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Tag: Media Literacy

Collaborator Spotlight:
Ms. Tessa jolls

Collaborator Spotlight:
Ms. Tessa jolls

Tessa Jolls, Center for Media Literacy

Klein Buendel collaborator, Ms. Tessa Jolls, has been the President and CEO of the Center for Media Literacy (CML) in California since 1999. Currently, she is working with Dr. Barbara Walkosz, Senior Scientist at Klein Buendel, to lead a new research project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CE003635). The aim of the project is to update and translate Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media, an evidence-based media-literacy violence prevention curriculum for middle school students, formerly delivered in person, into an interactive technology-based platform.

Created by CML, Beyond Blame, is a theory-based curriculum that underwent a rigorous long-term evaluation, in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Violence prevention programs, including school-based education programs, are recommended to address youth violence. 

CML is an educational organization that provides leadership, public education, professional development and evidence-based educational resources nationally and internationally. CML is dedicated to promoting and supporting media literacy education as a framework for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating and participating with media content. CML helps citizens, especially the young, develop critical thinking and media production skills needed to live fully in the 21st century media culture.

Ms. Jolls’ primary focus at CML is demonstrating how media literacy works through school and community-based implementation programs. She actively contributes to the development of the media literacy field internationally through her speaking, writing and consulting, with curriculum development and research projects, and through publishing and disseminating new curricular and training materials.

Recent Honors and Awards

  • Received the Fulbright NATO Security Studies Award in Brussels in 2021.
  • Co-taught the first media literacy undergraduate course at the University of Latvia Faculty of Social Sciences in 2019.  
  • Served as a 2019 Fulbright Specialist for a two-week assignment in Bulgaria, where she conducted workshop trainings.
  • Invited to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Education, WICT Senior Executive Summit in March 2018.  
  • Served on the International Steering Committee for UNESCO’s Global MIL Alliance, and as co-chair of the Digital and Media Literacy Working Group, organized through the Children and Screens Initiative; resulted in a Pediatrics paper recommending research and policy priorities for the field.  
  • Organized  the Commit 2 MediaLit! Campaign to recognize Media Literacy Week in 2016.  
  • Received the Global Media and Information Literacy Award, in recognition of her work in Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue, from the UNESCO-initiated GAPMIL, in cooperation with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) in 2015.
  • Honored with the International Media Literacy Award by Gateway Media Literacy Partners in 2014.
  • Recognized with the Jesse McCanse Award for Individual Contribution to Media Literacy by the National Telemedia Council in 2013.  
Challenging Violence in the Media

Challenging Violence in the Media

Klein Buendel and the Center for Media Literacy in California are launching a new research project to update and translate Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media, an evidence-based media-literacy violence prevention curriculum for middle school students, formerly delivered in person, into an interactive technology-based platform. Beyond Blame, developed by the Center for Media Literacy,is a theory-based curriculum that underwent a rigorous long-term evaluation, in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Violence prevention programs, including school-based education programs, are recommended to address youth violence.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “youth violence is a serious public health problem and that an adverse childhood experience can have a long-term impact on health and well-being, disproportionately impacting communities of color.” Violence affects thousands of youths each day as well as their families, schools, and communities. CDC reports that youth can be involved in violence as a victim, offender, or witness. Homicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 10-24 and the leading cause of death for non-Hispanic Black or African American youth.1,2 However, youth violence is preventable and the development of evidence-based approaches that address the factors to decrease the risk of violence, buffer against that risk, and promote positive youth development and well-being3 are imperative.  

A number of factors exist that may increase or decrease the possibility of youth experiencing or enacting violence. Media violence has long been identified by public health as a risk factor and violent content in television, social media, and video games has been associated with aggression and youth violence. Yet, media literacy programs are often not included in violence prevention efforts. Media literacy is recognized as a life skill to strengthen and provide resiliency for an individual’s ability to resist negative and harmful messages that are powerfully packaged and promoted in the media.

Today, youth live in an unprecedented mediated environment. With technology allowing 24-hour media access, the amount of time youth spend with media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. This is evidenced by widespread media usage by middle school children: 98% watch television, 78% use tablets, 67% interact with smart phones, 73% use computers, and 68% use gaming devices. Children ages 8-12 in the U.S. average 4-6 hours a day watching or using screens. To help children navigate this mediated environment, media literacy education provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate using media in a variety of forms, including videos, social media (such as TikTok and You Tube), video games, film, and television.  

Upon completing Beyond Blame in person, students significantly increased their knowledge of the Five Core Concepts/Key Questions of media literacy, increased recognition of their exposure to media violence, and had stronger beliefs that media violence affects users. The original Beyond Blame aligns with the Common Core standards identified for Language Arts, and the technology-based curriculum will adhere to the same standards along with the International Society for Technology in Education Standards that ensure that using technology for learning can create high-impact, sustainable, scalable, and equitable learning experiences for all learners. 

This research is supported by a grant from the CDC (CE003635). The project team will be led by Multiple Principal Investigators, Dr. Barbara Walkosz, a Senior Scientist at Klein Buendel, and Ms. Tessa Jolls, President of the Center for Media Literacy and will be joined by a Co-Investigator, Dr. Christine Rizzo from Northeastern University in Massachusetts. The Klein Buendel Creative Team will design and program the Beyond Blame prototype. 

References

  1. David-Ferdon C, Clayton HB, Dahlberg LL, et al. Vital signs: Prevalence of multiple forms of violence and increased health risk behaviors and conditions among youths – United States, 2019. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021;70(5):167-173. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7005a4.PMC7861486  
  2. Sheats KJ, Irving SM, Mercy JA, et al. Violence-related disparities experienced by black youth and young adults: opportunities for prevention. Am J Prev Med. 2018;55(4):462-469. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2018.05.017.PMC6691967 
  3. youth.gov. Youth topics: violence prevention. Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs. Available at: https://youth.gov/youth-topics/violence-prevention. Accessed March 28, 2022. 
Scaling Media Literacy in a School District Environment

Scaling Media Literacy in a School District Environment

Implementation science, the study of methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practices, is emerging as a framework to study the application of media literacy. Implementation science emerged in the public health field, and is just becoming known and applied in media literacy programs.

A research team led by Dr. Tessa Jolls from the Center for Media Literacy in California, and including Dr. Barbara Walkosz from Klein Buendel, conducted a panel discussion at the Global Media Education Summit held March 2-4, 2023 at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. The panel was entitled, “Implementation Science: The Road to Scaling in a District Environment.” Two additional panelists included Dr. Marilyn Cohen from the University of Washington and Ms. Heather Van Benthuysen from the Chicago Public Schools.

The research team discussed the rising field of implementation science and presented an example underway in a U.S. school district. Relying on theories of change and rigorous evaluations of programming that exemplify these theories of change, the panelists described how implementation science provides a solid foundation for dissemination, scaling, and helping media literacy take its rightful place as a central educational offering. The panelists illustrated how implementation science works to strengthen and sustain media literacy in schools.

The Global Media Education Summit is convened by the UK’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, in collaboration with a leading media education space, in a different country each year. In 2023, the School of Communication and the Community Engaged Research Initiative at Simon Fraser University hosted the event, in partnership with the McLuhan Foundation. The Global Media Education Summit brings together an international network of researchers, educators, and practitioners across all aspects of media education, media and digital literacies, youth media production and media and technology in education. As the leading global showcase for research, pedagogy, and innovation, the Summit explores the changing currents across media education and media literacy communities around the world.

Media Literacy Case Study

Media Literacy Case Study

Dr. Barbara Walkosz from Klein Buendel, Ms. Tessa Jolls from the Center for Media Literacy, Dr. Marilyn Cohen from the University of Washington, and Mr. Michael Danielson from Action 4 Media Literacy presented timely media literacy research at the National Association of Media Literacy Education Conference (July 15-17, 2022). Their virtual presentation was entitled, “Media Literacy Policy Enactment and Implementation: A Case Study of Washington State.”

As the need for media literacy across societal sectors is well established, citizens, educators, and policymakers increasingly recognize the necessity for a citizenry to have the skills to be able critically analyze and create media content. Primarily since the U.S. elections of 2016 and 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, media literacy is taking its place center-stage as an essential element for sustaining a democratic and a healthy society. Although efforts for media literacy education policy adoption are encouraging at the national and state levels, once adopted, policies and programs are sparsely funded and often not institutionally supported for a sustained period.

The case study of the adoption and implementation of media literacy in the state of Washington offers insights into successful strategies for long-term enactment of media literacy education. Diffusion of Innovations Theory provides a theoretical framework to explain and understand the adoption and implementation processes and offers a promising framework for media literacy policy implementation in other contexts.