What is Media Literacy?
And Why it's Necessary For Media Consumers to be Literate
Creators of media make their living from being media literate. Consumers need the basic information necessary to critique the messages that shape our values and culture.
Simply defined, media literacy is the act of learning to use critical thinking skills to analyze the truly staggering number of messages we are bombarded with daily. While it is true that many of these messages come in the form of advertising, everything from billboards to matchbook covers, “selling” products is only the tip of the media iceberg.
Other than a few brief lessons concerning the evils of advertising in elementary school, most Americans receive little if any real media literacy education. Purveyors of mass media however, spend thousands of hours studying what has truly become a science as well as an art: Media Literacy
Media Literacy = Experiencing, analyzing and MAKING media products.
When most Americans hear the phrase, "The Media", what comes to mind initially is the news media. We tend to think of the media as either broadcast or print news journalism. While technically accurate, this is only part of the picture. Mass media in its entirety consists of not only "The News" but all television and print mediums as well as radio, Internet, the movie industry and anything else that fits the definition of Mass Media.
Mass Media: Any medium that is used to deliver a "message" on a large scale to a mass audience.
Becoming media literate doesn't require a large investment in time or study, but it does require acknowledging one's own personal media consumption habits and committing to monitor this "media diet" with the goal of understanding - "Why do I spend so much time with this form of media? What does it do for me? What is the emotional "payoff"?" - and reducing personal time spent with various media products. Most people consistently underestimate the power of media messages while overestimating their own personal power to resist these messages.
Using critical thinking skills when exposed to any type of media becomes easier with practice. An unconscious consumer of media perpetuates the problem.
- Become educated about the inner workings and techniques of media creation.
- Learn to recognize that all messages in all media forms are targeted messages, not simply the advertisements and commercials.
- Asking the tough questions about these messages is the difference between an unconscious consumer and a media literate user of media products.
Media literacy is often based not on what you know... but on what you ask.
- "Who is this message intended for?"
- "Who wants to reach this group and why?
- "What emotional "hook" is being relied on to grab the attention of consumers?" (ex. - Feeling popular or fear of embarrassment)
- "Who produced this piece of media? For what purpose?"
- "Who profits from it?"
- "Who loses?"
- "What view is being promoted? What view is missing?"
With recent changes in the law allowing large scale convergence of all types of media, an informed and critical understanding of the media is crucial now ,more than ever, in American society. As we receive more of our information from fewer unrelated sources and the effects of these sources on our culture steadily increases, it becomes imperative that private citizens take the business of media as seriously as the corporations who are controlling it.
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