Universal Media Literacy Education for All
Mass media and advertising are powerful tools with the potential to influence our lives in ways we are not aware of, leading us to make important life decisions based on their influence rather than critical thinking or rationality.
Universal media literacy education can equip people with the skills needed to recognize when they are being influenced by mass media, fed disinformation or propaganda, and make more informed choices and decisions.
Providing universal media literacy training will help everyone become literate and self-aware, resulting in better navigation (*and better political choices) through a constantly evolving digital landscape of truth, half-truths, and disinformation.
What is media literacy?
Media Literacy can be defined by five different aspects:
What is access in media literacy?
In media literacy, Access is how, when, where, and how often people have access to the tools, technology, and digital skills necessary to thrive such as having access to technology or having access to conceive or share information.
What is analyzing in media literacy?
In media literacy, analyzing media content is the process of asking questions about a piece of media in order to identify authorship, credibility, purpose, technique, context, and economics such as fact-checking or seeing the intent behind an author’s publishing.
What is evaluating in media literacy?
In media literacy, evaluating media content involves making your own judgment and conclusions about media messages based on the information gathered during media access such as when you decide whether the information is credible, misinformation, or propaganda.
What is creation in media literacy?
In media literacy, media creation is learning how to express ideas through media and communication tools to create new media such as writing, public speaking, art, and more.
What is act in media literacy?
Act(ion) is the culmination of accessing, analyzing, and evaluating media messages such as when we act accordingly to how we articulate our thoughts, feelings, and responses to media.
Basic core principles of media literacy are important for media literacy education. We become better-informed participants of media when we ask questions and think critically about messages we receive and create and when we recognize media as a form of socialization to name a few.
Next, we will look at how media ownership and regulation contribute to a universal media literacy education.
Why is media ownership and regulation important?
It is important to understand that a lot of media we consume, interact with, and share is owned by very few conglomerates and as such may have a motive or bias behind what is being shared.
For example, if you are consuming and sharing media from Fox News, it is likely you are sharing a right leaning article or story because Fox News is right leaning and typically frame news articles to support their beliefs.
But media ownership can really becomes problematic when they have direct affiliations with Law makers.
In 2016, most of the major broadcasting companies donated to Hilary Clinton. Many belive there needs to be reform or regulations on the media.
You can not start conversations on a topic like SuperPacs, when the media companies pay politicians a lot of money to disregard topics like this. These companies also won’t show anything related to this topic, harming us the viewer.
And big companies like Facebook sell your information to advertisers because you signed an agreement in exchange for its service.
Media privacy and security
Media privacy and security is becoming more and more an emerging issue. We use social media and email for personal and sensitive communications as well as for business.
You would think that privacy and security would be at the top of tech companies list.
However, you have to question how secure a website is when it sells your information to advertisers.
A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk shows that 64% of Americans say their social media activity is not very or not at all secure.
And they may be justified to think this way. In a large scale hack, several celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence had intimate and nude photo’s of themselves uploaded to the internet.
What kind of personal information was accessible that allowed someone to hack these accounts? Couldn’t it happen to anyone?
Mis/dis-information, hoaxes, and conspiracies
The internet is made up of participants where anyone can contribute and create. Where a journalist has a professional obligation to fact check and verify where it’s information is coming from, the average person can make something up whether this is on accident or on purpose.
Misinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories were around a long time before the internet. However, the internet and social media in particular, has sped the amount of misinformation we encounter on the internet.
Before the 2016 elections, an image of Donald Trump began circulating the internet that had Donald Trump talking negatively about Republicans back in 1998. It was later determined to be false but to an illiterate media user, they would share this false image hoping to discourage others from voting for Donald Trump.
And with a quick search on Google, any user could debunk this information but for something more tricky like AI, it becomes harder to tell what is real and what is fake.
A Tik Tok user’s videos started trending because it shows Tom Cruise walking and talking. The video has Tom Cruise’s voice and his hair and facial features look life-like, but it is really just a highly sophisticated visual effect.
Unsuspecting users may have a harder time telling the difference between what is real and what is fake because video proof has always been a way of confirming how someone acts. They would be quick to spread more misinformation because it looks credible enough.
Advertising and persuasion
Advertising and persuasion are powerful tools of influencing an illiterate media user. While not all advertising and persuasion tactics are sinister, they can be as dangerous as Nazi propaganda and less obvious to spot.
It is important to think critically about messages we see everyday. Steve McKevitt says the internet revolutionized the way we communicate, but has created an “onlinefication” of commerce in almost every aspect of our lives such as finding food or finding love.
Think about how we willingly give personal information to advertisers to use things like Facebook. We may not use Facebook to look at ads but as we scroll down our timelines, we see ad after ad.
Sociologist Emily Fogg Mead says “ads are a subtle, persistent, unavoidable presence that creeps into the reader’s inner consciousness. A mechanical association is formed and may frequently result in an involuntary purchase.”
Whether we know it or not, we are being manipulated by tech companies into thinking exchanging our personal data is worth the price of admission to use their service.
Representation in media
Finally it is important to understand that not all media was originally made with the welfare of other races, gender, or orientation in mind.
Cultivation theory by definition is: “a communications and sociological framework which posits that long-term exposure to media shapes how the consumers of media perceive the world as well as conduct themselves in life.”
For those who watch a lot of crime shows, they may develop a skewed idea that the world is a dangerous place with crime happening 24/7.
For those who watch movies that depict people of color, they develop ideas about how other races are based on stereotypes. Think about how latino’s in movies are typically seen as landscapers or maids. Other films depict them as gang bangers.
As a whole this creates racial bias and possible prejudice because media illiterate people begin believing this is how Latino’s behave.
Why does all of this matter?
To recap, becoming a media literate user involves critical thinking of media ownership, regulations, privacy, security, misinformation, hoaxes, conspiracies, advertising, persuasion, and representation.
Media literacy matters to slow the spread of disinformation and see the rationale behind a message.
Media literacy can start change when more users are more aware of an ongoing problem such as the little representation of Asians in movies.
Media literacy calls bullshit on politicians when they try to frame something like Super Pac’s as necessary for democracy.
As such, media literacy education should be universal. It should be implemented in schools, but could also be implemented in other ways.
What if Facebook, Twitter, Google and other companies attributed to media illiteracy, implemented mandatory training to use their service? Would they lose users?
Most likely not because people wouldn’t like to find something new to replace it with.
By having media literacy education for all, we can start to make changes that enhance peoples lives and build stronger communities.
