EDEC 262 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Alternative Media, Media Consumption, Socalled
22 Jun 2018
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Evaluating Media Literacy Education: Concepts, Theories and Future Direction
-Argues that media literacy is mostly defined in terms of the knowledge and skills individuals
need to analyze, evaluate, or produce media messages.
—> these knowledge and skills mainly relate to four key facets of the mass media phenomenon,
i.e. media industries, media messages, media audiences, and media effects.
-A worldwide movement in media literacy education has been growing for roughly twenty-five
years now and has been marked by a number of recent developments
-Media literacy is being mandated and taught more broadly in many countries.
-The movement generated three national organizations that advance media education training,
networking, and information: the Center for Media Literacy (CML), the National Association for
Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME).
-Most of the states have media education elements in the subject areas of consumer and health
skills, in English and language and communication arts frameworks, and (to a lesser extent) in
social studies, history, and civics.
—-> Media literacy education is also implemented in after-school programs, summer camps,
religious education programs, library and prevention programs, community-based organizations
or at home with parental guidance
-At first sight, the increased scholarly attention for media literacy education may seem
unproblematic. However, the academic literature reveals that media literacy education is a
multifaceted (and contested) phenomenon.
-Traditionally, it has involved the ability to analyze and appreciate respected works of literature
and, by extension, to communicate effectively by writing well.
-In the past half-century it has come to include the ability to analyze competently and to utilize
skillfully print journalism, cinematic productions, radio and television programming, and even
computer-mediated information and exchange
-While media education is mainly applied to K-12 education, scholars have also discussed it in
the context of higher education. employment in the media industries and adult literacy
-Can be called digital or multiple media literacies when discussing it in plural
-The National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy defined media literacy as “the ability to
access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a variety of forms”
—> definition lacks specificity, that is, it cannot provide much detail to people who want to
design educational strategies. Luckily, several authors have more thoroughly elaborated their
key ideas in seminal books.
-Potter (2004, 58-59) defines media literacy as “the set of perspectives from which we expose
ourselves to the media and interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter.”
—> the key to media literacy is to build good knowledge structures. In particular, individuals
need to have a good deal of information about media industries, media messages, media effects,
the real world and the self. Also, to sort through this information and organize it, people need
skills of analysis, evaluation, grouping, induction, deduction, synthesis, and abstracting.
-Buckingham questions if the individual is key to understand how best to teach media literacy.
More specifically, he argues that we cannot teach a limited set of cognitive abilities which
individuals somehow come to possess. Rather, he proposes a number of key media concepts:
production, language, representation, and audience – which provide a theoretical framework
which can be applied to the whole range of contemporary mass media.
-In his view, teachers should start from pupils’ existing understanding of the media and use these
concepts to enable them to think in a more conscious and deliberate way. “The aim of media
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