It's About Understanding

The Media Awareness Network believes media is, “the ability to sift through and analyze the messages that inform, entertain and sell to us every day. It's the ability to bring critical thinking skills to bear on all media— from music videos and Web environments to product placement in films and virtual displays on NHL hockey boards. It's about asking pertinent questions about what's there, and noticing what's not there. And it's the instinct to question what lies behind media productions— the motives, the money, the values and the ownership— and to be aware of how these factors influence content.”

Being media literate means you are able to analyze and understand the events or messages around you. The Media Awareness Network proposes three stages to being in control of the media around us: to choose what and when “what media to view, to ask questions concerning it’s production and what has been left out, and to ask, Who produces the media we experience—and for what purpose? Who profits? Who loses? And who decides?”

Media literacy is a skill that can always be mastered.

The Centre for Media Literacy says there are five core concepts and five key questions in Media Literacy:

Five Core Concepts
1. All media messages are constructed.
2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
3. Different people experience the same messages differently.
4. Media have embedded values and points of view.
5. Media messages are constructed to gain profit and/or power.

Five Key Questions
1. Who created this message?
2. What techniques are used to attract my attention?
3. How might different people understand this message differently from me?
4. What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?
5. Why was this message sent?

Having said this, media literacy can take all forms. In our Mass Communications course we are introduced to five different styles of writing and presenting a point of view in the books we are expected to read. The following are some examples of what the audience understands when reading these book: Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs is a biased view of the author Chuck Klosterman, Ways of Seeing by John Berger looks at different forms of art throughout history and analyzes their context, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud presents many aspects of visual communication: visual iconography and history. Being introduced to these books is a form of media literacy—trying to understand their context and ask question (shown through class discussions).


Works Cited


"Media Literacy." 2009. Media Awareness Network, Web. 7 Oct 2009. .