Visual Literacy in International Relations: Teaching Critical Evaluative Skills through Fictional Television

This article explores how students experience fictional television as part of their broader learning experience. In particular, the article investigates the potential role of fictional television in the development of visual literacy and critical evaluative skills. The article reports the findings of an experiment into critical evaluative viewing, which measures the foreign policy beliefs of students after exposure to two contrasting episodes of NBC's The West Wing. The results indicate that students are influenced by fictional television, but in perhaps unexpected ways. Although nuanced, the findings suggest that students demonstrate and develop critical evaluative skills—and visual literacy—in two different ways. First, students oppose the fictional/political message to which they are exposed. And, second, students reject the options that are presented to them in their totality. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for teaching critical evaluative skills and visual literacy.