Literacy for the Current Generation: Why We Need Media Literacy

As David Considine said in the Fall 1995 issue of Telemedium, the Journal of Media Literacy;"In an age where most Americans get most of their information from television, not textbooks, pictures not print, we need a wider definition of what it means to be literate." It is true that our definition of what it means to be literate is changing and broadening, as it will continue to do in the years to come, as our technology and methods of communicating become more advanced. In the same article, David Considine defines Media Literacy as follows: "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate a variety of information including print and non-print." This definition itself shows how valuable media literacy is for just basic day-to-day survival. Considine's definition of media literacy could just as well be describing the requirements for a job or even the goal of education today.

With 65% of parents today concerned about their child's media use, isn't it surprising that only 18% believe that they need to be doing to monitor it (according to media statistics)? Even the internet is getting on board with helping parents to show their children how to properly evaluate media messages, with websites such as PBS KIDS GO!. This website in particular shows children how to decide which advertisements to believe, and familiarizes them with advertising strategies so they will be less likely to fall for advertising gimmicks. Children ages 8-12 years old see an average of 21 food ads per day, which translates out to more than 7,600 ads per year, and that is just a count of ads that are food related!

In an age where one-fifth of toddlers have a television in their bedroom, media literacy should be promoted from a very young age. When children and adults are continually being exposed to media messages, whether it be on the way to work, school, or even while relaxing at home, they need to take special care that they do not fall into traps that the media has set out for us. Advertisements are just one example of ways that we can be misled by the media. Television shows, news programs, and even video games all send out messages just waiting to be interpreted by the viewer.

Being trained in media literacy is a skill that you can use every day, almost every minute. The filters in our brains are continually working to decide what to believe and what to ignore. Media literacy skills help us to be less vulnerable to the messages that surround us. Media messages can alter our thoughts about a variety of things, such as what social norms are, including thoughts of drinking, violence, smoking, and even depression. While these factors are not necessarily going to cause us to become more violent, or more depressed, they will alter our idea of what is "cool," thus altering our behaviour and ultimately our thought processes. Since American adults and teens spend over 5 months a year consuming media, don't you think it's about time we focus on becoming more media literate?

Old or new, still has an effect

I have been taking a look at the way the media can effect a person's behaviour, and when I was watching an older movie the other day, I realized that no matter how old the movie is, there are still scenes that can affect you. Really, in the end, it has to do with the content of the scene, rather than the graphic nature of it. For example, in the movie Charade, which was made in 1936, there are no scenes of violence, by today's standards, but the dead bodies still have a disturbing effect. Most memorably, the two that have to deal with the types of death that scare me most - suffocation and drowning. There is not very much outright violence, but instead, the absence of violence itself is disturbing. When you see violence in a movie anymore, you assume that someone is about to die. When there is no violence, but suddenly a dead body appears in the next room, I find it even more disturbing. In that way, I feel like the older movies did it right - the absence of extreme real violence makes it harder to become desensitized to the violent images portrayed by our society.

I think this is interesting, because in the same vein, when I watch a movie like Casino Royale or Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the violence is more realistic, but for some reason less effective. In Casino Royale,the only two sections that especially bother me involves the torture scene, and the drowning scene at the end, in spite of the fact that there are multiple scenes that are more graphic than that. Shootings take place, things blow up, and the opening credits include Bond completing his first mission - to kill someone connected with the main plot. The whole point of Casino Royale is to kill people for information, to get ahead, to find out things for the "good" of the government or the people.

In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the violence is realistic, but the situation is much less so. Spousal abuse seldom ends in a marriage working out. When Mr. and Mrs. Smith show violence towards each other, you'd think that the show of spousal violance would turn you off to the movie altogether, but oddly it somehow has the completely different effect. It glorifies violence and sex, and puts them together in a way that makes it attractive, and does not appear at all wrong. They portray violence in an attractive manner, which is similar to Casino Royale - everyone wants to be Bond, or a secret agent, but no one thinks of the consequences or the things that you would actually have to do in order to have that profession.

In conclusion, I think the public overall is being desensitized to violence in general, but there are still some images which will bother people all the time. I always am bothered by the scenes I mentioned, and will continue to be no matter how many times I watch the movies, because I am bothered by the topics portrayed by them.

Is NBC's Celebrity Apprentice a celebrity?

The ratings and shares system is a time tested method of how many people are watching the show, and how effective it actually is. They are also used for discerning how many people are seeing a certain type of commercial, and what the typical demographic is that views the show, or just the network's time slot in general.

The Celebrity Apprentice finished strong at NBC's Thursday night prime time slot, with an average 7.4 rating and a 12 share. Since other popular shows had not yet come back from the writers strike, NBC actually maintained the number one slot throughout the night because of this show. In general, I think that the show would hold up decently among the other shows that it was competing against, such as Grey's Anatomy on ABC, but the writer's strike helped it immensely. Seeing as last year, Grey's Anatomy brought in a share of 14.1, it would certainly detract from the viewers of The Celebrity Apprentice. The fact that this week was the finale helped as well, I would think. The first hour the ratings were down, because it had to compete with the NCAA tournament, but after the second hour the ratings rose again, to bring the average up for the #1 spot of the night.

If Celebrity Apprentice was moved to a different spot, I don't know if it would be as successul. It has the potential to be, because it would no longer have to compete with Grey's Anatomy on Thursday nights, however, there are plenty of other shows, reality or otherwise that it would have to compete with if it was moved.

The demographic that it appeals to, mainly the working world, would be best suited to watch it at it's current time, which is immediately after dinner time on a thursday night, and not late enough that those who have to get up for work would decline to watch it. According to Zap2it.com, the ratings for the group of 18-49 year olds watching were higher than any of the other networks that night. I think the spots that were left vacant by the writers strike helped Celebrity Apprentice gain popularity, and even though the writers strike was over by the time the finale came around, the popularity that it had gained throughout the weeks of the writers strike helped it to keep it's popularity to the end. Let's face it - no viewers of the show would tune out for the special 2 hour finale, to see whether Piers or Trace won! Even though I did not watch the show religiously for it's entire run, I tuned in to see who won, and actually found myself caring.

Amusing Ourselves with Postman

Neil Postman's work "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" is an interesting commentary on the way that media was in 1985, and to some extent, what it is today. However in some aspects, Postman could be considered to be inaccurate. Postman could not have foreseen many of the changes in media that were to come, which is part of the danger of writing such a book.

For example, as Postman said, the television commercial became an influential part of American culture - especially during the Super Bowl. However, one could argue that since the arrival of TiVo and other such recording media, television commercials have lost their influence, and things that Postman could not have for seen have taken its place (for example, the rise of internet usage). As far as Postman could tell, however, television commercials were the way to go; and in actuality, they were for many years after this book was published.

An example of something that has not changed, however is the effect that the media still has over the image of those both in politics and just on television in general. We as a people require our politicians and newscasters alike to present themselves as stylish, handsome, and well groomed. Using the Richard Nixon example, if our presidential candidate refuses to wear makeup on screen, and as a result looks sweaty, or pasty on television, we will refuse to elect him, no matter how good his political platform is. Newscasters suffer a similar fate, as Postman mentioned - however I do not agree with his idea that newscasters are more concerned about looking good for the camera than getting a good story.

In short, I had a mixed reaction to Neil Postman's book. It is an interesting commentary on where people in 1984 felt that the media was going, but as for its relevance today, I am not quite sure. Fundamentally, perhaps, Postman's ideas could carry over into the media arena of today, but there are a good deal of things that have changed as well. If you read Postman with the intention of not taking him completely seriously, I believe it can be beneficial. In other words, take Postman's views with a grain of salt.

"Do it yourself" journalism

As the internet is getting to be a more and more popular way for people to get their news, the practice of "citizen journalism" has popped up. I think this is an interesting new direction for journalism, because it enables the everyday American to have a platform for their views and give their perspective on the different situations the world over.

The citizen journalism website I chose to review was "OhmyNews International," http://english.ohmynews.com/index.asp, a site for international news, which also provides links on "how to" articles for brand new citizen journalists. One of the most interesting of these links was for the "Journawiki," (http://journalism.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page ) which is basically an online manual on how to be a citizezn journalist, which can be added to by fellow citizen journalists all over the world.

The reason I chose "OhmyNews International" was because of it's old school newspaper look and feel. Its look was clean and professional, and even though the articles have their own biases, the tone and grammatical structure was professional as well. It also interested me because it was an international site, so it has a wider volume of writers, as well as readers. The international aspect also shows that there are many different viewpoints available from this website, and it's not just concentrated in one area.

I think that citizen journalism is really the future of journalism, because it is easily accessible, and it's coming from "people like us." The hardship will be determining what is true and what is false, but that stands true of even traditional journalism today.

Survival of the fittest...

In a recent episode of Survivor: Fans vs. Favorites, the motivational speaker from the Fan team said that the Fans have an advantage over the Favorites, because they know how the Favorites behave, just by watching the previous seasons. The Favorites, on the other hand, have no idea how the Fans are going to behave.
I was inclined to disagree with this logic. While on the surface it seems to make sense, in reality, the Fans have no idea who the Favorites are. The Favorites, who in past seasons appeared to have one personality, may in fact have a personality completely different. That is to say, they could have been playing a role, in order to appeal to the viewers, or their fellow players. Also, the personalities that they portrayed could have been altered merely by the other player's personalities. The chemistry between the teammates could have brought out different traits in different people. As well, the challenges are probably not going to be the exact same, and it is difficult to say how people you have never met are going to react in every circumstance.
The idea of Fans vs. Favorites is interesting, but I think that it is just going to be like every other Survivor, and not that much different.

Max Headroom analysis

In my BC253 class, we recently viewed an episode of a show called "Max Headroom." The episode we watched showed a group of terrorists in cohorts with a news station in order to boost the ratings, and gain more money for all involved. It really showed the impact that the news could have (and in some cases does have) on the world.
Along the same lines, it also shows the importance of keeping the media relatively honest - if the media actually did conspire with terrorists, what could happen? In television today, the ratings are all powerful; however, how much sacrifice is too much? Are we sacrificing our morals, innocence, and humanity for the sake of ratings and monetary gain?
For example, when I was watching the news the other day, I saw footage of a woman who had been poisoned, supposedly by her husband. They showed video of her dead body on the news, in the middle of the day, no less, all the while mentioning that her own family could not watch this footage. How is that necessary? I am not saying that our media would go as far as to kill a woman on the air, as they did in the episode of Max Headroom. Max Headroom shows a "worst case scenario" of what our media could potentially become, if we continue to value the ratings over the people who are watching.