Media Literacy

Media literacy is defined as the ability to access, communicate, interpret, and evaluate messages or texts across a range of digitally mediated forms. Individuals who are media literate can identify how, why, and for what purposes messages or texts are constructed. People around the world are spending more time consuming and producing multimedia texts, such as blogs, social media platforms, chat forums, wikis, videos, and video games. Scholars and educators have been calling for the development of new media literacy: a form of critical literacy that attends to the ongoing development of media and information and communication technologies (ICTs), multimodality, and the convergence of media toward the privatization and commercialization of knowledge.

Overview

The relationship between media, ICTs, and people has evolved over time and across disciplines. The first wave of research in the 1960s and 1970s was primarily concerned with investigating the ideological messages embedded in print and digital texts. The second wave of research, in the 1980s, shifted the focus to the reader or the audience of texts. In 1982 the UNESCO Grünwald Declaration established media literacy as a global concern. It called for educational and political systems to promote the development of a critical understanding of communication and information technologies for all citizens, specifically in relation to images, words, and sounds. The third wave, in the 1990s, highlighted the ways in which audiences negotiate the meaning of various texts in relation to their social locations—for example, their social class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality—and social and cultural contexts. The rise of the internet in the 1990s catalyzed debates regarding how to use digital technology for learning and education. After 2000, governmental, educational, and institutional support for media literacy only continued to grow, as had the everyday use of ICTs for communication, corporate and domestic labor, education, and entertainment. New media literacy highlights, among other things, the convergence of media ownership and the privatization and commercialization of media over time.

Media literacy builds on a foundation of active inquiry and critical thinking and includes the ability to access, communicate, interpret, evaluate, create, reflect on, and interact with digitally mediated texts. Interdisciplinary research has contributed literature that examines the relationships between media literacy and cultural practices, public health and well-being, societal norms and values, and education and work opportunities. The following themes have been identified across research: (1) mass media influences both individuals and society; (2) this influence is perceived to be subtle, and individuals who are passive consumers are more susceptible to media influence; (3) a goal of media literacy is to enable individuals to become aware of the role and influence that media has on their lives and to empower them to use media as a tool through which they can achieve their own goals; (4) media literacy is learned and develops over time, and; (5) to increase media literacy, individuals must be engaged in active knowledge construction and skill development.

Media shapes individually lived experiences, cultures, and societies. Cultural and corporate norms, values, ideologies, and practices are mediated by modern-day modes of storytelling from movies, video games, television, music, and the internet. Drawing on educational reformer John Dewey’s argument in the early twentieth century that a strong democracy relies on an educated and literate citizenry, scholars of new media have positioned media literacy as a vital ability for a democratic citizenry and socially just world.

By the 2020s, technological advancements and further integration of the internet into everyday lives had only led some to advocate for media literacy as a crucial skill with a sense of increased urgency. A main area of concern had become the proliferation of text, videos, and images generated by accessible but sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) software. While the spread of misinformation and disinformation, especially on social media, had long been an issue, many worried about such technology's potential to challenge people's ability to differentiate between real and adulterated or fraudulent media. In general, experts in countries throughout the world encouraged policies and education dedicated to ensuring public media literacy in relation to AI.

Bibliography

Alvermann, Donna E., and Margaret C. Hagood. “Critical Media Literacy: Research, Theory, and Practice in ‘New Times’.”Journal of Educational Research, vol. 93, no. 3, 2000, pp. 193–205.

Batista, Taciane D'Angelo. "Navigating the Digital Era: Media Literacy in the Age of AI." International Council for Media Literacy, 24 Apr. 2024, ic4ml.org/blogs/navigating-the-digital-era-media-literacy-in-the-age-of-ai/. Accessed 28 Aug. 2024.

Buckingham, David. The Media Literacy of Children and Young People: A Review of the Research Literature on Behalf of Ofcom. Ofcom, 2005.

Frau-Meigs, Divina. User Empowerment through Media and Information Literacy Responses to the Evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). UNESCO, 2024, unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000388547. Accessed 28 Aug. 2024.

Luke, Carmen. “As Seen on TV or Was That My Phone? New Media Literacy.” Policy Futures in Education, vol. 5, no. 1, 2007, pp. 50–58.

Luke, Carmen. “Cyberpedagogy.” The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Envrironments. Edited by Joel Weiss, et al., Springer, 2006, 269–77.

Potter, James W. “Review of Literature on Media Literacy.” Sociology Compass, vol. 7, no. 6, 2013, pp. 417–35.

Share, Jeff. Media Literacy Is Elementary: Teaching Youth to Critically Read and Create Media. Lang, 2009.