Media Literacy Education in Russia: Soviet Cineclubs and Critical Thinking: Report of Dr. Elizaveta Friesem, Temple University, USA and Dr. Alexander Fedorov, Anton Chekhov Taganrog State Pedagogical Institute, Russia.
Teaching audiences to critically engage with media messages is one of the main goals of media literacy education. In this paper we analyze the phenomenon of Soviet cineclubs, focusing on the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. Having described in detail one representative example, we ask: Can we claim that Russian cineclubs contributed to the developments of their participants’ critical thinking skills? We offer argumentat ion for both an affirmative and a negative answer, thus encouraging the reader to think not only about the history of media literacy education, but also about its current state, about the nature of the field and its pur...
