingly, once they made it much harder to share passwords, their subscriptions skyrocketed. They never want to plateau in earnings, there's always this expectation of increased earnings, which means they either need to continually get new subscriptions or really push in different ways for content creation. But you also mentioned that they are increasingly looking to exert influence and power outside of the platform. We have platforms like Netflix where they're like, ‘Okay, we are sort of reaching peak subscribers, let's also start creating content and do it in a way that is really industry disruptive, because that is where how we're going to get yet more subscribers.’ And they've done a really good job with that. So, anybody you have a conversation with about Netflix are like, ‘Oh, so you're about to talk about House of Cards,’ so yes, House of Cards. When you look at the history of House of Cards and its development, it was intentionally disruptive. They were like, ‘Nope, we're going to release the whole season all at once, and we want people to stay home from work and sit down and watch the whole thing, episode one to the last episode of the season.’ So they, that is where binge watching really took root. It was sort of kind of there they saw it in their data and they're like, ‘Okay, let's make binge watching a thing.’ And by in their design of House of Cards and really leaning into the binge watching, they not only changed like the whole release schedule for normal television series, right? That's also completely upended marketing, the marketing industry for TV, it has dramatically shifted how television narrative is written. So it's really interesting how just that one company not only controls a lot of data about us, but it also, frankly, effected a massive shift in multiple industries as well.
Muira: And I think it's important to remember that platforms business models are often in motion and in flux, right, not just because of concerns from shareholders, but because the technology itself is sometimes not built to live for forever, right? And so something that comes to mind in thinking about kind of the political economy of platforms, is that many corners of the internet that were initially thought to be places of unmoderated expression (I'm thinking about Reddit, for example) you know, there have historically been questions about, well, how can a place like Reddit make money, right? And I think one of the things that was interesting to me as someone who researches this space was Reddit's decision to partner with Open AI, right? And effectively sell a lot of that data to another company whose, you know, reputation and commitment to copyright might be somewhat in question, right? And so that, for me, is also an example of how even the agreements that we make with platforms in a given moment can change, and we can be forced to change with them if we wish to remain connected.
But, you know, part of what I'm trying to inspire students to do at Tulane is to remember that even in the face of platforms, they too, wield considerable power. It is important to remember that the kind of platform-centered moment that we are having in civil society is not necessarily one we have to accept in the future. Part of what I try to do as a researcher and educator is, is asking the question of one, what are platforms like Tiktok doing with the data that we give them? And also, what are platforms doing for or against democracy?
And so one thing that Tulane students can do is try to be comparative, right, in their everyday technological practices, and not accept one platform's rules as something they have to opt into for the rest of their lives.
And I think another thing that I try to remind students of too, is that platforms in general, I would say, want their users to think of them as invincible.
Katherine: I think it's so interesting to see this generation that is now maybe going through the first Great Migration off of Twitter and onto a new platform. It's so interesting seeing this as a millennial who started on MySpace and then had the great migration onto Facebook and then the Great Migration onto Instagram, that these things that you were talking about Muira, about the ephemerality of certain platforms and how these things are not permanent. It's maybe easier for people of a slightly older generation to recognize that, you know, the modes of communication on places like Tiktok - it's very right now, but it's not going to be for very much longer.
Lisa: sure. So it's like, you're right. It's totally ephemeral. And from where I stand, it's deeply impacting our information consumption practices, and it's deeply influencing the design and shape of that information and the depth of that information.
And I love that that, that you're talking a lot about teaching modes of regaining agency and modes of disruption, and in my, every once in a while, I sort of dig into my computer to look up this resource. I'm very much of the first step is awareness for me. There's so much that happens that we're just not aware because it's so, like you were saying, it's almost invisible, right? So, this is making me think of we have all these fabulous resources.
Lisa: Which brings us to what the sort of resource sharing, which is, are there things that you would recommend in particular that students read or listen to or look at in order to increase their awareness of media literacy and all these things?
Muira: Yeah. You know, I was thinking about just how overwhelming it can be to keep up with tech news writ large, and so sometimes just even subscribing to a single newsletter, a single round-up, can make the granularities of our everyday technological landscape clearer and less scary. You know, I try to tune into Wired regularly.
Lisa: Wired is so good.
Muira: Wired is really wonderful. But I also just want to give a shout out for like the op eds and tech coverage in Teen Vogue. I think that their politics and tech editors really, are really intentional about what they're publishing.
There's so much to read out there. I'm a big fan too, of MIT Press and all that they're publishing, not just around platforms, but also the history of technology.
So, I assign Hidden Systems in most of my classes because it's such an easy read, but it unearths kind of the complexity of our everyday socio-technical lives.
Lisa: There’s this fabulous anime, it's a bit old by now, but it's still really great. It's called Psycho Pass. Oh, it's so good. It's very, very good anime. It should really have a warning, the very first opening scenes of the very first episode are extremely violent. That level of violence does not recur in my memory throughout the rest of it. So people who do not like to see violent murders in a public place, maybe skip the first episode, even though it is important for setting the scene. There is government data collecting everybody's moods, and then, how are they feeling? How “stable” are they again, using air quotes, and then interventions that they try to do to maintain a balanced society. It's really interesting, but that was my first like, oh, data, personal data. How is it being used? And it's just a great show to watch.
But just for listening things I, and more contemporary things, Media Matters is one that I really enjoy. I don't always agree with them, but you don't have to agree with everybody to be able to listen to it and learn from it, right? So that's such a really great podcast series. I really enjoy listening to them and learning from them.
My sort of more academic entry into the concept of platform power and media literacy, in that sense, is a book. It was written, we have the e-book in the library, it was by two people, Nielsen and Ganter. It's called Platform Power: Shaping Media and Society. And that, again, gets into how these platforms can influence society and culture, which is sort of a big thing.
And then I do there are two authors, and, well, actually three authors that I think really are important for people to read at least a little bit of. So there is a book. It's a bit old. When I was published in 2016 called the Netflix Effect. You can find it, but in that book, it's a collection of contributed chapters. One of the authors is Sarah Arnold, “Netflix and the Myth of Choice: Participation in Autonomy,” and then the other one, the other author in that book is Neta Alexander, and she wrote a chapter called “Catered to Your Future Self: Netflix, Predictive Personalization and the Mathematization of Taste.” If you're like me and do not like math, don't worry, it's still totally accessible for us non-math people.
And then, as you were thinking, I'm like, Oh, wait, but there's also this book, and then there's also this thing. So I'm just gonna do three more like things that I think people should… Another book by Tara Fickell, this one is more recent, is called the Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities, and that, again, looks at how data and demographics play into the shape of everything, of these things that we interact with on the daily. It's a really good book to look at.
Thinking of that book reminded me, naturally, of Dr. Jacque Howard. She is in the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science, which by itself is a really great organization to start following and seeing what events they're offering. But Dr. Howard offers a TIDE class, it's TIDE-1485. She's teaching it this semester, and that class is called Surveillance, Data, and Society, and Dr. Howard does really interesting stuff with that class.
Katherine: I don't know I would my recommendations would be to go analog, to just spend a week going analog. Make a zine, talk to your neighbor, talk to an elder millennial about MySpace.
Muira: Is the library, Is the library offering any workshops on zines this semester? Is that something…
Katherine: we are.
[some cross -talk]
Lisa: yeah, well, I'm looking at you, Katherine.
Katherine: because I'm doing it. Lisa is doing a whole week of workshops on media literacy in October.
Lisa: yeah, which is actually also the very same week when this episode airs!
Katherine: Yeah. We're going to be talking about creating zine versions of your research as a sort of radical way of resisting these platforms by doing things analog. We're going to be physically making zines out of materials that are provided by the library. So it's going to be a lot of fun talking about radical politics, but then also physically making and community building. So it should be a lot of fun.
Muira: That’s great.
Lisa: I have no doubt that it's gonna be fun. So, the workshops and events for media literacy week again are in October. All of the library's workshops are available on the Library's website, under workshops and events.
Katherine: Thank you to our guests, Dr. Muira McCammon and Lisa Hooper, librarian at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.
Muira: Thank you.
Lisa: Thank you, Katherine.
[background music begins]
Lisa: All right friends, you’ve been listening to Literacies, a 4-part audio series. What you just heard was a shorter excerpt from a much longer conversation.
To listen to the whole conversation, read the transcript, learn more about today’s guests, or check out any of the resources mentioned just now, visit our website libguides.Tulane.edu/literacies
This episode was recorded in Howard-Tilton Memorial Library using equipment available for anyone in the Tulane community to check out from Media Services in Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.
Don’t miss our next episode, where we’ll be talking with Dr. Victoria Elmwood and Professor David Rodriguez about Information Literacy. The next episode will drop at noon on November 4th. To be sure you don’t miss it, follow Tulane University Libraries’ YouTube channel and Instagram.
Our host for this episode of Literacies was Katherine Hicks, our audio engineer and audio producer is Justin Green, and Alan Velasquez is our video producer.
Wired - an online magazine for staying up to date on the latest tech in our lives news
Hidden Systems : Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day by Dan Nott (Penguin Press, 2023)
Psycho Pass (Funimation, 2012)
On the Media (WNYC Studios). Note, what i said was Media Matters but what I was thinking of is actually called On the Media.
The Power of Platforms: Shaping Media and Society by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Sarah Anne Ganter (Oxford University Press, 2022)
The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century edited by Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities by Tara FIckle (New York University Press, 2019)
The Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science (CAIDS)
Dr. Muira McCammon is a professor in Tulane’s Department of Communication, where she researches government speech, digital culture, and the politics of media technologies.
She is an organizational, institutional, and socio-legal scholar, who studies how government data, information, and communication flow through corporate social media platforms. Her present research draws on archival data, digital ethnography, and other qualitative methods to understand, document, and reimagine government communication practices. In her work, she is committed to thinking through the power of absence, ephemerality, and ignorance in civil society.
Katherine Hicks is a Scholarly Engagement Librarian at the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library and serves as the subject liaison for Communication, Art, Architecture, and Philosophy. She graduated from Pratt Institute in New York with an MS in Library Science and an MA in History of Art and Design. Her master's thesis explored taxonomies for video game visual style, exploring the history of animation and illustration as well as the different technologies used to create and render graphics. She previously worked in Pratt's special collections department acquiring, cataloging, and maintaining films, artists books, and zines. She also holds a BA in History with a concentration in Public History from Hood College in Frederick, MD. In her spare time, she likes to talk about Star Wars and read fantasy novels.
Ep. 2, Information LiteracyAir Date: November 4, 2024
In this episode, Dr. Victoria Elmwood and Professor Dave Rodriguez deep dive into the importance and intricacies of being an information literate person in today's technology-rich environment. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) describes Information Literacy as "the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning (Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education)." This core concept guides much of the work that Dr. Elmwood and Professor Rodriguez engage in their work with students and throughout this conversation.
Professor David Rodriguez is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of English. He is a teacher, writer, musician, and editor based in New Orleans. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and has been published in the New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, Sandy River Review, Hawai'i Review, and Convergence, among other places. Most recently, he co-authored a research article on the decentralization of authority in Radiohead's music and digital media. As an instructor, he has won several awards and co-edited two composition textbooks. His areas of focus include critical reading and writing, literature, technical writing, film studies, and creative writing.
Dr. Victoria Elmwood Victoria Elmwood is a Scholarly Engagement Librarian at the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library and serves as the subject liaison for Classics, English, French & Italian, and Germanic & Slavic Studies. A veteran instructor of college-level composition, she collaborates closely with the freshman composition program to promote students’ information literacy skills and academic documentation practices. Victoria holds a combined Ph.D. in English and American Studies and an M.A. in English from Indiana University Bloomington, as well as an M.L.I.S. from LSU Baton Rouge and a B.A. from Reed College.
Check back at noon on November 4, 2024.
Ep. 3, Data LiteracyAir Date: February 11, 2025, 12 noon CST
In episode three, we follow a wide ranging and insightful conversation with 3 guests: Kay P Maye, Dr. Patrick Button, and Dr. Aron Culotta. Like many other literacies, there are many components to Data Literacy. The Oceans of Data Project describes data literate people as individuals who understand, explain and document the utility and limitations of data by becoming critical consumers of data, controlling their personal data trail, finding meaning and taking action based on data.They can identify, collect, evaluate, analyze, interpret, present and protect data.
Dr. Patrick Button serves as the inaugural Executive Director of The Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science. Button has been with the initiative since its beginnings, serving as the chair of a subcommittee focused on how to engage and support undergraduate students with data education.
Button concurrently serves as an Associate Professor of Economics at Tulane, and his research focuses on discrimination in the scope of age and disability, expanding to sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity. Interested in teaching data literacy, Button integrates data analysis in his courses on Labor Economics, Economics of Discrimination, and Econometrics.
Their research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, the Sloan Foundation, the Social Security Administration, the Haynes Foundation, and the Borchard Center for Law and Aging, among others. Button is currently researching sexual orientation and race discrimination in access to mortgage loans, and gender identity, race, ethnicity, and health insurance status discrimination in access to mental health care appointments. See Button’s personal website for more information about their research.
Dr. Aron Culotta is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Tulane University and Director of the Tulane Center for Community-Engaged Artificial Intelligence. He received his PhD in computer science from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2008, and his research focuses on machine learning, natural language processing, and social network analysis, and their implications on society. His NSF-funded research has developed AI methods for several interdisciplinary projects in public health, law, marketing, political science, and emergency response. He has published over seventy academic articles on AI, serves on the steering committee of the International Conference on Web and Social Media, and has received best paper awards from the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing and from the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
Kay P Maye is the Scholarly Engagement Librarian for Social Sciences and Data at Tulane University. He received his M.S. in Information Science from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. During his time as a librarian at Tulane and Clemson University, Maye has worked with the Data Curation Network to create instruction and reference materials for information professionals working with research data across disciplines. In 2022, Maye was awarded a LEADING (The LIS Education and Data Science Integrated Network Group) Fellowship to work with the Repository Analytics and Metrics Portal (RAMP) , a web service that aggregated use and performance use data of institutional repositories, on a text analysis machine learning project. Maye has used the skills learned through these experiences to offer research data support services through the Tulane University Libraries.
Check back at noon on February 11, 2025.
Ep. 4, Financial LiteracyAir Date: April 8, 2025, 12 noon CST
In our fourth and final conversation of the series, we're joined by business librarian Tim Coady and Dr. Toni Weiss for an informative and timely conversation about Financial Literacy. In this episode, we get back to basics with advice and exercises for freshmen and graduating seniors alike
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Dr. Toni Weiss is the Lawrence MvD Schloss Senior Professor of Practice in the Department of Economics as well as the Executive Director of Tulane’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT). Her focus, both in the department and at CELT, is on creating an environment both in and out of the classroom that maximizes students’ academic, professional and personal growth while at Tulane. All of the work she does on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning she brings into the classroom, thus taking the theoretical and making it practical and functional.
In addition to her roles at Tulane, Professor Weiss does freelance economic consulting work. Her work has primarily focused on economic development within the City of New Orleans as well as on economic impact studies measuring the effects of a variety of special events that occur in and around New Orleans.
Tim Coady is the Librarian for the A.B. Freeman School of Business. In this role, Tim collects, makes discoverable, and provides support for information resources to meet the education and research needs of the faculty, students, and staff of the School and greater campus community. Tim is passionate about the need for informational literacy both within business education and broadly. His interests focus on the way access to information impacts the way we make decisions.
Check back at noon, April 8, to find audio and transcript.
Audio Engineer & Audio Producer
Justin Green is a Tulane University sophomore from New Orleans, LA. He is studying Legal Studies in Business and Computer Science. He is in the Legislative Scholars Program, Tulane Black Student Union, Alliance of Black Business Students, Gulf Scholars Program, and College Scholars Program. He serves as the Cohort Programs Student Intern with the Office of College Programs.
Video Producer
Alan Velasquez is the Digital Media Production Unit Coordinator in Digital Scholarship & Initiatives, providing audiovisual production, post-production, and digitization services for Tulane University Libraries. He manages the Tulane University Libraries YouTube channel and works with library and campus partners to create video content. He offers accessibility services for audiovisual content and provides digital scholarship support by creating and maintaining guides and tutorials. Links: Audiovisual Services Library Guide Tulane University Libraries YouTube Channel.
Host
lisa Hooper is Head of Media Services at Tulane University Libraries. In this role, she develops technology collections, workshops, and programming to support equitable opportunities for interdisciplinary discovery, innovative scholarship, and skill development through creative play with multimedia collections and media tools. In her role as a member of the Scholarly Engagement team, lisa serves as the subject liaison for music, dance, and theater.
