Through a Distorted Lens

Book excerpt: This volume examines what and how the media teach, to and by whom, and for what purpose, in a rapidly shifting milieu of media content, platforms, and relations. While intimately concerned with education, authors move the discussion beyond the setting of formal schooling to uncover the ways in which the media contribute to individual and collective understandings of self and other, and their relations to society and communities in which they move. In doing so, the text encourages readers to transcend exclusionary discussions of citizenship to consider participation in local and global geographies against a neoliberal backdrop that marginalizes those unable to, unwilling to, and excluded from competing in the free market. Contributors extend their deliberations back to formal school settings to reaffirm pedagogies that rediscover the reading of texts—broadly defined—in the world through multimodalities. In this sense, the text strives to be transdisciplinary, and is appropriate for use in multiple disciplines and fields of study.