Ypulse Interview: Renee Hobbs, Goddess Of Media Literacy

Renee Hobbs is not just a Goddess, she's a professor at Temple University and one of the masterminds behind MyPopStudio, which is a multimedia project designed to teach media literacy to tween girls (who we all know are being targeted with more and more marketing). Renee will also deliver the lunchtime keynote at the Tween Mashup in New York. And now… the interview.

Ypulse: Why do you think girls need a site or experience like MyPopStudio?

Renee Hobbs: Girls need the experience of the web adventure My Pop Studio for several reasons. First of all, girls need media literacy skills to be able to critically consume entertainment media, popular culture, advertising, product placement, and celebrity culture — all of which have a significant influence on girls' social, mental, physical, and emotional development. When we talk to girls about dieting and nutrition, cosmetic surgery and the beauty ideal, we can see how their ideas are shaped by parents, peers, and mass media and popular culture.

Increasingly, girls are spending more time online for a wide range of entertainment and informational activities, but television and popular culture are still dominant sources of sources. Many tweens have strong emotional attachments to celebrities like Fergie, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Media and popular culture messages constantly tell them what they should look like, what they should do, and who they should be.

Because there are no national media literacy standards in our schools, it is important that we develop and disseminate media literacy in a variety of formats to reach children and youth. Parents can introduce My Pop Studio to their children as a way to have an opportunity to initiate dialogue about media literacy by interacting with the program with their daughters.

Many online games are not designed with girls in mind and those that are dominant in the marketplace are replete with stereotypes that emphasize mindless consumerism. Girls have specific design and content preferences in online games that usually are not found in mainstream games which target boys. We've busted the stereotype that girls don't like online games — because they do — but we just need to appeal to their needs and preferences, and that is what My Pop Studio aims to do.

My Pop Studio was designed to be a vehicle to introduce media literacy skills to tween girls through games about media that combine education and entertainment. There are two major learning goals that we want girls to walk away with: 1) There are many choices involved in the construction of media messages; and 2) Media messages convey values and belief systems. These two ideas are foundational concepts of media literacy and represent basic knowledge for tweens to thrive in a technology-rich and media-saturated society.

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YP: This generation of tweens/teens are often characterized as very media savvy — in many ways because they have been marketed to from day one. Would you agree with this characterization? Is there a difference between being a great b.s. detector and being media literate?

RH: Yes, there is a huge difference. Being cynical about advertising is not the same as being media literate. Tween girls are moving into a time period where they can think more abstractly. But girls don't immediately recognize how values messages are encoded into advertising, popular music, movies or online communication. Most 10 to 12 year old girls aren't even familiar with the term "media." They can't usually define the word. Each medium is independent for them — videogames, the Internet, TV, magazines, music. When girls start to think about media in a systematic way, as part of an institutional system, they notice patterns in how the world is represented, what kinds of values are emphasized (and what is ignored). That's the beginning of critical thinking.

Most kids know advertisers want them to buy things and the goal of most media is to make money, but they have not thought more deeply, nor developed critical thinking skills about media. The goal is for kids to become critical media consumers.

Of course, parents and marketers always talk about how skillful kids are with using technology tools. They can upload and download photos as fast as lightning, can't they? But just being able to use media tools doesn't necessarily give kids insight on how they work on us, how they influence us, how and why they matter. Media are a powerful and pervasive influence in kids' lives, and media literacy helps kids pull back the layers to look "behind the scenes" and question media messages. A media literate kid is often asking questions about media and thinking critically about their media choices and experiences. They are developing some awareness of how media effects themselves on a personal level — their thoughts, values, beliefs, and behavior. Tweens can make discriminations between high-quality media and poor-quality media if they've been exposed to conversations with media literate adults or participated in activities where critical thinking about media is explored.

Kids today are characterized as media savvy, but in reality, most tweens cannot answer basic questions of media literacy, such as: Who is the author and what is the purpose of the message? What techniques are used to attract your attention? What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented? How might different people interpret the message differently? What is missing from the message? Instead, they simply use technology tools and react to media messages. Some kids appropriate media images as a substitute for the more difficult challenge of developing a unique personal identity. If kids don't recognize media messages as constructions — messages that have a purpose and a point of view– that's potentially dangerous for kids and for the culture as a whole.

YP: What is the most popular activity on the site? Why do you think it is the most popular?

RH: The most popular activity on the site, from our web traffic results, observations, and interviews of girls, is Popstar Producer — an activity in the Music Studio section of the site. In this activity, girls can create their own pop star and watch her perform a song. They start by choosing a "value message" that they want the star to convey, create the star's name, and then choose how they want her to look and what she wears. They go on to construct a song by choosing a beat, instruments, musical genre, lyrics — and even sound effects. One of the reasons this activity is the most popular is because, simply, girls enjoy paper-doll activities where they get to name, dress, and manipulate a character. We know this from our research on girls' game preferences and also from our observations of girls online.

And of course, in an age where American Idol is one of the top viewed shows for this age group, creating a "star" is appealing. By looking at the mass media, it appears that becoming a celebrity is the ultimate accomplishment in 21st century America . Girls like being in charge, spending time changing the way a character looks or what she does. On Pop Star Producer, we have found that many tween girls name the Pop Star and design her after themselves. They get to design a cartoon star version of themselves and "try on" different identities through their star. This kind of creative identity play is an important part of their development.

Girls really like to see the end result of their choices in a final performance. Girls can also vote on other girls' pop stars and try to guess the value message the creator was trying to send, and they can also submit comments to the message board for other girls to read. Several girls we interviewed said they enjoyed reading what other people thought about things. They use the message boards to promote their characters and comment on how values messages are depicted through a character's choice of clothing, lyrics, and even musical genre. Many of the comments on the site show that, through playing on the site, tween girls are beginning to realize how value messages — good and bad — are communicated through celebrity images and popular music.

Responsible parents can't help but notice how media shape a child's developing sense of personal identity. For example, most of the media executives I have met over the years are highly responsible in ensuring that their own children don't have excessive exposure to media and technology and are active in talking to their children about how media is constructed. Media literacy educators just want every tween in America to have that luxury.

YP: What is one of the more interesting ways a girl has used the exercises on the site? Share an anecdote or epiphany….

RH: Several girls have commented on how they notice music in advertising after they have played "Selling with a Song," an activity that lets girls explore how music affects one's feelings about various products. We have clear evidence from interviews with girls that this activity changes the ways girls see advertising.

But our most dramatic insights have come from observing the difference between how parents and educators use the site as compared with how girls use the site. There is a game in the Digital Studio called Are You a Multi-Tasker? It offers girls a challenging multitasking task (doing several media-related activities involving mental concentration, reading and organizing, all at once). When girls play this game, they are usually quick and have no major problems finishing the game. They describe it as fun! However, when we introduce parents and educators to the game, they usually do terribly and get very frustrated. That is a key example of the difference in today's kids growing up in a media-saturated environment where multitasking is the norm.

YP: Are there examples of commercial media for girls where they get it right? That is, are there for-profit magazines, TV shows, musicians that you think do a great job encouraging media literacy for girls?

RH: We like Girls Life, a magazine for girls that targets tweens with appropriate messages about health, school, and relationships. This magazine (and website) combines high interest activities with age-appropriate and highly engaging messages. We also like Pink's great video, "Stupid Girls" which we have used with tweens in small-group discussions to explore gender stereotypes.

We like the Dove Self-Esteem Fund "Evolution" video to teach girls about photographic manipulations and unrealistic beauty ideals. We are also big fans of New Moon Magazine. New Moon magazine promotes writing and reading skills for girls and gives them tremendous editorial control over the publication of their magazine. Last year, we watched Geena Davis give an inspiring speech to tween girls and their parents about the over representation of male characters in film and television and we’re big fans of her "See Jane" initiative with Dads and Daughters, the non-profit parent organization.

YP: Following up on the last question, what are some practical ways commercial media or marketers could help promote media literacy or be more transparent about what they do?

RH: You mentioned transparency — and this is something that marketers can do to promote media literacy skills among tweens. Being transparent about the process of creating messages is an important part of helping young people understanding the marketing process. Our advice: create a “behind the scenes” video online about how a commercial (or a website or a videogame) is made. Show how researchers gather information about the target audience, and the different jobs involved in making media, for instance. Create "media smart moments" or "did you know" mini-lessons where kids are shown how your business works, how your message was created, and the implications of it. Transparency is a key "new media literacy" skill that Henry Jenkins identifies in his book, Convergence Culture. Since we are all becoming simultaneous producers and consumers of culture, we need increased opportunities to learn how the game is played.

In our interviews with tween girls, we have found that they love transparency. We're doing a viral marketing campaign for My Pop Studio, going into chat rooms like Habbo Hotel and games like Webkinz. We're talking about viral marketing with them, teaching them about it, showing how it works. Girls are fascinated to learn about the new forms of influence that are being used online, and it also makes them curious about our website, too. We need to pull back the curtain on viral marketing that targets children and youth.

Here are some other things that commercial media can do to help:

Help support media literacy at the grass-roots level: Find teacher partners in your child's school or offer to volunteer to offer a media literacy workshop in your child's school.

Support national media literacy initiatives like the Alliance for a Media Literate America through partnership projects and other kinds of sponsorship. It's just good politics to show support for media literacy — but it gets tiresome to go to conferences and hear so many people just talking about it — without offering the kind of leadership and vision that is needed now. To get the media literacy movement closer to the "tipping point," we need resources to bring curricula and teacher training into schools.

Encourage federal initiatives that support media literacy education through the Federal Communication Commission and the Department of Education.

Integrate media literacy concepts into existing entertainment products. Networks and websites for tweens like The N could easily incorporate media literacy concepts into interstitials and the website to help students develop critical thinking skills about mass media and popular culture.

YP: Anything else you want Ypulse readers to know before the Tween Mashup?

RH: Those of us at the Temple's Media Education Lab are excited for the possibilities that happen when people combine forces to develop new initiatives. There people in the media business who genuinely want to develop media literacy skills in kids, and we believe that media makers and educators can form significant partnerships to make this happen.

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