What can kids learn from media marketing?

Response to "Scrutinizing the Cybersell: Teen-Targeted Web Sites as Texts" by Darren Crovitz

So in an era where fast-paced media blitzes are inundating us, how can we use it to the advantage of educators? Clearly adults have no place in the cyber age.

Maybe not even in commercials. Okay, so you watched the video, right? McDonald's is the place for teens to hang out with no adult supervision and fall in love. I love how realistic advertising is!

How can we stop our students from falling victim to every marketing ploy that they stumble upon? We all know that advertisers sell us on unrealistic dreams. But maybe if I hang out at McDonald's I could fall in love too. With an overweight guy who will probably die from heart disease or a heart attack before I can get him to the alter. Oh, wait, that isn't the dream they are selling me.

I am getting distracted here. Focus. 

How can we use a classroom to make students more critical about their consumption of media? In the article from Crovitz, he talks about teaching students to read and write in their language, which is a multimodal language. No longer are words, pictures, and sounds separate mediums. Now they are all pieces to a whole. He writes about using websites as texts. Let's face it, students don't want to read the literary canon as much as they want to hang out on the Internet. It only makes sense to use it to our advantage. 

Getting students to look at anything critically is like trying to start a fire with a wet match. If they don't want to read the canon (and I will address this is another post, but here is a sneak peek at a friend's take), we have to venture outside our dusty old books and figure out what they will read. And clearly they spend all kinds of time on computers and cell phones.

In Crovtiz's article, he talks extensively about two brand websites that primarily market to the teen demographic, Doritos and SlimJim. I chose to include a commercial from McDonald's above because they market to an even younger crowd on their website. Crovitz's article is almost 5 years old, so I venture to say that in that time marketing idiots geniuses have figured out a way to get to the next generation even younger. No matter, though, because Crovitz already has a way to address it in the classroom. Use their own technology against them to teach them. 

Here's the down low: take some time to "analyze" some of the websites that are marketed to your students with your students. Who cares if you are critically analyzing The Scarlett Letter or SlimJim. When students visit any website, they are critical without always realizing it. If the site doesn't engage them, they move on. As educators, why don't we teach them why they feel that way? Why don't we try to make the critical thinkers instead of mindless followers? If we can use websites that students frequent to teach them about literary tools, why aren't we doing it? If we can teach students to see cross-marketing campaigns in the same way we used to teach students to find multiple meanings in a book, doesn't that count as critical analysis? We have to start somewhere. So why not start with the cybersell? That is two areas at which all teens excel: on the Internet and in their consumerism.

So I think it is pretty clear that I agree with Crovitz's article, and not just because he is the guy grading this blog. He has some great points. But I do have some questions. Ready?

•  If we are going to try to teach websites as texts, how much time would we realistically spend on the "text"? It seems to reason that if we would spend a few weeks on a novel, we should allocate a similar amount of time to this cyber text. But does a cyber text require as much time as a novel? Considering this cyber text is their the language of these digital natives, won't they be more fluent and thereby require less time to absorb the lessons?
• Are administrators likely to try and revoke my certification if I try to teach a website as a text? Can I use the justification that I am teaching critical analysis in a digital age? Can I expect administrators or even colleagues to push back? 
• Will students respond to this technique or will they think it is a desperate attempt to understand them? Will they recognize parody and tone if I don't explicitly tell them to look for it?
• What happens if I land in a school that doesn't have all of this technology available in the classroom?
• Will students feel duped when we finally apply critical analysis to a more traditional text? How can I avoid making them feel like I pulled a bait-and-switch?

Overall, I see this idea of cyber text as a great scaffold to get students to think about other aspects of literacy. But even if they walk away only knowing that Doritos, SlimJim, and Mickey D's is only telling them part of the truth, I will count it as a success.