Exploring Media Advertising

MEd Research: Exploring Media Advertising through Drama with Inner-City Students (1999-2001)

Award: American Alliance for Theatre & Education Distinguished Thesis Award

This reflective practice case study involved creating and delivering a unit for inner-city high school students integrating drama and media literacy/production with a focus on advertising. It used socially critical or issues-based drama to examine the relationship between youth and media advertising, to draw out and question their meanings/understandings, towards finding appropriate ways of teaching media studies. Analysis of students’ responses to the work and the media messages they created saw these young people as sophisticated readers of advertisements who made meanings that spoke to their needs, desires and life experiences. The study forced a re-evaluation of the critical perspective brought to the teaching, which led to a more pluralistic stance that allowed the intersection of public and private realms of knowing and the acknowledgement of students’ desiring identities. In representing the research data the study took an alternative arts-based approach by depicting significant teaching/learning moments through scripted scenes.

Publications & Presentations

Conrad, D. (2010). Ads that talk back: Exploring media advertising through drama with inner-city students. Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing.

Conrad, D. (2002). Drama as arts-based pedagogy & research: Media advertising and inner-city youth. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 48(3), 254-268. Available: http://ajer.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ajer/article/view/330/0

Conrad, D. (2002). Drama, media advertising, and inner-city youth. Youth Theatre Journal, (16), 71-87. Available: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08929092.2002.10012542

Conrad, D. (2001). Exploring media advertising through drama with inner-city students. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB.

Conrad, D. (2002, March). Data collection, analysis and dissemination through drama: Exploring media advertising through drama with inner-city students. International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, Edmonton, AB.

Conrad, D. (2001, Aug.). Drama, media advertising and inner city students. American Alliance for Theatre and Education, San Diego, CA.

Conrad, D. (2001, April). Exploring media advertising through drama with inner city students. AERA, Seattle, WA.