Institutional narratives of the shift to media literacy: Interviewing New Zealand’s Office of Film and Literature Classification

Abstract

This article presents a case study of media literacy deployment in contemporary media regulation through interviews with New Zealand’s Chief Censor and other key staff members in the Office of Film and Literature Classification. The interviews offer an account of how media literacy came to be adopted as a prominent strategy within their policy remit. This article explores how the institutional narrative reconciles their media literacy approaches and core classification work, finding four key discursive and practical strategies: integrating, expanding, reconceptualizing and reasserting relevance. The analysis also reveals how the standpoint of media as a site of potential harm shapes the meaning of media literacy in this institutional context. This case study provides insight into the utility of media literacy for contemporary media regulation, examining how a classification agency navigates change and continuity in the face of a challenging and rapidly evolving media landscape.