What is Media Literacy?

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Media literacy education first began in the United States and United Kingdom. It was a direct result of war propaganda in the 1930s and the rise of advertising in the 1960s. During that time, media was used to manipulate people’s perspective. Thus, there was a need to educate people on how to detect the biases, falsehoods, and half-truths depicted in print, radio, and television (Boyd, 2014).

Media literacy is the ability to identify different types of media from a wide array of sources and understand the messages they bring (Hobbs, 1997). In its simplest form, media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media. As such, it performs an important role in education, development, and innovation.

Now that information comes through an interwoven system of media technologies, being media literate has become an essential skill in the 21st century. And schools, teachers, and students are constantly confronted with a challenge—the challenge of being media literate.

What Media Literacy is NOT

To better understand media literacy, here are common misconceptions of what it is:
  1. Criticizing the media is not, and of itself, media literacy;
  2. Merely producing media is not media literacy, although part of being media literate is the ability to produce media;
  3. Teaching with media (videos, presentations, etc.) does not equal media literacy. Nevertheless, an education in media literacy must also include teaching with and about media;
  4. Viewing media and analyzing it from a single perspective is not media literacy. True media literacy requires both the ability and willingness to view and analyze media from multiple positions and perspectives.

What Media Literacy Requires

So what does it take, then, for someone to be considered media literate?

The Ontario Ministry of Education (1989) stressed that media literacy also means helping people develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media, their techniques, and their impact.

Thus, being media literate requires individuals to:

1. Learn to Think Critically

When people evaluate media, they decide if the messages and key ideas make sense before being convinced on the information they received.

2. Become Smart Consumers of Products and Information

Media literacy helps individuals learn how to determine whether something is credible before being persuaded by what is being offered.

3. Recognize Points of View

Identifying an author’s perspective helps individuals appreciate different ideas in the context of what they already know.

4. Create Media Responsibly

Recognizing one’s ideas and appropriately expressing them lead to effective communication.

5. Identify the Role of Media in Our Culture

Media conveys something, shapes understanding of the world, and makes an individual act or think in certain ways.

To conclude, media literacy is without a doubt an essential skill in the 21st century. Anyone who wants to succeed in today’s competitive world must know how to understand, use, analyze, and evaluate media in all its current and constantly evolving forms (print, audio, video, online, etc.)—to, as media literacy reminds us, “watch carefully and think critically.”

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