Media Literacy: Critical thinking about media

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Media Literacy Critical thinking about
media

• Frank W. Baker
• Fbaker1346_at_aol.com
• Media Literacy Clearinghouse
• www.frankwbaker.com

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Generation M digital natives
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• College students and high-school students
  preparing to enter college are sorely lacking in
  the skills needed to retrieve, analyze, and
  communicate information that is available online
  only 13 percent of the test-takers were
  information literate. The
  Chronicle of Higher Education, October 17, 2006

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What students need to know

• Adolescents need to learn how to integrate
• knowledge from multiple sources, including
• music, video, online databases and other media.
• They need to think critically about
• information.they need to participate in the
• kinds of collaboration that new communication
• and information technologies enable, but
• increasingly demand.

Bruce Bertram, Diversity and Critical Social
Engagement How Changing Technologies Enable New
Modes of Literacy in Changing Circumstances
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• Our students are growing up in a world
  saturated with media messagesyet, they (and
  their teachers) receive little or no training in
  the skills of analyzing or re-evaluating these
  messages, many of which make use of language,
  moving images, music, sound effects. Source
  R.Hobbs, Journal Adult Adolescent Literacy,
  February 2004

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What is media literacy?

• Take the next few minutes to draft
• your own definition.

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Media literacy is

• The ability to
• Access
• Analyze
• Interpret
• Produce
• communication in a variety of
  forms

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• "Media literacy is concerned with helping
  students develop an informed and critical
  understanding of the nature of mass media, the
  techniques used by them, and the impact of these
  techniques. More specifically, it is education
  that aims to increase the students' understanding
  and enjoyment of how the media work, how they
  produce meaning, how they are organized, and how
  they construct reality. Media literacy also aims
  to provide students with the ability to create
  media products. "

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With the advent and popularity of
YouTube,Current TV, and similar venues, young
people have become media producers.
DIY (do it yourself)
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What media literacy is

• Set of skills, knowledge, abilities
• Awareness of personal media habits
• Understanding of how media works
• Appreciation of medias power/influence
• Ability to discern critically question/view
• How meaning is created in media
• Healthy skepticism
• Access to media
• Ability to produce create media

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What media literacy is not

• media bashing
• protection against media
• just about television
• just TV production
• how to use AV equipment
• only teaching with media
• it is also teaching about the media

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5 Key Concepts in Media Literacy
1. All Media Are Constructions
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5 Key Concepts in Media Literacy

• 2. Media languages with unique rules

The Language of FilmCamerasLightsAudio
(sound, music)EditingSet DesignCostumeActors
expressionsMakeup
The Language of IMBRBBe Right
BackPOSParent Over ShoulderLOLLaughing out
Loud
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5 Key Concepts in Media Literacy

• 3. Media convey values points-of-view

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5 Key Concepts in Media Literacy

• 4. Different people experience the same media
  differently

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5 Key Concepts in Media Literacy

• 5. Media power profit

FOX (News Corp) NBC (NBC/Universal) CBS
ABC (Disney) CNN (AOL/Time Warner) VIACOM
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Impact of media consolidation

• Media consolidation comes at the expense of
  ethnic diversity and serving the interests of
  women and minoritiesBenton Foundation/Social
  Science Research CouncilOctober 23, 2006

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TV

• What would your students
• say is the purpose of
• television?

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Audience-Advertiser-Program
You are broughtto the sponsorby the program.

• This
• program
• is brought to
• you by the
• sponsor.

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Media literacy in the classroom

• Assignment Media Literacy

Introductory video
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ML in Ohio Teaching Standards

• English Language Arts
• Communication Oral Visual StandardB. Explain
  a speakers point of view and use of persuasive
  techniques in presentations and visual media.

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English examples

• Non-print texts (TV, film, music)
• Understanding bias stereotypes
• Analyzing techniques of persuasion
• (for example in advertising)
• The language of TV/film (camera work, lighting,
  music)
• Visual literacy (photography)
• Blogging graphic novels

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ML in Ohio Teaching Standards

• Social Studies9th grade
• -identify sources of propaganda, describe the
  most common techniques, and explain how
  propaganda is used to influence behavior

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Social Studies examples

• Analyze/produce editorial cartoons
• Examine historical photographs
• Study past/present propaganda
• History of U.S. mass media
• Understand communications policy
• Analyze political advertising

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ML in Ohio Teaching Standards

• Health
  Alcohol, Tobacco Other Drugs
• Investigate how alcohol/tobacco company ads
  target young people
• Examine media portrayal of body shape/
• /type

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Health examples

• How media market consumer products
• Nutrition messages (i.e. junk food)
• Alcohol tobacco advertising
• Body image and the media
• Media messages about sex

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ML in Ohio Teaching Standards

• VISUAL ART
• Identify examples of visual culture (e.g.
  advertising, political cartoons, product design,
  theme parks)and discuss how visual art is used
  to shape people's tastes, choices, values,
  lifestyles, buying habits and opinions.

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ML in Ohio Teaching Standards

• Library Media
• Benchmark A Explain the intended effect of
  media communications and messages when delivered
  by various audiences for various
  purposesBenchmark B Examine a variety of
  elements and components used to create and
  construct media communications for various
  audiences and various purposesBenchmark C
  Critique and evaluate the intended impact of
  media communications and messages when delivered
  and received by society as a whole

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Media literacycritical thinking

• Who created/paid for the message?
• What is the messages purpose?
• Who is the message trying to reach?
• What techniques are used?
• Who or what might be left out?
• How do we know what it means?
• Who benefits from the message?

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Media literacycritical thinking

• What lifestyles are promoted and why?
• Does the message contain bias or stereotypes?
• What can I do with the information?

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Visual literacy

• Understanding images

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If video is how we are communicating and
persuading in this new century, why aren't more
students writing screenplays as part of their
schoolwork?
Heidi Hayes JacobEd Consultant
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The languages of TV-Film

• CAMERAS (point-of-view)
• LIGHTS
• SOUND MUSIC
• EDITING (post production)
• SET DESIGN
• ACTOR wardrobe expression

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Examples

• Cell phone DOVE Political
  Ads
• script

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Film Examples
Opening Credits- symbolism Pocket Watch Fear-
lighting music
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Film Examples
In what ways does the director use techniques
which make us, the viewer, believe what we
see is actual Civil Rights footage?
1978 Docudrama