What is Media Literacy? Why is it important?
"Media literacy is a set of skills that anyone can learn. Just as
literacy is the ability to read and write, media literacy refers to the
ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media messages of all
kinds."
-- The Media Literacy Project
Media is everywhere. We are bombarded with media images, sounds, and messages. The
average adolescent (age 8-18) spends 7.5 hours per day interfacing with a
media device. Because of multitasking, that equates to nearly 11 hours
of media consumption - per day. So, what is the media in your life?
So, it's important to recognize that all of this has an influence.
Work
to understand the messages you're receiving in all of this are
controlled. They have and create a meaning - and it's important to
think about this. And ask yourself questions:
- Who created this?
- What do they want from it?
- Can I trust it?
- What is it telling me directly? What is it implying?
When you start to ask yourself these questions, you should start to find that the answers can be very simple and very complicated all at once. Hopefully, you'll also start to realize that the media you're exposed to all the time often carries many different meanings.
You may not realize the subtle messages you're receiving. The people who MADE it may or may not have even realized that message would come across. But what Dave is doing here is being media literate. Thinking about the messages media is sending and what kind of an influence it's having on viewers.
From the Media Literacy Project:
"The goal of most media messages is to persuade the audience to believe or do something.
Hollywood movies use expensive special effects to make us believe that what we’re seeing is
real. News stories use several techniques – such as direct quotation of identified sources – to
make us believe that the story is accurate... We call these techniques the "language of persuasion”... Learning the language of persuasion is an important media literacy skill. Once you know how
media messages try to persuade you to believe or do something, you’ll be better able to make
your own decisions."
What are some common formulas and tricks that you see in media to try and convince and persuade viewers into believing in the product/message/etc?
Let's look at some basic examples - Lots of what we looked at today were from the Media Literacy toolbox from the Media Literacy Project, but here are some of the others:
Deconstructing the Media is important - let's look at the suggested guidelines for how to deconstruct a piece of media and what you should think about when you're watching and reading.
This commercial was in the top 10 most viewed YouTube videos of 2011 - think about some of the techniques we talked about (beautiful people, association, using cute/warm and fluffy, etc.):
It's not all just in advertising, either. These messages are coming out of all different forms of media: movies, television, music, video games, online applications, billboards, politics, professional sports - the list is as infinite as the media we watch.
The number 1 YouTube video of 2011 has plenty of these messages - and in this case the video was so popular because most people didn't even like it!
However, they still watched it - one of the most brilliant elements to these media and advertising messages is that we think we're not affected by them, we can see that they're stupid so we figure they may influence others, but not us. Remember though, the effect can be indirect - you may not buy into a single ad or idea, but when it saturates our society - you kind of can't help it. Remember to be conscious of your choices, be critical in your purchases and your own decisions as media viewers, and more importantly as media makers.
The number one YouTube video of all time has (as of this writing) nearly 700 MILLION views. That's unbelievable influence. What messages are you seeing here? (watch out, you'll probably have to watch an advertisement first - hmm....)
You may or may not have seen these examples - but surely you've seen things that look and feel similar. What are other examples you know of? Think of a website you visit often or when you try to watch a video online - what kind of ads are you confronted with? What kind of sites and videos are you seeking out, and why? What about when you watch TV or movies, what kind of messages are you getting? Driving and seeing billboards? Listening to music? How does it all come together to create a landscape of messages??
Even further - what are some common messages we receive all the time about how to act, look, purchase, and live in society?
How do these change if you are a man or a woman? If you're transgender? Straight or gay? How is your race and ethnicity represented? Your physical appearance? Depending on your interests?
Deconstructing things further:
This app was created taking advantage the latest HTML coding language, HTML5 and has audio and video content from advertisements geared towards young girls and young boys exclusively. With this app you can take the video content from one, and the audio content from another and watch where things are very similar and where things are very different:
Here is a trailer for a documentary that analyzes the role of masculinity and how it influences messages coming out of hip hop music:
A tumblr discussing the representations of women in comics and graphic art:
And on a similar note, a man trying to do poses that women do in such art:
This is all a great start to analyzing how the media is made and how the message is delivered and intended to be received. But, it gets even more intense if you dig a little deeper - and one great way to do that is by asking the question, who is making this?
Each piece of media is made for a specific reason - think about what that reason might be. Often it's an attempt to sell a product or service and make money. So, you have to consider who profits the most.
Wow! Dow Chemical really cares about humanity - that's why they made such a pretty commercial! But what they don't mention is all of the human rights atrocities they are responsible for in their factories which are located in the 3rd world - that the very chemicals they're manufacturing are destroying the health and well being of entire communities. Instead of addressing those issues, Dow chose to spend millions of dollars on a massive public image campaign to represent themselves as a caring company.
This happens all the time:
What techniques do you notice they're using?
Thinking further about who is behind the creation of all of this stuff, look at some of these statistics:
In 2009 Women made up over 50% of moviegoers and movie ticket buyers, but far less than 20% of the creative teams of the most financially successful movies (only 3 films directed by women were in the top 100 box offices sucesses for the year).
Here's a link with more info and stats.
The numbers are even worse for minorities - and that doesn't even begin to get into the ways and roles in which minorities are represented in movies, television, and video games - here's an article on that subject.
Yet, there are more women than ever (and more women than men) in elite colleges and graduate programs.
Women in the advertising industry make up about 27% of the management, and only about 15% of the directors and executives.
But that's not all - it's not just about who is getting hired or not hired, it's about who is controlling all of this content. Unfortunately part of the reason it seems like we get a lot of the same messages and all of these companies are using the same tricks is because that's exactly what's happening. It all starts to sound pretty much the same, right? Like there's really only a few key messages out there? Well, take a look at this:
What happens when all of the media is owned by only a few entities? How does this shape their intent and authority?
Media in the 21st century is a new and rapidly developing influence on all of this. Think of major internet and tech companies like apple, google, and facebook. Think of their role in your own life - and be aware of how they work in terms of media content. Sign into your facebook account and you'll see advertisements on your homepage - advertisements geared specifically to you based on your likes and interests. If you use a google product (and chances are you do - probably several), everything you're doing through that product is being used to cater an advertising and media experience specifically targeting you.
As the world changes, the media changes in turn. Media makers are finding new ways to create and tell stories - which is fantastic, but can also be exploited. Advertisers are capitalizing on the new ways in which people are connecting and telling stories, and they're working to put their own brand on it so that you feel like they're an essential part of it.
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