Belinha S. De Abreu
âMedia literacy, our capacity to access, have a critical understanding of, and interact with the media has never been as important as in todayâs societyâ (European Commission, 2017). Media literacy education is a global and international focus. As media technologies continue to expand in scope and reach, with little regard for physical or cultural borders, how we educate students about the role of media in their daily lives increasingly incorporates perspectives that are more global. Thus, an essential and analogous relationship exists between the new digital technologies, global awareness, and media literacy. A global perspective, given the accessibility of the world via social networks and the Internet, is needed for our students and educators.
We exist in a period of time where the connections we make with each other go beyond the everyday person-to-person and extend to whom we connect with through media. The media is the repository for these connections. It is the conduit and the influencer. It is the messenger, the producer, the innovator, and the creator. As people, we live within the frames of the development of the media and we have become the communicators as encoders, decoders, and even the methods of delivery. The media has become an augmentation of our person. Our human distinction, which separates us from the media as a tool, is our ability to discern and consider the media as a platform, as a vehicle, as a tool, and as a representation.
We are at a time and place where the answers for media and technology come across via the media as simple but wrong, or complex and right. The issue is whether the global public is willing in many cases to take the harder path of finding out truth and seeing it out consciously and directly. The headlines of the past few years are an indication of this struggle:
âIn France, School Lessons Ask: Which Twitter Post Should You Trustâ (The New York Times, 2018)
âThe Guardians and the War on Truthâ (Time, 2018).
âPoor media literacy âmaking Turks vulnerable to fake newsââ (Hurriet Daily News, 2018).
âHow are first time votes in Nigeria navigating fake news?â (BBC News World Service, 2019).
âHow the BBC is tackling the growing problem of fake news in Asia and Africaâ (The Drum, 2019).
âMisinformation Is Endangering Indiaâs Electionâ (The Atlantic, 2019).
Whether it is journalists or journalism, there is a struggle going on in our world regarding media manipulation. As Umberto Eco stated, âNot long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police⊠Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications (Eco, 1967, pp. 1â2). Moreover, the transmission of information is happening through various filter bubbles, individuals in power and our general society, as well as multiple technologies.
Being media literate today is about understanding that platforms of communication manipulate and that simplicity of a basic search does not often give the âbestâ or âcorrectâ answer. As a global society, we have allowed the technology to control, influence, and direct us, and that has just happened in a very short period of time.
Media literacy has been looked at globally for quite some time but not necessarily under the name of âmedia literacy.â As early as the 1920s, there was discussion of visual literacy in particular to the understanding of motion pictures and its incorporation into a contextual learning in the classroom. There was even an organization founded on this principle from the University of Chicago (Saettler, 2004). However, more often, especially in countries outside of the United States âmedia educationâ was used as the term for referencing the ideas of media literacy. The UK, Australia, Spain, and even Canada had media education as a principle of learning, and it wasnât until the second half of the twentieth century that we could see an exchange of terminology between âmedia literacyâ and media âeducationâ (Buckingham, 2019).
Debating the merits of media literacy education is not new. The work of media literacy education was highlighted in particular during the 1960s and 1970s as world events were creating turmoil in the world:
The 60sâŠthat was really the hotbed issues of civil rights, the war in Vietnam â all of those things were televisual and had a lot of ideological implicationsâŠWe were inspired by these situations that were being commodified by the mediaâŠand it obviously shaped what I was doing.
It is important to note that prior to that time, there was discussion of media education and that term has been exchanged with media literacy throughout the years. However, there is a debate about whether we would look at media education and media literacy in the same way and that continues to be true.
Duncan was one of the first media literacy educators and true pioneer of this work. He was the co-founder of the Alliance for Media Literacy in Toronto, Ontario, and Media Education Working Group of the Centre for Media and Culture in Education at OISE/University of Toronto. Much of the Ontario, Canada, work came from Duncan, who, in 1989, provided the Ministry from Ontario with a theoretical paper with eight key concepts for media literacy:
1 All media are constructions.
2 The media construct reality.
3 Audiences negotiate meaning in 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 (Duncan, 1989).
Another media literacy scholar, Len Masterman, from the United Kingdom, in 1989 came up with a series of principles used widely in UK for teaching and learning as related to media education. In particular, Masterman focused on the idea of media texts: âIn the past, media teachers had asserted their interpretive authority over students. But the media, too, are teachers in this mold â because all media texts point audiences towards a specific set of emotional, social and intellectual responsesâ (Connections/MediaLit Moments, 2013, p. 2).
Mastermanâs works looked at both consumption and production, but more importantly he believed in critical practice that needed to be developed in schools and with educators in the UK. His work was foundational to the development of the Canadianâs school of thought in regard to media literacy education and later to what was developed in the United States.
Media Literacy Globally Defined
The European Commissionâs definition of media literacy, articulated in its Communication on a European approach to media literacy in the digital environment, states: âMedia literacy is generally defined as the ability to access the media, to understand and to critically evaluate different aspects of the media and media contents and to create communications in a variety of contextsâ (European Commission, 2009, para. 3).
The UNESCOâs Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers outlines the components of Media Literacy as:
Understand the role and functions of media
Understand the conditions under which media fulfill their functions
Critically analyze and evaluate media content
Use of media for democratic participation, intercultural dialogue and learning
Produce user-generated content
ICT and other media skills (UNESCO, 2011, p. 18).
From these definitions, it is easy to see that the media literacy movement has very much had an international bent, from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain, and more. Historically, the work done internationally has long set the precedence for what is working and used in schools and curriculum whether in North America, Asia, or Australia.
In Australia, media literacy is actively promoted within the primary and secondary curriculum in all states. In some states it is dealt with under the guise of English, and, in others, it is offered within an Arts framework. In the later years of high school in some states, media studies is offered as a stand-alone option. However, the primary focus still appears to be on broadcast media rather than the newer digital media (Penman & Turnbull, 2007, p 5).
European Association for Viewerâs Interests (EAVI) is an independent, not-for-profit international civil society organization registered in Brussels. EAVI was created to facilitate the âunifying process of all those who support citizensâ and consumersâ interests in the fields of mediaâ (EAVI, 2005). This organization focuses on the digital citizen and represents media literacy as follows:
Media literate citizens are those who are aware of the content they use, how they found it, who is constructing and providing it. Furthermore they are wise, ethical and effective in media use. Literate citizens are able to fully participate in public life and interact with other people, benefiting from services and using the media as a resource in a safe way. They are open to learn, explore and have fun with the media. They will also be informed consumers when shopping and locate reliable sources of information. They are not passengers, but are in the driving seat deciding where to go. They are AWARE.
As a discussion point, media literacy has been noted as the antidote for disinformation around the world, and it is considered the biggest issue of our times. Further, media literacy is discussed in a variety of ways, including the language of fake news, the filter bubble that helped to create fake news, even in terms of the gap instinct as described by Hans Rosling in Factfulness:
We love to dichotomize. Good versus bad. Heroes versus villains. My country versus the rest. Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and also dramatic because it implies conflict, we do it without thinking all the time. Journalists know this. They set up their narratives as conflicts between two opposing people, views or groups. They prefer stories of extreme poverty and billionaires to stories about the vast majority of people slowing dragging themselves toward better lives. Journalists are storytellers. So are people who produce documentaries and movies. Documentaries pit the fragile individual against the big, evil corporation. Blockbuster movies usually feature good fighting evil.
Unfortunately, this claim appears to fit right into what has happened during the election of 2016 and subsequent activity where âfake newsâ became interpreted in a variety of different ways by different news agencies, politicians, and even the general populace. Here is a piece in The Guardian, which attempted to define the variations of âfake newsâ:
Fake news means fictions deliberately fabricated and presented as non-fiction with the intent to mislead recipients into treating fiction as fact or into doubting verifiable fact.
âFictionsâ is meant to distinguish fake news from items which have a kernel of truth but are exaggerated, out of proportion, in the clichĂ© âsensationalisedâ.
âFabricatedâ emphasises the made-up, manufactured aspect of fake news.
âDeliberatelyâ and âintentâ draw attention to how fake news is purposeful, and help to show it is distinct from the flawed j...
