Media Literacy Essay

Media literacy in social media

How media literacy is defined is important for it exerts influence on the framing of the debate, the research agenda and policy initiatives (Livingstone, 2004). However, its concept has always been controversial (Luke, 1989). The definition of media literacy first appear in the 1992 National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy, which described it as: “The ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages” (Rubin, 1998, p.3). Based on this definition, many researchers are putting efforts to redefine it from different aspects. Some definitions of the last decade involved the understanding of how media functioned in society (Messaris, 1998). Others pointed out that media literacy instead depended

According to Tyner (1998, p17), definitions range from the tautological (computer literacy is the ability to use computers) to the hugely idealistic: “The term literacy is shorthand for cultural ideals as eclectic as economic development, personal fulfillment, and individual moral fortitude”. One of the definition that is more related to daily practice puts emphasis on critical thinking and the ability to distinguish media content form social reality, as Potter (2001, pp4-5) put it: “Media literacy is a perspective that we actively use when exposing ourselves to the media in order to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter.” While popular US textbooks on media literacy have an interesting description, which says, “we build our perspectives from knowledge structures; to build our knowledge structures, we need tools and raw materials-the tools are our media literacy skills, and the raw materials are information from the media and

[…] It is not of importance whether this is called information literacy, digital literacy, or simply literacy for an information age.” Since then, the notion of this new media literacy has been discussed among the scholars. Other than approaching and grasping the new literacy notion, however, some think new media will not replace the traditional media, and it is only a new technology as a quicker delivery system for old contents, people are in some cases merely performing what McLuhan (1967) would call “rear-view mirror” logic—“look at the present through a rear-view mirror and march backwards into the future” (Burke, 2008). According to Jones (1997,p.8), “the Internet does not create independent social spaces . . . it relies on an existing communication infrastructure and is integrated into current economic processes”. It may have some elements of truth, but the question is to what extents does the current system of media literacy “work” to help people make sense of the really new ways we use new media? And In what ways do old understandings apply for the newer technologies used in new ways? All the debates are still going on, and in general the vast domains of digital media literacy have only begun to be studied (Warschauer, 2009, p.