Right in Front of Your Face : Why We Need Media Literacy

Media literacy is everywhere. When you think of the things that you have done today you would be astonished when you see how much media you have been exposed to without your knowledge of it. Our world and culture has conformed around the many forms of media that we have to offer. When recalling the definition of media literacy I went and found on http://www.wikipedia.org/ that Media literacy is: the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms.

Media literacy is a very important part of our society and I became in my opinion somewhat knowledgeable about recently. The amount of time that people spend watching the television or on the internet is on the rise and continues to rapidly grow. It is something that should be taught at an early age and continued to be taught throughout life. If used correctly and not over whelming I feel that it can make our society better off.

Media literacy for children is an important learning tool. Learning about media literacy at a young age can be used to help children at a later time be able to filter out irrelevant messages. Having the knowledge of this media literacy at a young age can protect people from: trap 3 a false sense of control from Media Literacy Third Edition by W. James Potter stating that, “But the irony is that as we are offered greater control, we exercise less and less control” (8).

Children need to learn to be media literate while their minds are still developing. It allows children to think outside the box and not wait for someone else to tell them what to do. We want the new age to be able to read into the messages that are being portrayed by the media. We want them to know how the media sways the people, to be able to pull out hidden messages, and interoperate the messages.

Learning about triggers was very interesting I feel that it makes people more aware of their surroundings. They can take your attention away from something that you were doing and have you focus on something new. These are things that are good to become educated about at a young age.

We need to keep a focus on starting children at a young age where they are still influential. Rather than waiting until they are old enough to start making decisions on their own. Emotionally media literacy can help also. It can help people fully understand their emotions on what they see or hear on television.

Children should be exposed regularly to media literacy starting as soon as possible. It can help them understand things in the media that they would not have even thought twice about. It can defiantly help them in the future. By the way our word is drastically changing with the media it can really help them to learn and make decisions on their own. If I could go back and change what I learned at a young age I certainly would have added media literacy to my education.

Violence? Just A Movie!

The Media is where most people get their information it seems to be that the majority of the time what is in the media is negative. However, does this negativity influence people to do bad things? Some people may believe that it does influence people in a negative manner and others would say that it does not have any effect of people. It is very hard to find a movie that does not depict violence in it.

As I began thinking of the movies that I have seen that show violence in them I came across The Godfather. It is a movie that not only shows many scenes of violence in them but it are also a movie that presents honor and family values in it. During the movie I felt the intensity of the violent scenes like the director intended it to do. After I had watched it however I was not having any feeling of anger or hatred toward people.

There are many things that happen during the movie that seem to be very true to life, or what we are told it is like if we do not personally know of it. You see that people will go above and beyond for their family and some that may even kill for their protection or for revenge. These things are very true in life however, I do not think that violence that is in movies or in the media is the reason to why people become violent.

Out of the book Media Literacy Third Edition by W. James Potter, there are 13 factors that can “interact in the media effects process” (Potter 249). For Knowledge structure is a good reason as to why I was able to understand that the movie was just a movie. My knowledge was mainly acquired by the people around me not by the media so I am able to filter out the violence. I think to keep your set point factors without being influenced by other factors that can stray you from your set points. A factor that can especially be controlled in my opinion is Content of the Message (255). Instead of watching so many movies that depict violence you find something else to do with your time or you can watch movies with less or no violence in it.

I personally do not feel that violence in films or in the media causes people to act violently. In my opinion I feel that people do violent things because of other emotional and environmental factors. I do not think that added violence influences people to behave aggressive. I do slightly agree that if that is all you do is watch violence then it will affect you negatively. I will try to keep filtering out the bad for myself and from others to teach them that it is just a show.

Housewives Watching Housewives

Competition plays a major role in our everyday culture. Television networks experience competition every time their shows are played on television. Each competes to be the best and desire to have their shows played during the largest viewing audience. Many of the highest rated shows tend to be played during the hours of 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM.

One of my favorite shows and probably one of your favorite shows as well is, Desperate Housewives that premier on ABC Sundays at 9:00 PM. I have been watching this show since it has first began. I greatly enjoy this show because of its humor and its ability to take the audience out of the “real world” for an hour’s time.

This show has very strong ratings according to http://tv.zap2it.com. 18,933,000 total viewers watch this show from 2007-2008 Season through March 3, 2008. Its ratings/share is 11.9/17 in the household. USAToday.com tells us a little more about the target audience of Desperate Housewives by stating it targets viewers between the age ranges of 18-49 year olds.

Currently at its Sunday 9 PM scheduled airing spot, it does not have a large amount of rival network competition. When coming across a feeling of ratings’ decrease, it is most likely due to NBC Sunday Night Football because games are being played during the show. I think that there would be a major impact if the show’s day had been changed from Sunday at nine. Then it would begin to have some strong competition coming from FOX and CBS.

Depending on the day that they would schedule it would determine who and what shows that they would compete. Some shows that would be troublesome to Desperate Housewives would be the very popular CSI which brings in very high ratings with every viewing and also produces twice as many episodes during their season. Their ratings could possibly drop because of the intense competition that it would be facing. The loyal Desperate Housewives viewers may make a decision to not watch if another show is on at the same time that they may have become intrigued in when Desperate Housewives was on Sundays.

If it were not for competition would television be as good as it is today? What would the ratings look like if that were the case? We may not realize it, but television ratings are very important for our favorite shows to stay alive. So for all you Desperate Housewives fans out there keep watching and let’s keep the ratings up!

Judgemental Postman?

I was recently introduced to the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. He has openly expressed his feelings about many topics. After I read the book I began to notice things in entertainment and tried to relate them to what he meant. Postman makes very good points about our media today but he is very prejudiced toward his thoughts. I feel that Postman makes strong arguments but I disagree with many of the arguments or his views because he does not omit a worldly perspective of his argument.

I really do not agree with what he said, “all subject matter is presented as entertaining” (87). From my point of view he looks at the media as being strictly for entertainment purposes. I do not agree with him saying that ‘all’ is made for entertaining. Some things are made to be informative for the most part such as CNN. Another channel where their main focus is to inform is The Weather Channel.

Another topic that Postman says, “‘Sesame Street’ does not encourage children to love school or anything about it. It encourages then to love television” (144). This is another subject that I disagree with. I feel that Sesame Street is not a replacement for teachers but a supplement of education that children can receive at home to engage in the learning process. Other children shows use the same technique that can stimulate the learning process in children. Another good example is the child show Blues Clues. These and other educational children’s programs provide lessons on spelling, math, and other subjects that may help a student understand the subject while in school.

Postman composes valid points throughout his book but he needs to gain a holistic perspective of the aspects of future entertainment. Media is not used for the sole purpose of entertainment but as an educational source in our everyday lives. The media provides us with news, statistics, current affairs and other knowledgeable events that influence society.

All in all I felt that the Postman book was well written and supported the topics that were presented. I do not think that when he was writing this book that he had a very accurate outlook of what the future was to portray for the entertainment media.

What is News??

There are many different means of acquiring the news whether it is in the newspaper, watching it on television, or now one of the most popular, the internet. The news paper being around for the longest time still is slowly growing in amount of readers but it is not getting the same numbers as it did before. In the book Media Literacy by W. James Potter it states, "Only about 45% of American Adults read newspapers regularly" (Potter 125). The majority of the people that read the paper are senior citizens. Many people now get their news from the internet.

The internet is vastly growing with different web sites to get todays and yesterdays news. Now there are local community papers that are on the internet. When I used the site CyberJournalist, I found that there are many links that took me to citizen journalism sites. The specific site that I chose was http://northfield.org/. It is used so that the citizens of Northfield can talk about what is going on within their community.

The great thing about this site is that there are not the same constraints that are discussed in Media Literacy by Potter on page 103. These include deadlines, resource limitations and geographical focus. There are no deadlines that need to be made when you have a site like this. People can post whenever and whatever they want that deals with what is going on in their community or what is going to happen. The items that are posted tend to be things that are going to happen. It seems to focus mostly on promoting what events are taking place or will be taking place.

By using these citizen sites it also keeps from having your resources limited. Anyone in Northfield is able to post on it. This allows people in the communities to write what ever they want without having the restrictions such as the news stations or the editors of the papers.

It does however have a geographical focus for the area of Northfield. This site was made for the community of Northfield and talks about things that occur there. It does not focus on what is happening around the world like many other sites do.

This being said, I have learned that there are many different means of gaining the news. When I learned about this different way for people to communicate with each other I found it very interesting. People being able to get their opinions and events out in the news without someone turning them down could be a new beginning to the media.

The new season of Survivor: Fans vs. Favorites seems to have a clever idea behind it. To think putting fans up against the favorites seems like it could have its positives and its downfalls. Alex from the fans' statement seems to show a valid argument to media literacy.

The show demonstates from media literacy a concept that we discussed about traps that we fall into. I believe that Alex makes a stong argument in this case of having an advantage that they have seen how the players acted while they were on the show before. She says that she knows their "game" but I feel that is where the traps come into play.

Even though they saw how people acted over the course of their shows, Alex and the other fans do not see even close to what all happens behind the scene. There is so much that goes on when the camera is not on and I feel that the fans should realize that there are other things to concider.

The series Max Headroom was a show that presented 20 minutes into future. It did not last for anymore than a season. Even though it did not last that long while it was on it presented media literacy though the concept of knowledge structure.

In this show the world that they live in is very media oriented. These impact the knowledge structure of the viewers because the television is on all the time and can be interrupted at any time. The two major news channels were BreakThru and Network 23, these news channels went to extremes to get viewers and to increase their ratings.

While the viewers are watching these shows all the time it makes them more vulnerable to the things that are told to them through the television. This would change their knowledge structure from being very broad to a very narrow point of view because of the repitition that they experience. This takes away from their outlook of how they precieve the world to be. This could create a single minded, uniform society. This is why in Max Headroom it does display a broadened view of knowledge structure in media literacy.