THE MEDIA CONTRUCTS MESSAGES ( news, advertising, commercials, editorials, everthing!)
TO BE MEDIA LITERATE - YOU NEED DE-CONSTRUCT THEM.
HOW?
When reading, listening or watching , ask these questions
Who created this message?
What techniques are they using to attract my attention?
How might different people understand this message differently from me?
What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?
Why was this message sent?
Eight Key Concepts for Media Literacy 2. The media construct reality 3. Audiences negotiate meaning in the media 4. Media have commercial implications 5. Media contain ideological and value messages 6. Media have social and political implications 7. Form and content are closely related in the media 8. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form Source: John Pungente, S.J. From Barry Duncan et al. Media Literacy Resource Guide, Ontario Ministry of Education, Toronto, ON. Canada, 1989.
1. All media are construction
John Pungente, S.J.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
