| Background and Context |
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The focus of this course is media literacy. Media literacy -- as the term is used here -- refers to the development of an informed and critical understanding of the nature and impact of the mass media. Media literacy curricula are currently being implemented in dozens of countries, within primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions, as well as in less formal educational settings. The assumption underlying most of these efforts is that the mass media exert a significant influence in contemporary societies. Of course, these influences seldom take the form of simple stimulus-response effects (e.g., see a violent movie and run out to commit a violent crime). Rather, media influences tend to be gradual and cumulative, resulting in the cultivation and/or reinforcement of narrow sets of attitudes, values, perceptions, and practices (e.g., regarding gender, race, class, material consumption, the natural world, and so forth). Though early mass media research tended to focus on individual messages as the primary unit of analysis (in the search for simple stimulus-response effects), contemporary media research tends to focus on the entire cultural environment -- within which the commercial media are a dominant feature. Accordingly, media literacy efforts seek to raise students' critical awareness regarding the media's "environmental effects" (i.e., the ways that living within a given media environment influence us both individually and collectively). Beyond this awareness-raising objective, media literacy also helps students develop the practical skills to critically analyze particular aspects of their media environment, make decisions about the media they surround themselves with, consider the media environment they might like to raise their children within, understand the ways that media policy influences our media environment, envision alternative media environments, and potentially work toward media reform -- as both consumers and citizens. In short, just as the state of our natural environment and its impact on human health and well-being have become the focus of considerable attention in recent decades, so too must the state of our media environment. Indeed, my own interest in media literacy arose from a background in environmental education. While working as a high-school environmental studies teacher, I came to understand that most of my students had little direct experience with the issues we studied in the classroom. Rather, their perceptions of, and attitudes toward, the environmental issues we examined were highly influenced by mediated representations of those issues. Realizing this, I became interested in the relationship between our natural and cultural environments -- with the media as a dominant feature of the latter. This interest led me back to graduate school and into the field of media literacy. This experience has, in turn, shaped my approach to Communication 240. For additional background and perspectives on media literacy, as well as curricular resources for implementing media literacy programs for various age groups, please visit the following links: > return to top of page |