Article:

Experiencing Responsibility: A Phenomenological Approach to the Teaching of Media Ethics

One central concept in media ethics – and more broadly, in the field of applied ethics in general– is “responsibility”. The contribution asks how can the term “responsibility” productively be considered in the class room? Since responsibility is always tied to agents, their actions and the consequences of these actions, the agents involved in the spaces of production, representation and consumption are identified. The phenomenological method of “lived experience” on which I draw as a pedagogical framework offers a particularly fruitful approach to put responsibility into practice. The framework puts the students’ viewing experience at the center of the considerations. In the second part of the contribution the considerations are discussed in the context of the short documentary 4.1 Miles (Daphne Matziaraki, GR/US 2016, 22 minutes). The film deals with the refugee crisis on the Greek island Lesbos, following the captain of a coast guard ship with his crew.