Can Media Literacy Backfire?
If we can generally conclude that digital media literacy does work, it’s worth asking the opposite question: can media literacy backfire?
If we can generally conclude that digital media literacy does work, it’s worth asking the opposite question: can media literacy backfire?
Media education is the process through which individuals become media literate – able to critically understand the nature, techniques and impacts of media messages and productions. In the words of digital media literacy scholar Sonia Livingstone, “the more that the media mediate everything in society – work, education, information, civic participation, social relationships and more – the more vital it is that people are informed about and critically able to judge what’s useful or misleading, how they are regulated, when media can be trusted, and what commercial or political interests are at stake. In short, media literacy is needed not only to engage with the media but to engage with society through the media.”[1]
Young Canadians need to be able to make good choices about privacy, ethics, safety and verifying information when they’re using digital media, and they need to be prepared to be active and engaged digital citizens. Based on our ground-breaking research on digital literacy education in Canada – and linked to existing curriculum outcomes for each province and territory – MediaSmarts’ model curriculum that provides a framework for integrating digital literacy in Canadian schools. The framework draws on our research to identify nine essential skill topics that students need to know and provides resources in each category and at every grade level.
The question of whether media education, or digital media literacy, “works” is a bit misplaced. There is no doubt that it works in the same sense that other areas of study “work,” in that students who’ve received media education know more about digital media literacy than those that haven’t – just as students who take history courses know more about history than those that don’t.
Media educators base their teaching on key concepts for digital media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. As media education pioneer Len Masterman put it, “You can teach the media most effectively, not through a content-centered approach, but through the application of a conceptual framework which can help pupils to make sense of any media text.”[1]
If the key concepts are what students must understand, the core competencies are what they have to be able to do, and the framework topics are what they need to know, then digital citizenship may be imagined as the ideal outcome of media education. Digital citizenship is, therefore, realized when people have developed the ability to access, use, understand and engage with media, including online communities; apply critical thinking to media and networked tools; and possess the content knowledge needed to do all these things ethically and effectively.
Today's definition of literacy is more than reading and writing. In order to be functionally literate in our media-saturated world, children and young people—in fact, all of us—have to be able to read the messages that daily inform us, entertain us and sell to us. Media literacy education, therefore, must begin long before children become print literate to prepare them to critically engage with the media they consume.
Two of the most important kinds of information we look for online are about health and science. These can have a big effect on decisions we make about our own lives and our opinions on controversial issues.
While many of us strongly prefer online sources when seeking out health and science information,[1] a majority first encounter health or science stories through traditional news outlets.[2]