FINAL REFLECTION

WHY is MEDIA LITERacy education is a necessary tool for SOCIETY AND OUR FUTURE:

 

What is Media Literacy?

Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. This excerpt from Medialit.org offers an elaborate explanation:

“Media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.”

  • Why is media literacy important?

Media Literacy education gives society a guide to processing concepts of media with intelligence and caution in order to avoid being mislead or manipulated by media intended to arouse a particular belief or emotion. By approaching our media consumption with the implication of the principles of media literacy, we can also avoid being a victim of the harmful effects caused by various forms of misleading information such as misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracies.

Here are core principals I retrieved from an article by Understand Media:

* All media messages are “constructed.” Just as books use letters to make words, words to make sentences, sentences to make paragraphs, and paragraphs to tell us a story, media sources have their own set of rules to create their message.

* Each medium has different characteristics, strengths, and a unique "language" of construction. A photograph is constructed using a different process than a book. Each medium uses unique methods for constructing its messages.

* Media messages are produced for particular purposes. Every media message is meant to either sell you a product or service, or to convince you of a lifestyle or ideology.

* All media messages contain embedded values and points of view. The message creator has either consciously or subconsciously embedded their own values in the message.

* People use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages. Each person interprets media messages based on their own backgrounds and experiences, and so each person's interpretation will be different.

* Media and media messages can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and the democratic process. Although people are influenced by their friends, family, and community leaders as well as media, media influences all of those people as well

Advertising & Persuasion

Media can be constructed towards a certain objective for an audience by using persuasive techniques that reflect ideas derived from Greek Philosopher, Aristotle. His 3 strategies for efficient persuasion include:

  • Logos: Appeal to Logic and Reason

  • Pathos: Appeal to Emotional influence

  • Ethos: Appeal to Credibility/Authority

This article gives many great examples of how companies that perform well with their marketing and advertising operations consistently incorporate the “Aristotelian notions of ethos, pathos, and logos to create a message that fully resonates with their audience.”

 

In this crash course video Edward Bernays states, “The human being- male or female- is like a heard animal. Man is fearful of solitude.. He is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other influence.”

Further, all of the data collected from our digital footprints is used in various ways, typically without our awareness. For example, digital audience behavioral data is gathered by third parties and sold to advertising firms in order to adhere to the persuasive techniques listed above with the goal to articulate ways to present a product or a service to reach its target audience. This is a significantly common utilization that it allows companies to generate consumer profiles that mirror all types of human behavior as efficiently and accurately as possible to achieve the overall objective to create ads that persuade people to take action and spend money. The more computers understand human beings, the better ads will perform because they are structured to optimize conversions/making purchases. By utilizing the relationship between different emotions and their associated behavioral tendencies, advertisers can construct advertisements that align with aspects of behavioral patterns in order to present products or services to reach the most accurate profiles of the target audience. The higher the relevance and sense of personalization advertisements seem to the audience, the higher the influence will be to drive purchases.  The vulnerabilities in human emotion, such as an impulsive spending behavior after a breakup, advertisers can take advantage and predict our behaviors during an emotional state to optimize the chance that the target audience will act on their current state and make a purchase to contribute to it.  In this research article about the influence of advertising this is explained in detail:

“Consumer buying behavior refers to the methods involved when individuals or groups choose, buy, utilize or dispose of products, services, concepts or experiences to suit their needs and desires (Solomon, 1995). A behavior that consumers display in searching for, paying for, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they think will satisfy their needs” 

Social role and image reflects that ads influence individual lifestyle and the extent to which an individual seeks to present him or herself in a socially acceptable manner. In addition to selling products and services, ads sell image and lifestyle. Consumers learn about new lifestyle, image and trend through ads (Pollay & Mittal, 1993; Burns, 2003). Advertising promotes social messages and lifestyles through illustrating the position of ideal consumers and stimulating social action toward purchase of that product.

Advertisements generally have influence on how we perceive things around us. Through various types of advertisements, especially TVCs portray how a user of a certain product is or should be. It sometimes shows the social class the user of a product belongs to, their life styles and attitudes.”

Misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes, & conspiracies

With the idea that everybody has the right to freely create and publish media anywhere they desire at any given time, comes the occurrence of manipulated media that contains inaccurate or misleading information. Essentially, users must decide what they can or should not share and what to clarify/fact-check. Misinformation is commonly believed by audiences because of something in psychology called confirmation bias, where people tend to believe information that aligns with their personal values, experiences, background, beliefs, etc. According to this article from Psychology Today:

“Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views or prejudices one would like to be true.” 

This is one example of how practicing and applying the principles of media literacy can help us avoid being accustomed to a cycle of circulating ideas and perspectives. Instead, we can comprehend information with the understanding that it is not all black and white. It is important to evaluate the characteristics of the media you consume such as source, intention, grammar, tone, author, publisher, platform, etc. Another form of misleading information in the media is disinformation. According to this research article from information scientist, Don Fallis, disinformation is misleading information that has the function of misleading or it can be analyses that are too broad, too narrow, or both. He describes how “disinformation can cause significant harm to the people who are misled by it”. If we comprehend things through strategies that align with the principles of Media Literacy, we can better detect forms of disinformation to avoid spreading it. The more educated in media literacy we become as a society, the less we will see conflict and negativity being spread among the media. This article from Scientific American states:

“The differentiation between factual and opinion statements used in this study – the capacity to be proved or disproved by objective evidence – is commonly used by others as well, but may vary somewhat from how “facts” are sometimes discussed in debates – as statements that are true.”

A 2015 study by OSoMe researchers Emilio Ferrara and Zeyao Yang analyzed empirical data about such “emotional contagion” on Twitter and found that people overexposed to negative content tend to then share negative posts, whereas those overexposed to positive content tend to share more positive posts. Because negative content spreads faster than positive content, it is easy to manipulate emotions by creating narratives that trigger negative responses such as fear and anxiety.

Here are some questions you should ask to avoid intaking false information:

  • Where is this information coming from? / How do they know?

  • Who produced this information and what is their background and/or experience with this concept?

  • How is this person associated with the concept/idea/event/situation being presented? What is their involvement?

  • Where is the proof? Where is the proof coming from?

  • Is there more than one perspective being presented and contrasted with another? Or does this only demonstrate one side? 

  • What is the purpose of this piece of media? How is it trying to make the audience feel and why?  

If we work harder to try comprehending things through operations and processes that align with principles of Media Literacy, we can better detect forms of disinformation to avoid spreading it. The more educated in media literacy we become as a society, the less we will see conflict and negativity being spread among the media. 

Media ownership and regulation

Because implicating the principles of Media literacy requires access to all information and ideas without censorship, we need Net Neutrality. Being engaged in media consumption is a part of participation in society, including the ability to receive and convey information which is a global human right. (referenced in Module 1’s learning materials)

Net neutrality is an important aspect of media consumption in terms of how it is accessed and controlled among users. By having equal access to the internet and its services, we don’t have to worry about circumstances where corporate establishments have power over what we access and how much we pay for it. to article from TheStreet that I believe explained it efficiently:

“American law inherited from the British an idea called the common carriage, which says that the public always has a fundamental right of equal access to public roads and waterways. Under common carriage, you can set up toll roads and ferries, but only on an egalitarian basis. Everyone gets equal access, and if it's for pay, each person pays the same. Later on, Congress expanded this idea to include wire services such as telephones, as they run their lines along or under public rights of way.”

Similar to how we all have access to the same roads while paying the same toll fees, access to the internet should be structured in the same manner. Further, net neutrality ensures that we as consumers of technology are protected from service providers controlling the way we use the internet in terms of content, access, speed, services, etc. This includes actions such as blocking, referencing, or censoring particular speech or content.

More aspects of Net Neutrality include:

  • Stops service providers from blocking or slowing down websites and streaming speeds.

  • Companies can't discriminate what services they provide to the consumer

  • Individual freedom, not corporate control 

  • Censored speech and content

  • Can’t block or preference any content

  • Ensure that businesses can compete freely without gatekeeping fees