Media Literacy

What is Media Literacy? 

Media literacy is the next level when it comes to media skills. It is a critical thinking skill. This consists of knowing how to interpret and use what is presented to us on the media. This includes ideas such as being aware of the fact that no media maker tells the whole truth. Also, that people use their background knowledge to interpret what the media says, which is considered the subtext of the media. Having media literacy means that you are aware that everything the media does it done with a purpose and meaning behind it. 

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Rheingold's "Attention and Other 21st Century Social Media Literacies" 

Howard Rheingold take the idea of media literacy and breaks it down into five main literacies. These literacies are all interconnected and linked together. 

Attention: 

Rheingold's first media literacy is attention. In Rheingold's article, he states, "attention is the fundamental building block for how individuals think, how humans create tools and teach each other to use them, how groups socialize, and how people transform civilizations" (pg. 16). He speaks about how people are multi-taskers when it comes to attention. Students in particular need to be able to focus their attention on many different medias and know when to focus on one specific media. 

Participation: 

Participation has to do with becoming an active citizen of the media rather than a passive citizen. This means that students are working and creating their own media. This might be responding to media that is already available, or creating media of their own on things like Twitter or a Blog. 

Collaboration: 

The third media literacy according to Rheingold is collaboration. This refers to the idea that so much more collaboration is available now that we have more advanced technology. When people collaborate through media they are able to create big change in the world. This is the idea that two heads are better than one. 

Network Awareness: 

Rheingold speaks about his fourth media literacy as something that is much more complicated. This media literacy requires people to be aware of how the networks we participate in may influence the media that we see. We need to be aware that each network might present something in a different way, and that we need to keep in mind what we are sharing with who and with what network. 

Critical Consumption "Crap Detection": 

The final media literacy is "the literacy of trying to figure out what and who is trustworthy - and what and who is not trustworthy - online" (pg. 22). This means that the consumer needs to be able to see through what the media is putting out to find out what the actual truth is, and what is added and is not correct. 

My Thought on Media Literacy

I found all of this information really interesting to learn about this week. It was interesting to read about the five literacies and reflect on whether or not I use them in my daily life. I think that all five are still important. They are all so interconnected that one just naturally leads to the other. 

I think we should teach students about all of the media literacies and how they can apply them to their media experience. In the era of "fake news" that we live in, I think it is really important that we teach the students about the fifth literacy, critical consumption. Students need to be able to identify what in the media is true, what's false, and what is biased. This is not an easy skill to do, but it is something we all have to think about when we consume media. 

I am about to teach a health concept in my class that I actually can connect directly to this. We are going to be discussing how peer pressure is used through the media to persuade us to buy, use, do things. The idea critical consumption is really important in this concept. I'm excited to bring this up to my students in the next few weeks.