Media Literacy

Key Concepts of Media Literacy

Because there are many different types of genres and formats within specific media and communication technologies, media literacy programs may address these specific forms directly. For example, media literacy programs have included a focus on critical analysis of newspapers and television news, print and TV advertising, magazines, popular music, contemporary film, and participatory media such as video games and the Internet. Many media literacy advocates and educators make use of a unifying framework: key concepts or questions that identify the central ideas associated with media literacy learning. The key concepts can be explored with children of different ages and [Page 650]with different types of media messages. These include the following:

• 1.
  Messages are constructions. The media do not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, media messages are carefully crafted constructions that are the result of many decisions and determining factors.
• 2.
  Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules. Individual media messages can be recognized within specific genres (like cartoons, news, advertising, romance, horror, biography). Media messages make use of symbol systems and codes and conventions that can be verbal, visual, auditory, musical, narrative, or digital. For example, in narrative films for children, the bumbling or evil adult is a character stereotype that is commonly used in creating conflict.
• 3.
  Audiences actively interpret messages. People construct meaning as they consume media messages. Message interpretation varies according to individual factors such as developmental level, personal needs and anxieties, situational factors, racial and sexual attitudes, and family and cultural backgrounds.
• 4.
  Media have embedded values and points of view. Explicitly or implicitly, media express ideological messages about issues such as human nature, social roles, authority and power, and the distribution of resources. Media messages provide the majority of the observations and experiences that people use to develop personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of people's sense of reality is based on media messages that contain representations that have been specifically constructed to embody points of view, attitudes, and values.
• 5.
  Media have commercial implications and exist within an economic context. Media literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how economics and power affect message content, production techniques, and distribution. Many media products that children and young people consume are created as part of global business interests. Questions of ownership and control are important because a relatively small number of individuals decide what others watch, read, and hear in the media.

International Perspectives on Media Literacy

Most people would agree that Great Britain has the most well-established program of media literacy education in the world. Media education first appeared in the 1930s in England from a classical tradition of literary criticism, which established a premise that modern society and its cultural manifestations were alienating and mechanistic. Scholars began moving away from a “high culture/low culture” dichotomy toward analyzing the media through an examination of authorship, audience reception, meaning-making, and cultural identity in a sociocultural context. In 1985, Len Masterman's book Teaching the Media became widely influential, reaching an international audience of scholars and educators with interests in media literacy. By 1989, media education was mandated as a compulsory part of British education and located as a subject area within English. Many organizations have been important in supporting the work of teachers and students, including the British Film Institute, the English and Media Centre, the Institute on Education at London University, and many others.

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