By Renee Hobbs
Media Literacy IN ACTION
Questioning the Media
2nd
Edition
CHAPTER 1
What is media literacy?
CHAPTER 1
What Is Media Literacy?
Learning Outcomes
1. Define media literacy
2. Identify reasons why media literacy is important
3. Appreciate the diverse stakeholders who support media
literacy
4. Understand the theoretical principles of media literacy
5. Analyze a media text by asking critical questions as a form of
intellectual inquiry
Media literacy can change the way you see and understand the world
MEDIA LITERACY LEARNING MODEL
MEDIA LITERACY
DISCOURSE MODEL
An infographic that visualizes the set of core concepts that represent the big ideas embedded in the practice of media literacy
AUTHORS AND AUDIENCES
1. Authors create media messages for different purposes and target specific audiences.
2. Context matters in how authors and audiences create and interpret messages.
3. The economic and political system shapes how authors and audiences create and share media messages.
MESSAGES AND MEANINGS
4. Production techniques are used to construct messages.
5. The form and content of media messages contain values, ideology, and specific points of view.
6. Messages affect people's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
REPRESENTATIONS AND REALITIES
7. Messages are selective representations of reality.
8. Messages use stereotypes to express ideas and information.
9. The credibility of media messages is judged using features like authority and authenticity.
KEY IDEAS FROM CHAPTER 1
1. Developing a heightened awareness of the way you use social media, movies, videogames, news, and music media in daily life is the first step in media literacy because it helps you ask critical questions about what you watch, see, listen to, read, and play.
2. Media literacy is a lifelong learning practice that involves accessing, analyzing, creating, reflecting, and taking action, using the power of information and communication to make a difference in the world.
3. Media literacy is an expanded conceptualization of literacy in what it concerns the practice of sharing meaning through symbols that come in many different forms. There are many related terms for media literacy that refer to the knowledge, skills, competencies, and habits of mind needed to participate in media culture.
4. Media literacy protects people from potentially harmful media and helps empower them to confront media as a form of institutional and social power. Media literacy helps people resist distorted representations, evaluate the quality of media messages, and participate as citizens in democratic societies.
5. Asking critical questions about media, creating media, and reflecting on the role of media in society all help people build media literacy competencies. But as a lifelong learning practice, media literacy is always changing in response to changes in media, technology, and society.
Introduction to Media Literacy: Crash Course Media Literacy #1
I'M AN ORIGINAL CATCHPHRASE
Make a Media Literacy Meme
Apply what you learned in this chapter and use a meme generator to create a meme that expresses your thoughts and feelings about some of the key ideas of media literacy. Post and share your meme to your social network using the #MLAction hashtag.
ON WHY MEDIA LITERACY MATTERS
Reflect on one or more of the reasons why media literacy matters to you. Use the video reflection tool Flipgrid to consider these questions as you plan your informal extemporaneous response:
• How is media literacy relevant to your life?
• Which of the different motivations for media literacy make the most sense to you?
• How might people think and talk differently
about media as they develop media literacy
competencies?
• What unintended consequences might media literacy bring?
You can also view and respond to comments of other people who have offered thoughtful reflections on media literacy.
Confirm or Refute a Conspiracy Theory
Practice heightening your awareness of media by exploring a conspiracy theory that interests you. Activate your intellectual curiosity and spend time searching for information from multiple points of view. Notice the keywords and other strategies you use to access and analyze information. As you explore, pay attention to your own thoughts and feelings about what information seems more (or less) credible. Look for information that helps you to evaluate the truth value of the conspiracy theory. Share your findings with a friend and practice explaining your reasoning process
NEIL POSTMAN
“There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged” without the learner himself or herself "perceiving a problem to be worth learning” and taking an “active role in determining the process of solution.”
--Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner, 1969
Learn more about how Neil Postman influenced generations of media literacy educators and activists
