1 YouTube, Critical Pedagogy, and Media Activism: An Articulation Douglas Kellner and Gooyong Kim A main goal of critical pedagogy is to facilitate simultaneously individual development and social transformation for a more egalitarian and just society. As opposed to the reproductive role of education, critical pedagogy strives for the “action of dialogical Subjects upon reality in order to transform it…. [by] posing reality as a problem” (Freire, 1970, p. 168). In other words, critical pedagogy believes education to be a form of cultural politics that is fundamental to social transformation aiming to cultivate human agency and transformative activity. With the firm belief in the “potentiality of the people,” critical pedagogy equips individuals with opportunities to expose, develop and realize their human capacities through “participating in the pursuit of liberation” of themselves and society at the same time (Freire, 1970, p. 169). Therefore, due to individual differences in development and abilities, genuine education is never just a matter of a homogenized schooling during a certain time period. Essentially, education is a life-long process and search for self-fulfillment. As Dewey and Freire note, with critical perspectives on education’s role in societal as well as individual developments, it can also be a democratizing force and promote cultural revolution and social transformation. However, education today tends to be confined to schooling, that is, getting instruction as job-training, or indoctrination into established value-systems and practices. Education in a capitalist society is a kind of voucher for politico-economic success or, at least, subsistence. Furthermore, the hidden curriculum of mass media’s popular pedagogy, such as advertising, media socialization, and political propaganda, means that education in the United States, as a life-time process, tends to be controlled by dominant economic and political institutions. In other2 words, education is no longer primarily a matter of self-development, critical thought, and social progress, but is a mere matter of financial investment or ideological inculcation. Tragically, school is often no longer a live forum for liberating dialogue, but tends to be a warehouse for knowledge and skills as a matter of transmission in which “teaching for testing” becomes the norm under the banner of No Child Left Behind.1 In terms of the Enlightenment project of Western civilization which promised individual freedom, social prosperity, and universal progress, an enlightened modernity has not been achieved because of education’s failure to cultivate critical human agency with rationality and autonomy. Rather, schooling has promoted social conformity and striving for success in the competitive rat race. As a chief reason for the failure of the Enlightenment project, the monopoly of knowledge and the institutionalization of education have played a major role in strengthening conservative hegemony by eradicating critical consciousness, as well as by making school a crucial field for social, political, and ideological reproduction. With regard to the interconnection of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1980), schooling has become a quasi-monopoly control and dissemination of knowledge by established powers as a form of cultural and ideological domination, which controls knowledge to strengthen the interests of the dominant class. Consequently, Althusser (1971) correctly identifies education as a part of the Ideological State Apparatus to produce/reproduce ruling ideologies in capitalist societies. However, the innovation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has provided ordinary people with unprecedented opportunities to take on the ruling educational power structure and pedagogy. The uncontested monopoly of knowledge and the institutionalization of education can now be challenged by new media technologies, which make possible decentralized and interactive communication and a participatory model of culture and3 democracy, with multiple voices and an expanded flow of information, thus creating a new field for the conjuncture of education and democracy. In particular, dialogical two-way communication and collective “many-to-many” communication have been widely implemented with the emergence of the Internet and social networking sites. This technological development has amplified individual, voluntary participation in mutual education through proliferating new voices and visions, making possible the democratization of knowledge. In other words, conventional relationships between the producers and the consumers of knowledge have been productively challenged. Thus, the Internet has opened a space for individuals to realize Benjamin’s (1934) belief that a “reader is at all times ready to become a writer,” suggesting a new space to realize the civic engagement of modern citizens (p. 225). Consequently, individuals can become more deeply involved in the democratization of knowledge and mutual pedagogy as autonomous rational beings, thus helping to realize the dreams of the Enlightenment. With regard to the potential of ICTs for reviving a more pedagogically participatory democracy, Habermas’s (1989) notion of the “public sphere” is an important resource to examine the significance of voluntary individuals’ active engagement with the dominant reproductive model of education. Grounded in an ideal of “communicative rationality” which is based on mutual understanding and persuasion,2 Habermas (1989) believes that individuals should strive for personal autonomy and to exchange their ideas openly and reach consensus in the “universal speech situation” of the public sphere, in which there is minimum domination or manipulation and the force of the better argument prevails. Individuals can exercise mutual pedagogical practices when the ideal notion of the public sphere is embodied in their autonomous participation in discussions of their own interests, as well as by undistorted communication among themselves. In