Some Key Points on Folk Media

Source: Basic Human Communication (Vol. 1)

The Traditional Means of Communication

Theatre

Stories, tale, legends, proverbs, riddles (Oral Communication) – look for known
epics/legends in the project site, research on this, make a dialogue/discussion out of it or
put it into script format for theatre

Song, dance, body language, use of traditional instruments such as xylophone, guitar,
buffalo horn, etc.

Discussion. People need to be made accustomed to discussing together in the light of the
Gospel, with their own expressions and in their own style, the problems of society, of
economics, of politics and of religion.

The talking drum. Used to spread information about peoples’ births, deaths, and
importants events.

The plastic arts – sculpture, masks, drawings and symbols

Modern Means of Communication

Three basic groupings:

The mass media;

The group media or media for few; and

The personal media

Mass Media: the broadcast networks on a national and international scale, either private or
public; radio, television and printed word

Requires complex forms of organization for their operation, with huge financial
resources and need for highly qualified personnel.

Directed to large audiences.

They are public; their content is open to all.

Their audience is heterogeneous in composition.

They can establish simultaneous contact with large numbers of people very distant from
the source.

Persons known only in their public role as communicators manage the relationship
between the source and the audience. Very negative output. Others can be trained for
this.

The audience is “collectively unique.” Though sharing a common interest, the audience
have a very limited possibility of interaction.

Group Media: are modern means suitable for promoting interaction within a group, stimulating
audience to active reflection and participation. They include: videocassettes and films, followed

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by public debate, photos and posters, slides and computer presentations and so on, which are
widely used in catechesis.

Directed to groups where each member can participate.

They encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences.

They treat relevant, interesting themes related to life.

Their presentation is often done at artistically high level forms.

They use means that are technically and financially within the reach of the group.

They are usually brief.

They are often accompanied by a guide for discussion.

Personal Media: communication between individuals: the phone, telex, faxes and Internet as a
new addition though it can also be categorized as mass media and group media.

Standards of Christian Communication

AIM OF COMMUNICATION: Creating Community

Our communication will contain elements of:

Empathy. “Here I am to share the hurt, the sorrow, the shame with you.”
Incarnational. We show God in ourselves and in who we are.
Healing. The aim is to cure, build up rather than destroy, creative rather than destructive.

To fulfill these elements our communication will hold to standards of:

TRUTH

FREEDOM

RESPONSIBILITY

Source: Communication, Culture and Community

Means of Communication

Oral-aural communication

Script communication

Electronic communication

Space and satellite communication

Traditional Means of Communication

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Dance

Rituals

Drama

Story-telling

Ballads

Chanters

Flute

Praise singers

Meetings

Songs

Popular theatre

Drums

The gong

These means would generally tend to strengthen traditional community ties.

Modern Means of Communication

Radio

Television

Tape recorders

Video Cassettes

Newspapers

Telephone P. A. S.

Books

Posters

Facsimile

Fibre-optics

Satellite dishes

Less interaction and would weaken traditional relationships and community ties. Though, it can
provoke, facilitate and promote two-way processes of communication.

Integrating Traditional and Modern Means of Communication

Adapting the content and uses of the modern means of communication to cultural needs
and expressions and involving grassroots participation especially in rural communities.

Use the modern communication technologies to reflect and promote indigenous cultures
and traditions.

Example: culturally relevant video material on an issue could be used as a basis for
getting a group to enter into a discussion on the issue. The communication interaction
that would follow watching the video programme, would be interpersonal and in
consonance with their cultural identity.

In this way, the technology would be used in a manner that makes them adaptable to the
immediate needs and concerns of the people.

Functions of Communication

According to Schramm and Porter:

1. Communication as a sort of social radar – both search for what is new and to seek
reassurance and guidance concerning their relationship within their society. In addition
to convey to others their identity and understanding of relationships.
2. Communication serves as people’s management tool for making decisions and for
persuading and manipulating others.

3. Communication is used for instruction or education.

4. Communication serves as a means of entertainment.

According to MacBride:

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 1. Socialization
2. Education
3. Cultural promotion
4. Information
5. Entertainment
6. Integration
7. Motivation: promoting the immediate and ultimate aims of each society; stimulating the
recognition of aspirations and the exercise of personal choices; fostering individual and
community activities which are geared to the pursuit of agreed aims.

“Communication can be an instrument of power, a revolutionary weapon, a commercial product,

or a means of education; it can serve the ends of either liberation or of oppression, of either
growth of the individual personality or of drilling human beings into uniformity.”

Source: Communication in the Church and Society

The Media as the First Areopagus of our Time (Redemptoris Missio)

Areopagus : market or forum, the “religious forum,” on which the questions about the
meaning of life and the existence of God are thematised and discussed

This forum offers to faith and to the church the possibility of knowledge what other
contemporaries think, say and do, what motivates and inspires them, and what they fear,
desire and hope for. Areopagus is for faith and church a relevant source of information
about what people and the world are occupied with, about the spirit of the times.

Faith and church have to inform themselves and to reflect carefully what the media offer
concerning interpretations, ethics, religion and spirituality in their programs.

A fascinating process of exchange, confrontation, negotiation, clarification, deepening,
growth, renewal regarding the relationships between mass media, spirituality and
morality can take place.

Contribution of faith and church: careful combination of Spirituality and audiovisual
media in such a way that a dialogical spirituality develops and grows by using the new
audiovisual language of film and television.

FILM AND SPIRITUALITY

The Three Key Questions Are:

How do we understand spirituality?

Characteristics of film language to express spirituality?

The spiritual dialogue concerning spirituality in film?

I. Search-Model Spirituality

a. SPIRITUS: spirit, breath, inspiration, aspiration, motivation: which spirit drives

or motivates us?
b. EXPERIENCE: ordering, integrating the many different life experiences and
unifying them are more or less conscious activities of the human spirit. These
experiences can also concern the deeper dimensions of life: transcendence,
boundaries, liminality, the holy, the sacred, mystery, saints, Jesus Christ, God.
c. SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXT: Humans exist at a certain historical period, in
the context of a particular society, within cultural, political organizations, all
interacting among themselves.
d. CONSCIOUS PROCESS: Life is a process of change and growth: the human
person is more or less consciously and actively living his life, directing ones own
evolution, cultivating the life of the spirit (meditating, reflecting, praying,
communicating, criticizing, etc.)
e. VIEWPOINT/PERSPECTIVE: From which one sees, interprets, orders,
integrates life experiences, this means one’s worldview, religion, Christian faith;
this is the guiding, orienting vision on life, humankind, world, society.
f. TRANSFORMATION: Spirituality is changing and transforming life in the
direction of integration, unity, fulfillment, solidarity.

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 g. MYSTICISM: It is insight through experience that all phenomena of life are
connected, that they all are united in origin.
h. WORKING DEFINITION: Spirituality is a conscious and dynamic process of
the cultivation of one’s own life of the spirit from a Christian perspective.

II. Characteristics of the Medium Film to Express Spirituality

Spirituality takes a form of a story or drama, of dramatized-life stories. Thus Spirituality

in film is mainly on the narrative rather than the argumentative level.

Spirituality is always expressed in the form of a concentration/condensation of crucial life
events.

Spirituality is always situated in concrete socio-cultural contexts, showing confrontation
– conflict with the existing culture/spirit of times and criticism and/or protest against
existing dominant culture.

Spirituality has its roots in religious or secular events or developments like socio-
religious context.

Spirituality is always individualized and incarnated in living persons. It is a living or
lived and experienced spirituality.

Spirituality quite often takes the form of an audiovisualized life journey.

Spirituality implies visions/appreciation of life, human nature, world and being – often
very different and conflicting interpretations and evaluations of them.

The audiovisual language of film has at its disposal its own facilities to express
spirituality and spiritual values and to experience the same.

Spirituality in the context of the film dialogue is a dialogical spirituality: it concerns
spirituality and spiritual values implied in the film story and explored/discovered through
the dialogue in the group about the film’s spirituality.

III. The Film Dialogue in a Nutshell

a. The spiritual film dialogue:

A systematic goal-oriented group dialogue about film/TV stories;

Organized and guided viewing of films/TV-stories;

Sharing experiences and interpretations;

From a Christian perspective, in the light of the gospel;

Clarification of central symbols, scenes, dramatic forms;

Discovery of religious/spiritual dimensions in the story;

Broadening experiences and interpretations;

Evaluation and integration of experiences;

Process going from reception to perception of media stories;

Biography/reference systems of the viewers;

Group animator facilitates the dialogue;

b. Characteristics of the spiritual dialogue:

The group members describe what they have seen in the light of their own
background, their Christian life experiences, worldview, faith, spirituality;

With the help of guiding questions, the interpersonal communication on the film
initiates the spiritual dialogue;

Communication within the group about these questions continues and stimulates
this dialogue about spirituality embodied in the film story and in the spirituality
of the group members.

This dialogue is a spiritual dialogue. The spirituality developed during the
dialogue is a dialogical spirituality involving the film, the individual and each
member of the group.

This spiritual dialogue can be practiced in all kinds of events.

c. Main objectives of the film dialogue

A better Christian understanding of media stories;

A process of dialogue, confrontation and clarification;

Ordering and integration of experiences;

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Growth in religious and spiritual meaning;

Cultivation of the life of the spirit from a Christian viewpoint.

d. Guiding rules for spiritual dialogue

Initial reflection: brief sharing of first impressions, experiences, emotions,

questions.

Analysis of the audiovisual language, the story, the message, key moments in the
story, important images, symbols, scenes, music, verbal texts, camera, editing.

Analysis of spiritual dimensions: the “spirit” of the film, the inspiration,
motivations of the main characters, the ways they order and integrate their
experiences; the more or less implicit worldview, value system, images of religion
or faith, processes of transformation, mystical experiences.

IV. Film and TV-Productions for Spiritual Group Dialogue

Strong inspiration, aspirations and motivations;

Clear conversion, transformation, reorganization of life;

Demythologising and revealing character;

Openness to the mystery of life;

Liminal experiences, crises, ruptures, points of no return;

Critical attitudes vis-a-vis the dominant culture, religion;

Stories or dramas told in the form of a journey, a way, a road;

Mystical experiences of enlightenment, unity, transparency.

MEDIA EDUCATION: Approach and Understanding

1. Three types of Media Education

Media education can focus mainly on more systematic information about the fundamental
characteristics of the media film/TV/video: their history, genres, techniques, language,
worldviews, aesthetics and ethics. This type of media education situates itself more on
the cognitive level of media knowledge and media information.

Media education can also focus on an analysis of the media experiences of the users, on
media evaluation and appreciation in the context of media group work. This type of
media education situates itself more on the emotional-affective level of reflected and
systematized media experiences.

Media education can also focus on the philosophy of life (worldview) dimensions of the
media. The media and their messages are not neutral. They are always expressions of
human beings, of human visions and values, of worldviews and visions on humanity, of
moral and spiritual phenomena.

These three types of media education have their own possibilities and limitations.

2. Media Education: the Meaning of the Word “Medium”

Media are complex socio-cultural communication phenomena. Media can be understood

as an audiovisual language, as the forms in which stories and film messages are
expressed and received. Finally, media can mean the institution or organization,
producing and broadcasting the media products.

Media speak an audiovisual language. Words (audio) and images (visual) have entered a
new marriage under the presidency of electronics. It belongs to the main potentialities of
the media and its language to tell and dramatize stories, to offer visions and
interpretations of life, men and society in audiovisual narrative form. Media speak an
emotional affective language, expressing a broad scale of basic emotions and affections.

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Media actualize these visions and emotions differently in different genres. In this sense
film and television function as a mirror of culture and as an expression of the spirit of the
times in and through audiovisually dramatized stories.

Viewers are fascinated by these stories. They interact with these stories in their own way,
from the point of view of their biography and their actual life situations. They also
generate communication among the viewers.

3. Media Education: a Contextualized Phenomenon

Media and media education do not function in a historical socio-cultural vacuum. They
are formed by and embedded in the socio-cultural life and in concrete situations.

Studies on media education now when everyone is already familiar with the phenomenon
gives more factual insight into the character, role and impact of the media as well as more
research-based media theory.

All these developments have great relevance for a correct understanding of the
relationships between media, media culture, media education and their progress.

4. Media Education: a Process of Change

Media education takes into account the media themselves as well as the viewers and their
mutual relationships and interactions taking into consideration their life situations and
biography.

The educational approach implies that there is a consciousness of a more ideal and
desirable media reception, a process which can be described as a transition from a more
or less subconscious media reception to a more or less skilled media perception. A
guided, goal oriented and systematic reflection on concrete productions in small groups
can support this process.

The sense and the meaning, then, which the media may have for the viewer, may be
deepened through the process of media education. It has the intention of provoking
qualitative changes through its activities. It will change the viewers in the sense of
educating them towards clearer perception.

5. Media Education: a Goal-oriented and systematic Process

Media education concerns the central issues of change and formation with regard to the
media. It is steadily in search of goals, forms, methods and ways to realize this formation
in a more systematic way.

Media education nearly always takes place in a kind of stimulating group setting.

The media are depositories of religiosity, spirituality and morality. Thus, audiovisual
language can create new ways of expressing and experiencing important dimensions of
human life.

The use of didactic forms and methods as observations, guiding questions, role play have
a fundamental purpose to penetrate the contents and forms of the media.

This dimension of the method is an essential part of the media education approach.
Media education functions on the levels of knowledge, attitude and behavior.

6. Media Education: Levels of Philosophy of Life in the Media Productions

Philosophy of Life of the Viewers. Media education implies also a process of

confrontation and exchange between “the world” of the media, the media incarnated
visions on life and lifestyles and the “worlds” of the viewers, their views on life and their
lifestyles. Media education makes of its group participants in dialogue about the media
text an interpretative community in the light of the gospel.

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Philosophy of Life in Media Education. Media education asks foe explicitation of and
also reflection on the “chosen” worldview or philosophy of life, from which it has been
conceived, by which it is guided and through which it receives its concrete form.

A Christian Viewpoint and Perspective on Media Education. This media education

constructs its concept of what it has to be (identity), what it has to reach (goal) and how it
has to handle (methodology) at the background of the Christian view of life, in the light
of the gospel.

a. The Christian religion aims at constructing a world and a culture in

which life and death are meaningful for all people. Media education
from a Christian view point takes this view on Creation as well as on
Redemption as its frame of reference and perspective.
b. The Christian media education sees and values the image culture on a
more positive way. It develops a sharp eye for the specific and unique
cultural value of the image and for its spiritual force. It stimulates the
appreciation of media with aesthetic and spiritual dimensions. By doing
so it will develop sensitivity and discernment capacities for more and for
less valuable productions.
c. Media education in a Christian perspective makes an option for
constructive attitude towards the world of the media, for the real
dialogue with this world and for the development of a constructive sense
of human life and for the value of being human.

7. Working Definition

Inspired and guided by the Christian world vision,

Goal-oriented and systematic,

Educational and “dialogical” (in a group process), through which the involved
participants develop and grow in understanding and appreciation of the media
(film/TV/Video) through;

a. their stories,
b. their audio-visual language,
c. their history and genres,
d. their views on life, people and world,
e. their mirroring of culture and spirit of the time,
f. their disclosure of essentials of life and society.

8. General Objectives of Media Education

Better (Christian) understanding and perception of the media;

Process of dialogue, confrontation and clarification;

Building of “interpretative communities”;

Ordering, digesting, and integration of experiences and visions;

Growth in moral, religious and spiritual meaning;

Cultivation of the life of the spirit from a Christian viewpoint.