From believers to observers and critics: media literacy tools
Can we trust media? Is the real substance, the real news? Which are the filters of information media has? Why is important to consider media literacy for the future as a tool? When and how to teach media literacy? In Kindergarden? Is it only for college students or is important for grown ups just starting to learn how to use a computer? Is it a task to be done by the government? By academia? By individuals?
We live in a world where the whole concept of news has changed. People is not only using new media to spread ideas but also they are inventing new languages, that is why during the session there where a lot of questions without a final answer, there is still a lot of uncertainty around subjects like trust and how to educate people to be critic with contents.
And what about people with no voice, with no space in the system? According to Prof. Srivastava of Ryerson University, to have media literacy as a sine qua non requirement for media literacy success, you need to empower people. Then, you need:
– To have access to a variety of sources.
– To assess how messages are constructed.
– To analyze the info.
– To produce content, express or create our own messages.
But the world has changed, young people has shifted their attitude on privacy issues, they are not that concerned with data and the use of their personal data, is usual for those “digital natives” the transaction of personal info in exchange of something, so other aspect of media literacy is to teach people to be aware of their data and the impact personal data can have in their future, such as a bad profile on Facebook or worst, profiling that might be used to exclude people, for example, in health insurance or access to loans.
Young people also has a whole different attitude on Intellectual Property issues, the trends are to share their works within a community, and to be informed by their communities on specific subjects.
However it is an important task for educators to teach kids to be critical on the media, to build an informed opinion, a balanced, non biased opinion, not influenced by the impact of the image or the mixed messages of the wrong source. Jean Baudrillard said that “In making reality, even the most violent, emerge to the visible, it makes the real substance disappear. It is like the Myth of Eurydice: when Orpheus turns around to look at her, she vanishes and returns to hell. That is why, the more exponential the marketing of images is growing, the more fantastically grows the indifference towards the real world. Finally, the real world becomes a useless function, a collection of phantom shapes and ghost events. We are not far from the silhouettes on the walls of the cave of Plato.”
With the impact of New Media and all the images and mixed messages, all the content and lack of trust in printed press media literacy is a “must” for educators because children are facing a complex world in the future.
