Which of the following classroom activities will help students critically look…
2024
Which of the following classroom activities will help students critically look at the role of media in society?
(a) Asking students to have a classroom discussion on the topic ‘can the govt. prevent certain news from being aired on T.V? Why might it do so?’
(b) Asking students to bring clippings from different newspapers on the same issue and make comparisons regarding how they have reported it.
(c) Asking students to collect news items they have received in whatsapp groups or through social media platforms and using them as pedagogic resources.
Choose the correct option:
- A.
(a) and (b)
- B.
(a) and (c)
- C.
(b) and (c)
- D.
(a), (b) and (c)
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Critical media literacy is the ability to question a media message's source, motive, and framing rather than to accept or simply reproduce it. In teaching, an activity builds this ability only when it requires students to interrogate why a report says what it says, or to compare how different sources represent the same event; an activity that only gathers material without such an analytical step does not by itself develop this skill.
Activity (a) has students discuss whether the government can stop certain news from airing on TV and why it might do so — this directly makes students interrogate motives behind media control. Activity (b) has students collect newspaper clippings on one issue from different papers and compare how each has reported it — this directly makes students analyse differences in framing and bias across sources. Activity (c) has students gather news items received on WhatsApp or social media and use them as classroom material, but it specifies no comparison, verification, or interrogation step, so collecting alone does not build critical analysis of media.
(a) and (c) is incomplete: (a) is analytical, since it makes students interrogate the motives behind censorship, but (c) is only collection without a built-in critical step, so this combination does not consistently build critical media analysis.
(b) and (c) is incomplete for the same reason: comparing newspaper reports in (b) is analytical, while collecting social-media items in (c) is not.
(a), (b) and (c) together still includes (c), the non-analytical collection activity, so the full set is not the tightest correct combination.
Only (a) and (b) consistently require students to question and compare media content, so ‘(a) and (b)’ is the correct option.