INSIDE BLACK MIRROR: MEDIA, SOCIETY, EDUCATION. A MULTIDISCIPLINARY WORK FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIA AND AUDIOVISUAL EDUCATION AT SCHOOL

In recent years, especially in response to the pandemic, a variety of Media Education and audiovisual literacy courses have multiplied in response to the increasingly mediated experience of being in the world and onlife presence of technologies (Floridi, 2017). The contribution intends to discuss a theoretical perspective and a proposal to work with schools and extra-school contexts on and with the TV series Black Mirror to (1) gain insight into the workings of the contemporary media context; (2) expose students to the social implications of living in a mediatized world (the relationship with devices, the fine line between media control and trust, cyber stupidity, the cohabitation of public and private); (3) learn basic skills to detect and understand the use of the audiovisual language. Black Mirror is a science fiction series organized into self-contained episodes that cross different genres each time, touching in each episode a specific thematic scenario that forwards the relationship between man and technology in a possible future. This TV series perfectly meets the objectives of a “New Media Education”, allowing it to critically explore multiple characteristics of the contemporary media landscape and how its potential future impacts our lives. Therefore, the project comprises a collection of lesson plans to adopt in different school and educational contexts. The activities have been designed around images and texts from a selection of Black Mirror episodes and sequences, with ready-made scenarios and lesson plans to engage adolescents and younger people.