This exercise is meant to help us understand how meaning is created/coded and how it is decoded and/or changed. It points to ways in which through language and communication we come to hold shared and preconceived categories and meanings.

You are asked to think of yourselves as one audience sharing some of the same understandings and meanings, but also to consider what it might mean when we leave out certain categories and meanings.

You can turn this exercise into a game. You will need at least three people to play the game. Begin by splitting into three groups. Provide each group/person the word list below. In total there are 42 words. Each group/person has to create three categories using 12 words for each category (do not repeat the words). You may wish to write each word down on a separate piece of paper, or sticky note, and then move them around to create your categories. Name each category and then lost the words you have chosen.

Once you have named and created your categories, with the words you have chosen, take turns sharing your choices with the other groups. Explain why you choose the particular words and why you think they fit together. Discuss what might be the reasons you have created these categories - what experiences, definitions, values, meanings, people, affected your choices. Also, discuss if (how and why) by putting certain words together in one category we might be leaving others. Do you think that leaving certain words out (by defining categories in one particular way) we also exclude certain audiences?

Once you have done this, remain in the same groups and now come up with an additional category (one new category for each group/person) by using only six words (any words) from the list. Use words you do not automatically think go together. As before take turns explaining your choices.  

As part of the discussion ask each other what the categories you created say about you as an audience? Do they reveal shared understandings of one age group, of ethnicity, of gender, etc.? Do they confirm and/or challenge particular meanings and categories? Which ones? Why?

The categorization and mapping exercise was an opportunity for you to identify the conceptual maps you hold and perhaps take for granted. Just like the image exercise in Module 3.

Just to review and reiterate some of the ideas we have engaged so far. Conceptual maps are made of shared assumptions, cultural values and norms. Certain categories make sense to us because we share the meaning underlying them. Think of the categories you put together in the previous exercise and the discussion you had. The categories you put together are in a way part of your conceptual maps.
However, as we have seen so far, belonging in particular categories is not fixed, nor are the categories themselves. For example, historically men have been identified with work outside the home, and women with home making and childcare.

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This photo, taken from an article featured in The Economist, “Who’s Your Daddy,” refers to a trend, in the US, for more men to become stay at home dads. Here the magazine is reporting on an emerging social reality in the US. At the same time, by showing these images and writing about the topic the story contributes to discussions about new trends in parenthood and meaning of manhood.  The example shows changing associations with parenthood.

Media also draws similar connections, that is, media rely on our shared and assumed conceptual maps in order to convey a message. In addition, media in powerful ways shapes our conceptual maps. By making only particular kinds of connections (categories, meanings) media, and we as audiences, reinforce particular meanings.

Below is a link to an article that parodies the many travelogue pieces that have been written by foreign visitors and journalists in Kosovo. As Hana Marku’s piece shows, much of this writing relies on stereotypes, generalizations, and little contextualization. The meanings attributed to Kosovo, in the articles Marku parodies, continue to reference conflict and war, inter-ethnic tensions, a working class guide, generalizations about peoples’ beliefs and cultural values, and an emphasis on rural-urban differences. The photographs, also, almost always contain one picture of a cultural heritage site, one picture of a local culinary specialty, and one of a group of people. Quite often these kinds of articles provide superficial accounts of a much more complex social reality.

http://prishtinainsight.com/small-kosovo-shakes-off-ghosts-past-one-macchiato-time-mag/

However, as the example from The Economist shows, media can make new kinds of connections and affect our norms and values, thus being a powerful force in social change. The article shows how larger changes (mainly economic) make a previously rare practice (men being primary care givers) possible, and how these larger changes interact with social norms.

Media can also be used to promote certain issue, raise awareness and empower citizens. The following video is an example of a Prizren (Kosovo) based NGO, Ec Ma Ndryshe, providing an online platform (mahalla.info) for citizens to improve the living environment in their neighborhoods. This is an example of how social media are used to engage the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIUmSeMUH_Y

Think of audience, conceptual maps, and media as part of a process that is not linear, rather as a process where one shapes the other.

¹ http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/06/parenting

For this article read the article Promoting Positive Fatherhood in Kosovo: http://archive.kosovotwopointzero.com/article/2139/promovimi-i-atesise-pozitive-ne-kosove

You can conduct this exercise alone or in groups. If you will work in groups split into three groups. Each group will read the same article but answers the different questions below.

Once you have read the article discuss amongst yourselves and answers the following questions. Write down your answers. Once you are down take turns sharing your answers and discuss amongst yourselves.

Questions for Group 1:

• What assumptions about the audience are made in the article?
• What “shared meanings” does it rely on?

Questions for Group 2:

• Do you think the article can change what people think about the issue?
• Do you think that people from different age groups, genders, social settings (city, village, employed, unemployed, educated, uneducated, etc.) have different positions on the issue? What are those positions?

Questions for Group 3:

• How have you discussed the issue with your friends?
• How have you discussed the issue with your parents?
• What changes in gender roles have you noticed in your family, your community, and in the wider social setting?

Discussion

Once you have finished the exercise you can refer to the following for additional discussion.

The exercise is meant to unpack the following for the participants:

• Issues of inclusion and exclusion in media reporting – who is represented and used to stand in for society as a whole; voices that are excluded
• Different readings given to stories by audiences based on social position (gender, class, ethnicity) – audiences giving meaning to stories
• Discuss how media helps shape social reality by presenting issues in particular ways
• Helps to further understand that the word link exercise shows the importance of culture (how it shapes meanings we create) and how meanings are not homogenous

Shared meanings are shared within particular groups and can differ within one society. These differences are reflected through gender, class and ethnic relations. The “Whose Your Daddy” article depicts a white professional middle class family. The trend the article speaks about depicts changing gender roles, which are not to be found equally throughout American society. For example, single income families, working class families, families in traditional settings, and groups marginalized based on race and ethnicity, are not included in the article. Similarly, the article Promoting Positive Fatherhood in Kosovo, speaks of professional men in an urban Kosovar setting, and two income families.

The examples used in the module do not necessarily refer to mainstream conceptions of inclusion and diversity. Instead of identifying a marginalized group, and adding it in, the examples aims to identify the norm and through that norm discuss issues of inclusion, exclusion, and diversity. So, instead of addressing parenthood through the traditional ‘woman as caregiver and professional’ debate, the examples show that the debate is much more complex.

Having conducted the word link exercise, and read the discussion in the previous section, in this section you will do a critical reading of an online article. The exercise is similar to the one you conducted at the beginning of this curriculum but now you have more critical reading and discussion tools that you can use.

You can conduct this exercise alone or in groups. If you will work in groups split into three groups. Each group will read the same article but answers the different questions below.

Once you have read the article discuss amongst yourselves and answers the following questions. Write down your answers. Once you are down take turns sharing your answers and discuss amongst yourselves.

Read BBC article How Islamic State extremists use social media to recruit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/31574846/how-islamic-state-extremists-use-social-media-to-recruit

For a research based article you can see: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=mca

As you read keep notes on the following questions:

• Who are the people in the story and how are people being described?
• What are the events in the story and how are they ordered?
• Sources used in the article, i.e. people interviewed, person or publication providing information
• Evidence provided, i.e. information, data, facts provided
• Different positions articulated, i.e. what are the different sources and evidence saying

Questions for Group 1:

• What assumptions about the audience are made in the article?
• What “shared meanings” does it rely on?

Questions for Group 2:

• Do you think the article can change what people think about the issue?
• Do you think that people from different age groups, genders, social settings (city, village, employed, unemployed, educated, uneducated, etc.) have different positions on the issue? What are those positions?

Questions for Group 3:

• How have you discussed the issue with your friends?
• How have you discussed the issue with your parents?
• What changes in gender roles have you noticed in your family, your community, and in the wider social setting?