Co-authors: M. Solomon & M. Keats

Last week's #K12Media chat focused on representation (a reflection post on the specific topics will follow shortly). We decided that the topic would benefit from further discussion and this week's chat will once again be focused on representation.

This week will be directed toward the ways the white supremacy is being constructed & reconstructed within and across a variety of media platforms.

We offer you these very preliminary prompts and entry points for discussion.

We will surely pick up on these threads during the chat Monday evening, but we hope that you will begin conversations with your students.

Some key questions to ask (of any article, image etc):

• What is represented? What is missing?

• Is there any evidence that might point to how these aspects of the representation were selected? What might those observations reveal?

• Who has authored this piece? What biases and perspectives might they bring to the depictions within the piece?

• What choices are made in the representation (these choices may be visual - placement, images, content-related -whose voices are included/excluded, what evidence is presented, etc.)

• How do these choices/selections reveal attitudes, values, and beliefs of both the creator and the reader?

• What version of reality does the representation present? Who benefits? How might it be challenged?

• How might deconstructing representations help us to better understand ourselves and our world?

We have also gathered a variety of authors/perspectives; these are available via the cross posting of this topic in its entirety on the Association for Media Literacy website. These have been selected because we feel that they help us to better understand white supremacy and our colonial past and present. They challenge the representations of the Gerald Stanley trial and verdict in profoundly important ways.