Media literacy

• Engels
• HBO
• Studiejaar 3

What are media?

Different channels, or ways, in which news, entertainment, marketing messages or other information is spread

Oral tradition

Print media

Radio

Tele-vision

Social

media

platforms

Oldest

Older

Old

Newer

Newest

Which of the following would not be an example of mass media?

1. A letter from a friend
2. A billboard
3. A radio show

How many advertisements do we see every day?

1. Between 100 and 500
2. Between 500 and 2,500
3. Between 2,500 and 10,000
4. Over 10,000

Why media literacy?

Media surrounds us

We need to understand messages being sent

Know how to analyse media messages

What is
media literacy?

Questioning your media usage

How much time would you say the average person interacts with media messages per day?

Channeling of messages

Are there certain types of people that see media messages more often? How about less often?

People see media whether they like it or not.
People see media and don't realize that they're being affected by it.
24/7 we are bombarded by messages from various sources, different types of media.

Radio, television, film, Internet access, and depending on your level of interest, shows how much you connect with a particular media outlet.

Online media personalise their output based on your preferences and (online) behaviour.

Cognitive dissonance

People tend to stay away from information that they don't find that aligns with their attitudes.

(If people are interested in a particular topic, they frequent those media that feature those topics more often)

What impact do the media have on people's everyday lives?

From a day to day basis, the media is there to help people feel that they're a bigger part of their community, their country, their world.
It helps them make decisions that are potentially better in their lives.
So they'll seek out information, again, that they feel that they can relate to in an effort to be part of this bigger system.

What do you think are the positive effects of interacting with the media?

1. The ability to be educated and education is power.
2. Power to be informed.
3. Power to make better decisions in your life and be a much bigger part of the community.
4. A way to be connected to the people that you would not necessarily know from all over the world.
5. The universality of media is the most ultimate expression of being a part of a global community.

What are the negative effects of interacting with the media?

1. Misinformation
   Everyone should consider the quality of the particular media outlet. Because of technology, anybody easily could put up messages online. Look at quality media outlets as opposed to somebody that may be just sharing an opinion. Bloggers may have the same opinion as you but it doesn't mean they're following any kind of journalistic integrity or journalistic style.
2. Issue of oversaturation of messaging.
   As humans we get to a certain point where we start to shut down messages by sheer volume.

What is the future of media use?

What is the future of media use?

People will likely have more access to media as the years go on.
Increase of our connectivity from a global basis, allowing people to essentially meet each other and interact
Consumers of media are going to have to make a more direct choice about what media they're interested in and what not.
You need to know to make sure your own mind and your own attitudes and your own frame of reference on the world.
And use the media as a tool for information and not a basis to make decisions specifically on somebody else's thoughts. Use your own mind and have it better your own world and your own life.

An interview with William Cower

Let's watch this short interview with William Cower

True or false:
According to Mr. Cowen, everyone consumes the same amount of media everyday.

1. True
2. False

According to Mr Cowen, some children interact with media...

1. around 30 min. per day
2. less than 4 hours per day
3. up to 10 hours per day.

True or false:
People can be affected by media messages without realising it

1. True
2. False

Which of following is NOT a positive effect of interacting with media?

1. Being part of a larger community
2. Making more informed decisions about your life
3. Oversaturation (getting too many media messages)

How can I decide what media to read?

If the media are in English, how can I make sure I understand the whole message?

Previewing a text

How to understand the message

Previewing a text:

1. Title
2. Pictures and captions
3. Subheadings

4. First paragraph

5. What do I already know
about the topic? (prediction)

Prediction

• Together with a title, pictures and their captions can help us make a guess about the overall idea of the text.
• This process, using small pieces of information from previewing to make a guess about something in the whole text, is called predicting.

Which of the following do we not read when previewing?

1. Captions
2. Every paragraph
3. Title

Remember, the purpose of previewing is to quickly learn what the text is about. We don't need to read every paragraph. Instead, we just read a few pieces of the text.

Caption:
The need for media literacy grows as messages become more frequent and complex.

We see people on a crowded bus or subway. Everyone is reading a newspaper or magazine. In other words, they're all consuming media.

The caption tells us that media literacy is very important because people are exposed to a lots of media and it's  becoming more complex or complicated.

Subheadings

In addition to pictures, we should pay attention to any subheadings in the text.

We can predict that the text will talk about all of these ideas.

Most important information first

Last step in previewing:

Media texts, especially news articles, often give the most important information first.

So, let's look at the first one or two paragraphs.

What do you see?

- some interesting numbers in the first paragraph and then right below we
see two phrases, increased consumption of online information and the need for media literacy.
Even if some of these words are new for us, we should be ready to combine what we know about the title, the pictures, the captions, and the subheadings to predict the main idea of the text.
The main idea is the overall general message of the  text.
In our example, we could guess that the text will tell us that media literacy is important and it will give us some advice about how to improve media literacy.