[tsl/leadership] Fireside Workshop: Smoke & Mirrors
Brainstorming about and then deconstructing the ways alcohol and tobacco advertisements work in our society
Last night we had our first Fireside Workshop for May, titled Smoke & Mirrors: A Look at Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing. The workshop was made up of very classic media literacy exercises. We spent time thinking specifically about the reasons that alcohol and tobacco use happen, what the negatives effects of use and abuse are, and the role that marketing plays in shaping a culture where these activities are accepted to large degrees, especially within youth culture. After some discussion about what demographics are and why they're important to advertising, we took a look at a number of tobacco and cigarette ads to do a little deconstruction of the messages being sent, who the ads were targeting and what stories about the products being sold weren't being told.
The workshop went over well, very smoothly. Almost too smoothly actually. The teens there seemed completely comfortable with the activities we did, and pretty much didn't bat an eyelash when they had the opportunity to peel back the veneer of an advertisement's narrative and look at what's under the hood. At the end of the workshop, I thought I'd just ask how many people there had done similar activities to this before. I was amazed! Every single teen there had the done the same thing in the past, in health class! To me, this is revolutionary. When I was in high school (and I'm not that old), we didn't even have health class, let alone one that taught media literacy. Moments like that give me a little hope that our mainstream educational system might actually be improving in certain areas.
On a sidenote, this workshop was the first time I used a published Google Doc to display brainstorms that a group had on a prim, and it worked brilliantly. Doing this is pretty simple, but really powerful. See here for instructions on how to implement it.
