Pursuing Social Justice Through Media
As a Year 4 BMS student, Eden shares her journey in the BMS program and how her studies allowed her to see the power of media to do good in the world. Eden strives to combine the worlds of academia with art and media technology to advance social justice and empower and uplift marginalized voices.
Following Creative Dreams by Pursuing Media Studies
Eden has always had an interest in film and photography. As a child, she would express her creativity by making stop motion videos with their LEGO, and as a teenager, with the encouragement of her high school photography teacher, Eden developed a love for capturing and editing surreal photographs and this would lead to a pivotal shift in her life. While she was also skilled in the sciences, Eden decided to lean into their creative side to pursue her passion for multimedia art as an avenue to express herself. After hearing about the UBC Bachelor of Media Studies program during her final year in high school, she discovered it was the perfect program for her. BMS not only offered theoretical knowledge in Media, it also offered extensive hands-on practical and technical experience in over eight UBC media-related departments, allowing Eden to study and experiment with different forms of media.
Every Moment, A Part of Me Dies is a photography project Eden produced for an assignment in one of the first-year BMS Core Courses, VISA 110: Foundation Studio: Digital Media.
Eden especially enjoyed the ENGL 232: Approaches to Media course. Being her first dive into the theoretical world of Media Studies, it provided a new perspective on the world – allowing her to see the “invisible language” of media and how media, culture, and technology are all linked together. Through this course, Eden found a new avenue to pursue social justice and the capabilities of media to do good. She learned that the affordances of media don’t need to only be utilized by “the powers that be”, they can be used to help uplift marginalized communities. Courses like VISA 241: Introduction to Digital Art also expanded Eden’s artistic abilities and showed her the capabilities of creating art with artificial intelligence, helping to refine her digital artistic practice and also develop hard skills that are transferrable to passion projects and the workplace.
Eden created this piece by feeding the text prompt “homosexual love” into VQGAN+CLIP, a generative adversarial network (GAN) machine learning model trained on a vast dataset of random internet material. The resulting image, born of the internet’s unconscious, features a fleshy, gelatinous mass of intertwined bodies that seems to reflect normative cultures’ hypersexualization of queer bodies.
Cohort Feels like Family
Eden attributes much of her love for the BMS program to its cohort-based structure, allowing her and her classmates to feel like a family, go to classes together, share notes, and provide support for each other.
One of Eden’s most memorable moments was taking the INFO 250: Networks, Crowds, and Communities course with her friends. She had the opportunity to work with a local neighbourhood house – helping her develop a social media strategy and seeing its direct impact on the community organization. Developing this project along with her peers allowed her to establish strong bonds of friendship that she continues to cherish today.
Eden also reminisced about her first year when she and a few members of her cohort would gather every Friday night to watch a movie together, greatly complementing their experience in the first-year core course, FIST 100: Introduction to Film Studies.
Screen capture of Alzheimer’s Is A Bomb, a transmedia poetry project Eden created for CRWR 213: Introduction to Writing for the New Media, another first-year BMS Core Course. The project is dedicated to her grandmother who had recently been diagnosed with dementia and deals with themes of memory, family and grief. You can find the project here: www.alzheimers-is-a-bomb.com/.
Developing Critical Thinking Skills
For Eden, one of the most important skills that she has developed during her time in the BMS is the ability to think critically and “read against the grain”. This has allowed Eden to better understand the systemic nature of oppression, appreciate the inevitable nuances of life, and think critically about what it means to be human. Eden shared that while scientific thinking can be very absolute, “always trying to ascribe order onto the world”, media studies affords her the ability to avoid forcing the world into a box. Instead, it has allowed her to grow comfortable with the inevitable chaos and unknowns that mark our lives. Specifically, Eden sees the potential to use media to advocate for social justice. The critical thinking skills Eden developed would prove to be highly beneficial in her career pursuits, where she was empowered to speak up and advocate for herself, unafraid to suggest unique and creative ideas in a professional setting.
Pursuing a Career in Media Studies and Empowering Marginalized Communities
During one of Eden’s Arts Co-op work placements, she worked with the Kwikwetlem First Nation as Communications Coordinator. She learned how to serve the Indigenous community and the importance of highlighting other people’s voices while knowing how, and where, your own voice matters. During this experience, Eden saw the potential to use media for social progress, and its capabilities to empower Indigenous, and other historically marginalized communities.
Using the knowledge and skills she learned from the diverse new media and interactive media courses she took in the BMS program, Eden is currently working as a Marketing Co-op for Archiact, a virtual reality game development studio based in Vancouver. Through this experience, Eden is learning about the technical side of digital art, and what marketing looks like for a gaming company in one of the fastest-growing media industries in the world.
Eden also joined the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee at Archiact, where she is dedicated to lifting up marginalized voices in the company. For example, when her game development team was creating a non-binary character, Eden spoke up about the special responsibilities of writing a non-binary character from her own personal experiences, and her studies in the BMS have supported them in advocating for their values.
Eden has enjoyed Media Studies so much that she plans to pursue a graduate degree specializing in media after graduating. She is not sure exactly what form this will take yet, but she is interested in how media interacts with queer and trans identities, and in creating more space for queerness in media.
Screen capture of the website Eden developed for the Kwikwetlem First Nation during her co-op work term with them. This page features an interactive language guide Eden created so that settlers can familiarize themselves with the proper pronunciation of a handful of important hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ words and phrases. You can visit the website here: www.kwikwetlem.com/.
“Media Studies will equip you with the language to articulate the complex, and often invisible relationships between media, technology and culture. It’s our responsibility to use that language to advocate for those who don’t have a voice.”
To view more of Eden’s work, please visit her website and/or social media page:
Website: https://www.edenstephanson.com/
Instagram (portfolio): https://www.instagram.com/by_estephanson/
