COMMON LAB MANUAL: KEY THEORETICAL CONCEPTS​
TALE OF X CITIES - MEDIA COMPETENCES FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING & EMPOWERMENT

​Text: Sotirios Bahtstezis

One of the main goals of Common Lab focuses on media literacy, civic engagement, participatory culture, and digital education. For the past decade, scholars have lamented the loss of traditional indicators for civic engagement, including attending town hall meetings, participating in civic groups, and voting in local elections. While these measures still have a place in the framework for “good citizenship”, they are increasingly distant from the reality of what participation looks like for societies increasingly linked by media technologies (Mihailidis and Thevenin 2013). On a large scale, the evolution of "networked social movements" (Castells, 2012), organised largely around digital tools and social media platforms, is reshaping civic engagement not only in the case of large-scale civic and political uprisings, but also in the context of daily engagement with personal and public matters. As Mihailidis and Thevenin (2013) maintain, already in 1985, long before any Twitter revolution, the advent of social media, and even the consumer Internet, media scholar Len Masterman wrote, "Media education is an essential step in the long march towards a truly participatory democracy, and the democratisation of our institutions. Widespread media literacy is essential if all citizens are to wield power, make rational decisions, become effective change-agents, and have an effective involvement with the media." (Masterman 1985:13) While much has changed in the past decades, this argument remains just as (and arguably more) valid as when Masterman wrote it. The rise of "fake news" and large-scale media propaganda campaigns during the Donald Trump administration or the Putin regime and the dangers to democracy that these entail, made more than evident the need to instigate educational projects that produce media literate citizens.

Scholars and educators discuss media literacy as the ability not just to read visual texts but also to situate them in relation to broader social, cultural, and political contexts. According to Mihailidis and Thevenin (2013) in learning to critically read media messages, citizens are developing the abilities to gather accurate, relevant information about their society and to question authority (both textual and, by implication, institutional). Hobbs stresses the role that media literacy plays in society, “because it emphasises a critique of textual authority, invites to identify the cultural codes that structure an author’s work, understand how these codes function as part of a social system, and disrupt the text through alternative interpretations”. (Hobbs 1998:22).
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According to Mihailidis and Thevenin (2013) the three core dispositions of media literate citizens are: 

• critical thinkers, 
• effective creators and communicators,
• agents of social change.

This model is centered around four core medial literacy competencies for a participatory age:

• participatory competency,
• collaborative competency,
• expressive competency, 
• critical competency.

The first focuses on enabling skills that “make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (Jenkins et al., 2009, p. 8). The second extends both bonding and bridging social capital (Putnam, 2000) to help situate the engaged citizen in environments where they recognise the capacity they have to form connections and extend their communications to a large group of interested peers. The third focuses on the media content that citizens are posting and sharing. By focusing on the creation, dissemination, and reception of individual expression, citizens can reflect on the content of their voice, and also on the power they have to be part of a larger civic dialogue. The fourth focuses on individuals being able to critically view and engage with the media messages that they encounter on a daily basis (Lopez, 2008). 

In line with this thinking, Tale of X Cities aims at helping to empower civic voices for the future of sustainable, tolerant, and participatory democracy in the digital age. Tale of X Cities brought together for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021 more than 20 institutions and 150 participants from 12 cities across Northern Greece rounding up its first year with a festival that took place online and in public spaces in all the participating cities. The participants' works, bringing us stories from their cities, and local events by the partner institutions, were presented alongside talks and discussions that explored the essence of the project and highlighted its future possibilities. The aim of the programme, which continues beyond Common Lab, is to familiarise the participants with the use of new means of information and communication technology (which is now emerging as a necessary skill), and to explore the relationship between the physical and digital environment. The programme also aims to create communities of people of different ages, through the acquaintance with the local history, traditions, personal narratives and contemporary reflections, which can lead to a new image of the city, for residents and visitors. Finally, through the process of the workshop and the final Festival, the programme aims to encourage the networking of the different cities of Northern Greece that participate. 

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Bibliography

​Castells, M., Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012.

​Hobbs, Renee, “The seven great debates in the media literacy movement”, Journal of Communication, 48(1), (1998): 16-32.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K., & Robinson, A. J., Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. A report for the MacArthur Foundation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

Lopez, A., Mediacology: A multicultural approach to media literacy in the 21st century. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2008.

​Masterman, L., Teaching the media. London, UK: Routledge, 1985.

Mihailidis, Paul and Benjamin Thevenin, “Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy”, American Behavioral Scientist XX(X) 1–12 (2013): 1-12.

Putnam, R., Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
About Common Lab
​Background
Timeline

ACTIVITIES RATIONALE 
​Tale of X Cities & media competences for community building
State of the Arts & the digital public spheres

KEY THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
​Social innovation through art
​Art for social change
​Post-industrial design
Cultural and creative industries
Bibliography

CASE STUDY: TALE OF X CITIES
​About the case study
​Tale of X Cities key results & findings
​Lessons learned & recommendations 
Model project flow
​Media productions as evaluation tool
​Digital events and communication formats