Media, power and identity: Critical media education for students of social work

This paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of the module entitled 'Critical Approaches to the Media Environment' (a part of the basic course on communication offered to Masters' level students of social work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences) as well as the pedagogical strategies employed to involve students in a process of critical media education. These strategies include the collective analysis of the discourses of popular media artifacts, as well as other exercises, which help to foreground the media construction of reality and the self.