Surrounded by it everywhere, everyday: Why we need media literacy

The Alliance for a Media Literate America website at www.amlainfo.org has a quote that says “we must prepare young people for living in a world of powerful images, words, and sounds. –UNESCO/1982” In order to accomplish this they must become media literate.

In Media Literacy by James W. Potter, he defines Media Literacy on page 22 as “a set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the media to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter.” Media literacy is very important for today’s society because we spend more time with the Media than we do outside of these technologies. It is hard not too, because we are surrounded by all different forms of media everyday. Because of this, we are subject to information overload from all of the information we are receiving from the different forms of media. This leads to information fatigue which says on page 7 of Media Literacy that “the media present so many messages and aggressively compete for our attention that we have no choice but to retreat into the state of automaticity.” Automaticity “is a state where our minds operate without any conscious effort from us (5).” This is bad news, and is the trap that many individuals fall subject too. However, becoming media literate is a good way to fight this trap.

There are five things individuals need to be aware of when becoming media literate. These are: being aware of media affects, media content, and media industry, as well as have a good sense of the real world, and a clear sense of self and how we interact with the media. There is a quote from David Considine, on www.mediachannel.org that says “Media Literacy: the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in a variety of formats.” We should be media literate because as www.mediachannel.org says “the mass media affect how we perceive and understand the world and people around us. From what we wear, eat, and buy to how we relate to ourselves and others.” The purpose of media literacy is “to empower individuals to control media programming (25)” and construct their own meaning from the media messages.

Becoming media literate is hard to instill into an adult, much less a child, but becoming so is being incorporated into classrooms and homes everywhere, for a good reason. It is important to understand though as said on www.medialit.org, that media literacy “is not about “protecting” kids from unwanted messages.” Because even though you can turn the TV off, or not let your kids get video games with any sort of violence, media is surrounding us, and is almost completely unavoidable. So instead of just watching, or listening, or observing different forms of media passively, students should be urged to “become competent, critical, and literate (www.medialit.org)” in the different media forms. Team Media Literacy says on www.preventionalliance.com that “just as children not only need to be taught to read, but also comprehend what they are reading, media literacy teaches people how to comprehend what they are consuming.”

Affects of Media

I think that media definitely can have a huge impact on people. Media can affect other emotions, besides violence, or bring out other behaviors in people, besides just violence. It can also cause people to want to make a difference. The form of media I will be touching on is movies.

I think one of the main reasons I am not affected by violent movies, is because of my lack of degree of identification. Normally, I do not identify with any of the characters in these kinds of movies, therefore I am not affected. Sociological factors such as my parents, friends, church, and how I was raised also have an affect on the influence violence in movies has on me. I live in a quiet neighborhood, where I was always taught violence is not the answer, and have never experienced anything first hand that I would consider violent. Through these norms that I have consistently been exposed to in my everyday lifestyle, I am able to avoid the behavioral manifestation of aggression that others who were not brought up like I was might experience. Also because of my personal locus I am able to discern which effects I want to become manifested in me and which I do not.

Some movies that I watch though do have an affect on me. I watched the movie Crash about two years ago, and things about it still bother me to this day. Crash is about racism and prejudices between all different races and people. It has violence in it, but the way it affected me was not too make me act aggressively. Although I do not really have a degree of identification with any of the characters in this film, and the affect it has on me is probably not even anywhere near the affect it has on other people who have actually experienced something close to what is shown in this film, it still affected me. Movies that are based on real life and things that actually occur have the most influence on me. And the fact some humans treat people that are different than them the way that we do, as shown in Crash just makes me sad and makes me want to do something about it. I think that movies like this manifest a motivation of wanting to change or do something about the injustices in the world, in certain people. Therefore, although some movies can evoke aggressive behavior and negative feelings in people, it can also cause people to want to make a difference.

I hope in the future I can use media as a tool to learn by using my cognitive abilities. I want to be motivated to seek out more information about what I am shown through different forms of media, instead of just believing everything I see or hear.

American Idol appears to be the most popular show on broadcast television on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and in my personal opinion, for good reason. For the week of March 24, 2008, American Idol on Tuesday, which is of all the contestants singing, received a rating of 14 with 24.758 million viewers. The results show of American Idol on Wednesday, which says who got kicked off for that week, had a rating of 15.2 with 25.742 million viewers.

There are many other well liked shows on at the same time as American Idol and their ratings would most likely increase if they were moved to another time or day. ABC is the second most popular network for the 8 PM time frame for Tuesdays American Idol. This is because of the also extremely well liked TV show “Dancing with the Stars.” CBS was third with “NCIS”, NBC fourth with “The Biggest Loser,” and the CW last with “Beauty and the Geek.”

I have spoken to some people, old and young alike and most agree that they are at a loss as to what to watch on Tuesday Night because there are so many options and there are at least two of the five choices that they do not want to miss at all. Most of them watch one program and switch to another at commercials. This is frustrating for some people because they are not very impressed with the selection of television shows all of the other days of the week, and then all of their favorites are on the same night at the same time. However, to others they figure Tuesdays are the best day for these shows because they could care less about most of them, and like the fact that they do not interfere with the shows that they enjoy.

The ratings of some television shows would greatly benefit from being moved to another time or day. Although the rating of “Dancing with the Stars” is pretty high, it is still behind “American Idol.” If it were moved to another time, it might be the most popular for that night. But who knows? Because then it would have to compete with other shows that would be on at that time. This could cause a whole other issue. It all depends on personal preference, but I feel strongly that if all of these popular shows were on a different day or time, their ratings would go up.