Media Literacy

Modern literacy is not just about reading and writing text. It is about understanding and participating in the complexly media rich

environment in which we live.

What is this?

Serious Threats to Humans

10,000 Years Ago

• Wild animals

• Starvation

• Other humans

• Weather

• Sickness

Today

• Other Humans

• Sickness

• Environmental destruction

• Technology

• Starvation

Important Opportunities for Humans

10,000 Years Ago

• Food

• Mates

• Shelter

• Technology

• Discovery

• Invention

Today

• Financial Gains

• Technology

• Experiences

• Knowledge

• Mates

• Food

• Shelter

• *Violence & Danger

How do we know about threats and opportunities?

10,000 Years Ago

• Instinctive Emotional Response (i.e. fear or excitement)

• Direct Experience

• Language (oral/gestural)

Today

• Media

• Hearsay

• Instinctive Emotional Response

• Direct Experience

• Critical Thinking

How do you know the difference between a threat and an opportunity?

10,000 Years ago

Today

Is this a threat or an opportunity?

Today

Is this a threat or an opportunity?

Media Literacy & Critical Thinking

• Our brains still interpret our environment in the same way as they did 10,000 years ago: we are still stimulated by strong signals of food, sex, and danger even though this is mostly simulated and not as it seems.

• Most signals for food, sex, and danger have ulterior motives: profit, persuasion, or deception (even entertainment has complex purpose).

Media Literacy & Critical Thinking

• These purposes are not inherently bad, but they complicate the nature of what we are presented with in our environment. Nothing is what it seems.

• Thus, there is potential to be afraid of what is not dangerous and to be unafraid of what is.

• There is also the potential to be sold false opportunities and be distracted or duped out of real ones.

Media Literacy & Critical Thinking

• Awareness of one’s food/sex/danger impulses and how these are manipulated in the messages around us is essential to successfully navigating the complex jungle of media signals and the real threats or opportunities (or wastes of time) they present.

An ideal mate?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHqzlxGGJFo

• What does this Dove advertisement reveal to us about advertising images of beauty? How can what it reveals help us better interpret images we see presented in media? On the other hand, what should we keep in mind about the authors of this message?

A golden opportunity?

A golden opportunity?

• This job advertisement promises a great opportunity for an “enterprising, bright, communicative and responsible person” to become a “Financial Representative,” but what dangers might this advertisement pose? What clues are there that the ad is false? What does this example teach us about how to be successfully media literate?

A golden opportunity?

A golden opportunity?

• What is the subtext of this image? How does it make you feel? Now, think critically: how likely is it that you will ever win the lottery? Does the lottery present a realistic opportunity? What harm is there in playing the lottery (if any)?

A threat to society?

A threat to society?

• What is the subtext of this image? What kind of threat is suggested? Is this threat real or exaggerated? Who might be harmed by the subtext of the image?

A threat to society?

• In the article “Incarceration, Identity Formation, and Race in Young Adult Literature,” Tim Engles and Fern Kory pull together some shocking facts on the harmful effects of media’s overrepresentation of African Americans as criminals:

A threat to society?

• African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison. …A report in 2000 observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes. (Alexander qtd. in Engles and Kory 53)

A threat to society?

• News Headline: 8 dead as leftist rebels attack Compostela towns (philstar.com) | April 4, 2013 http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/04/04/927140/update-8-dead-leftist-rebels-attack-compostela-towns

• What is the subtext of this headline? Who or what is the threat?

• Can you see a connection between these last two examples and an article we looked at in class?