‘Media literacy’ advocates push to create savvier consumers of news and information
It’s long been said that there is no such thing as bad news. On the contrary, it is an unqualified good.
The problem is that the media have become so sophisticated and media literacy has become so mainstream that the public are no longer taught about it. So, what is media literacy?
What is it and how does it work?
The New Media Studies (NMS) have tried to answer this question in the past. In their book Media Literacy: Critical Thinking and Digital Media Education, they argue that media literacy is “critical thinking about media.” They write: “Many of the problems with media literacy, such as the difficulty of interpreting and assessing the quality and value of news and images, have to do with the fact that this level of media literacy is not practiced in the media literacy curriculum.”
The NMS assert that students need to be taught how to evaluate media literacy, both at home and in the classroom. They also state that media literacy is critical thinking, not literacy. The NMS suggest that media literacy should be taught in the following way:
1) Students need to study the news and become familiar with how the information is disseminated.
2) Students need to understand which sources are reliable and which are not.
3) Students need to be able to interpret news imagery and use different kinds of media in order to be able to make informed judgments about it.
4) Students need to evaluate news reports and decide which articles to trust.
5) Students need to work with a mentor to develop a media literate outlook.
These are the main principles of media literacy as set out by the NMS.
These are the main principles of media literacy as set out by the NMS.
The theory suggests that media literacy is a complex set of skills that are necessary in order to be able to have an informed and critical position in the media sphere. In short, these include:
1. Having an understanding of how information is produced and disseminated.
2. The ability to understand the power of pictures and the effects that they can have on viewers.
3. The ability to understand how the news reports that people see on