Media and Popular Culture as An Area of Education Research

When defining the term education we tend to narrow its meaning to something that takes place only in school. This point of view makes us unable to understand much of what is going on in contemporary education. On the other hand, contemporary media and popular culture seem to play an important role in education and processes of defining individual and collective identities. Not only do electronic media “pass on information” but also influence our life attitudes, lift boundaries between nations or social groups, and bridge the difference between what happens in and out of the school classroom. In the 1960s electronic media were perceived as “the third sphere of culture”. Nowadays they are “the first sphere of culture”, which means that they belong to “direct” or immediate culture where the participants have the opportunity to contact “face to face”. In other words, we our surrounded by the world of media and they are part of our culture. The increasing audiovisualisation of the present day changes society and provides broader perspectives on education. The separation between the sender and the receiver (teachers and students) seems to have become unimportant. Global knowledge offers the same information worldwide, no matter where we are or where we live. Modern media offer entertainment but also are an area where people live, create and negotiate meaning. This can be observed in various surveys taken, for example, on groups of soap opera fans, music or computer-games enthusiasts and others who take part in contemporary pop culture. The internet offers unrestricted communication to different subcultures and communities who thanks to it have the ability to express their opinion on a variety of issues like social events or texts that are a part of audio-visual culture. Communities nowadays originate in the context of popular culture.30911075Studia Edukacyjn