Eight Key Concepts for Media Literacy

 

1. All media are construction

College Level-- The media do not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, they present carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and result from many determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions, taking them apart to show how they are made.

 

Translation: The process of constructing media is subject to intentional and unintentional bias-- who puts in the bias?

 

2. The media construct reality

College Level-- The media are responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of our view of reality is based on media messages that have been pre-constructed and have attitudes, interpretations and conclusions already built in. The media, to a great extent, give us our sense of reality.

 

Translation: All media has "the answers" built in-- how many built in answers can you see?

 

3. Audiences negotiate meaning in the media

College Level-- The media provide us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of reality, and we all "negotiate" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background, and so forth.

 

Translation: All audiences find things that support their own reality-- how many audiences can you identify?

 

4. Media have commercial implications

College Level-- Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how these affect content, technique and distribution. Most media production is a business, and must therefore make a profit. Questions of ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media.

 

Translation: Media seeks to make money-- who profits from the media?

 

5. Media contain ideological and value messages

College Level-- All media products are advertising, in some sense, in that they proclaim values and ways of life. Explicitly or implicitly, the mainstream media convey ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life, the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.

 

Translation: Media seeks to support certain values and beliefs-- who profits from certain values and beliefs?

 

6. Media have social and political implications

College Level-- The media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. Television can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image. The media involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. They give us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns, so that we become citizens of Marshall McLuhan's "Global Village."

 

Translation: Media is not "fair" in its social and political representation-- who profits from social or political bias?

 

7. Form and content are closely related in the media

College Level-- As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages.

 

Translation: The very form of media influences the message and audience-- what form is popular or unpopular with a specific audience?

 

8. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form

College Level--  Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.

 

Translation: Media can be "Music" to the eyes and ears (and other senses?)-- who determines what is enjoyable to watch?

 

College Level (Academia)--  Source: John Pungente, S.J. From Barry Duncan et al. Media Literacy Resource Guide, Ontario Ministry of Education, Toronto, ON. Canada, 1989.