Media Literacy Notes

Connecting Past, Present, and Future

  • Media literacy helps people explore human relationships and experiences as represented through stories and symbols.
  • For 2,500 years, there has been a debate on whether new media and technology emancipate or control people.
  • This debate started with the transition from oral to written culture.
  • People worried about the democratizing effects of writing and the displacement of memorization.
  • In the 20th century, critics recognized that films conveyed values and ideologies that could impact moral and ethical judgments.
  • Each generation grapples with rapid changes in media and technology, affecting what Bill Moyers called "the public mind."
  • During the mid-20th century, the rise of television led to growing interest in analyzing media.
  • Exploring language, images, and symbols could shed light on the economic and political power of media industries.
  • In the 1990s, people grew up in a 500-channel universe with the commercialization of the internet.
  • In the 21st century, there is a confrontation with weaponized information, algorithmic personalization, social media influencers, and fake news.
  • Media literacy can help people prepare for an unknowable future.

Expanding Literacy

  • Media literacy involves interpretation, meaning-making, and creative expression.
  • It is an expanded conceptualization of literacy.
  • Literacy includes social practices like reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
  • It is defined as the sharing of meaning through symbols.
  • Concepts like author, text, audience, message, meaning, and representation help analyze all forms of expression.
  • Related types of literacy emerged in the 1960s to incorporate different types of media and technology.
  • These terms emerged because people value new competencies for navigating the media-saturated society.
  • Related terms include:
    • Visual literacy: Understanding and creating photography, images, and graphic design.
    • Information literacy: Searching for, finding, and evaluating information sources.
    • Film literacy: Understanding narratives through images, dialogue, and sound effects.
    • News literacy: Analyzing and judging the credibility and reliability of journalism.
    • Digital literacy: Skills for using the internet and social media.
    • Data literacy: Knowledge for using data visualizations, AI, algorithms, and databases.
  • All these approaches are integrated into a coherent whole.
  • Sharing meaning through symbols is expanding because it involves making sense of and using medium-specific features.
  • Skills of reading and writing in print differ from skills of viewing or creating a video documentary.
  • Editing a print document and editing a video documentary both involve reading, analysis, organization, and strategic thinking.
  • Reading from a smartphone differs from reading from a laptop screen or a printed page.
  • Each form of media places different expectations on the reader, viewer, listener, or user.
  • In the information age, expectations regarding literacy are high.
  • Reading comprehension and good writing skills help advance in careers.

Protecting Against Harmful Media

  • Media literacy has been examined as an intervention to address problems caused by media, an approach called protectionism.
  • Parents may provide informal media literacy learning experiences at home after observing behaviors from media.
  • It is difficult for children to detach from absorbing viewing activities.
  • Parents set limits on screen time and encourage educational programs, books, and unstructured activities.
  • Some parents model talking back to media, commenting on problematic content like violence or stereotypes.
  • Media literacy offers protection from harms associated with media culture.
  • Media effects researchers study the impact of media on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
  • Social science researchers conduct empirical investigations of media literacy interventions.
  • Researchers have explored how media literacy education may help people make decisions about dietary supplements and performance-enhancing substances.
  • Researchers developed a school-based program where students talked about sports and body image.
  • Experts described the effects of supplements, focusing on persuasive information on television and social media.
  • Dialogue with athletes and psychologists explored the moral implications of doping and offered mental strategies to counteract temptations.
  • Students created antidoping public service messages.
  • The health media literacy program contributed to attitude changes and decreased use of legal dietary supplements (Lucidi et al., 2017).
  • Other work has shown the value of media literacy in addressing issues like nutrition, sexual behavior, and substance use (Kistler, Kallman & Austin, 2017).
  • Some audiences are vulnerable to negative messages because they develop expectations from media.
  • This idea is sometimes called expectancy theory.
  • Media literacy can provide protection if people have more awareness, knowledge, and control over their interpretations.
  • They are less likely to see media representations as useful for forming expectations about real life (Pinkleton et al., 2012).
  • It can minimize negative consequences of violence, depictions, cyberbullying, stereotyping, or consumer culture.
  • Media literacy is associated with increased resilience of children and youth.
  • Media literacy has proven effective in various contexts.
  • Some programs focus on one issue, while others address many topics.
  • Some involve only one or two sessions, while others are semester-long (Martens, 2010).
  • Adolescents with higher media literacy show lower levels of smoking behavior.
  • Children's fears about terrorism can be reduced by parental media literacy programs.
  • College students can recognize and resist the