Introduction to Media Literacy (Ages 14-19)
Overview
As an introduction to Media Literacy, this lesson covers topics ranging from rhetorical theory, philosophy, and history to illuminate the interconnected complications of media in the modern world. Supplemental resources are woven into the lesson in the form of hyperlink text, images, and embedded videos. The ultimate goal of this lesson resource is to inform grade-aged learners about the subject complexity of media literacy and equip them with the most basic tools to properly understand and engage with social media and media in general. Crash Course, a free supplemental learning company is a commonly referenced external tool within the lesson as their expanding topic verity offers well-researched additive content for digital learning environments.
Goals and Outlines
Course Goals:
During this course, you'll be introduced to definitions of media and develop a more nuanced understanding of the messages contained therein, as well as, develop skills needed to identify possible goals media creators have in producing media content.
Course Outline:
This course covers two major topics with their own subcategories:
- Rhetorical Basis
- Coding
- Ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos
- Socratic dialogue & common argument fallacies
- Historical Concerns
- Early media development
- Radio and Culture Stars
- Social media and Internet 2.0
It is important to note that this course is not exhaustive, merely an introduction to a well-researched and active field of study. Everyone should have a basic understanding of media literacy, especially as the accessibility to media and the prevalence of it in people's daily lives only increases.
Additional Resources:
Watch this supplemental video from 1:04 to 2:06 for a better understanding of what media is and how pervasive it is in your daily life:
Rhetorical Basis
Coding
Functionally, Coding is the communication shorthand that everyone engages in but can be unique person-to-person or culture-to-culture. Whenever you are sending a text to someone and using emojis or abbreviating your speech, you are encoding your messages. The person receiving your text then has to decode the message, and depending on the context of the conversation, they may correctly or incorrectly interpret your speech. This is also true for spoken communication, however, pictographic elements are typically replaced by body language, slang, and memes.
You've likely experienced conversations with others much older or much younger than you where you've referenced a meme or pop-cultural element and they do not understand. This is an example of encoding errors or miscommunication.
Coding can also apply to graphical media; the visual shorthand for specific people-groups of ideas are often hidden in plain sight. This can also be unintentional on the part of media creators--they might create a character who displays behavioral patterns that the audience interprets as representing a specific demographic. Unintentional coding can often cause problems with communication, so as part of media literacy, it is important to understand how others might interpret the messages you put out into the world.
Ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos
Whether this is your first introduction to these Rhetorical Features or you have heard of them before, they provide the most essential step in understanding media and subtextual goals. Each of these terms (ethos, logos, pathos, kairos) refers to a specific feature of a persuasive argument. Media is often persuasive in nature. For example, advertisements want to entice you to purchase goods or services from the advertising company; social media posts espousing moral rights or wrongs are trying to persuade you to agree and change your perspective; essays or research papers want to persuade you to believe their contents, etc. Try to remember each of these terms as a question:
| Rhetorical Element | Function and literacy question |
|---|---|
| Ethos | appeal to authority, the authority of the media author/speaker; how the writer/speaker comes across in their verbiage. Does this person have the authority or education to be knowledgeable and accurate? |
| Logos | appeals to logic or reason; the text of the argument/speech Does the evidence provided support the conclusion or statements made by the text? |
| Pathos | appeal to emotions; the emotions a piece of media attempts to evoke in the audience What is the speaker/author trying to make me feel and why? |
| Kairos | the timeliness of an argument or idea; the relevance of information or arguments Does this information matter to the argument and what analogies are the author/speaker drawing to the referenced time |
When thinking through these questions, you can begin to uncover the intentions and goals the author/speaker had in mind.
Socratic dialogue & common argument fallacies
Arguments are a fundamental form of communication that is convincing and persuasive. And common. Almost every day of your life, whenever you talk to another person, you are making an argument. Whether that argument is based on subjective experiences--like why a certain TV show or song is good--or is based on broader socioeconomic conditions, this fundamental form of communication is everywhere, and most people lack training or awareness of it.
One example of an argument style used to deconstruct the ideas underlying a perspective is a Socratic dialogue, named after the Greek philosopher Socrates. The structure of a Socratic Dialogue is as follows: a question is asked, an answer is given, and the answer is then reviewed and dissected with the end goal being a holistic understanding of the underlying ideas present in the answer. For example:
What came first, the chicken or the egg? There are only two answers--maybe three--however, the reasoning to get to an answer could be widely different from one person to the next. An individual answering that the egg came first because where else could the chicken have come from is thinking within the bounds of the chicken's lifespan. Another person could answer that the egg came first because hard-shell eggs have existed since long before chickens as a distinct, recognized species have. They're not thinking about the lifespan of a single bird but in the broader terms of life and the reproductive objective of eggs to an egg-laying species. Yet another might say the chicken came first, and identify that the egg, as an inert non-consious entity, could not spontaneously generate.
Socrates identified several logical fallacies common in arguments through his dialogues, work that was built upon and modified over many years of philosophical and rhetorical studies.
Follow this link to read more about the fifteen common logical fallacies then watch this video from 5:14 to 8:16. If you would like, reviewing other videos in this Crash Course series may be helpful for furthering your understanding of argument forms, but they are not strictly necessary to this course.
Historical Concerns
Early media development
In its earliest form, what we conceive of as Media today were public debates, conversations, artworks or buildings, cultural songs, and rhymes. Mostly, this was the domain of the wealthy, educated, or socially connected individuals. Or else, they were artifacts of religions or cultural histories present as a form of cultural memory (e.g. for a mostly illiterate population, the song turned nursery rhyme 'Ring around the Rosie' described the symptoms of the Black Death and how it was thought to be kept at bay). The primary concern among the scholars of the time when it came to writing and written media was forgetfulness. Contemporaries of Socrates were worried that if people began writing things down, they'd lose the ability to remember and understand topics; they'd become lazy, neglecting memorization of topics and knowledge in favor of other pursuits. Writing holds longevity and it outlasted the thinkers and educators of Ancient Greece, surviving in the commentaries done by Islamic scholars such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina).
The next big jump in Media within Europe was Gutenberg and his movable type printing press in the early 1400s, no longer requiring the rigorous time hand-transcribing documents used to need. Once Media widely entered print forms and the rate of communication between communities or individuals increased along with literacy rates, a new form of fast-paced accessible media became common.
By the second wave of industrialization and factory cities, newspapers and pamphlets were the sources of new Media for the era. Then, as the 1800s got into swing and newspapers entered competition with each other for advertising dollars and attention from the wider population, Yellow Journalism reared its ugly head. Researching topics that happened days worth of travel away when Morse code and telegraph were still in the R&D phase was incredibly difficult. It was far easier to print speculations and conjecture. According to the Office of the Historian (USA), yellow journalism really hit its stride in the 1860s when it affected international relations between the USA and Spain.
Radios and Culture Stars
Radio and silent film were the next big technological leaps, further expanding the potential audience for Media sources, as well as, creating a new genre by reviving live oration and making dramatic performances much more accessible. The idea of radio dramas and plays was not widely known before the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast which dramatized an existing short fiction from the United Kingdom on an American radio station in the style of live reporting. Given the novelty of radio plays and the serious tone in which the dramatization was delivered, many people--especially those in New Jersey and the surrounding area--were panicking. The beautiful accident of virality coupled with further shifts in technology brought about a new concern for media critics and consumers: mass media. In other words, how sensationalism carried over from yellow journalism would affect the world given just how wide a reach radio had.
But Mass Media wasn't finished with just radios. The invention and distribution of the television set created yet another avenue for media to be consumed. Movies and shows of all kinds were accessible in a way they had never been before. Increasingly, the world people lived and navigated in had Media that not everyone rhetorically or philosophically understood. Sensationalism also shifted over time, no longer limited to just yellow journalism, and contributed to many political and social conflicts. From McCarthyism and the Red Scare (political defensiveness) in the 1950s to the Satanic Panic (moral defensiveness) of the 1980s and 1990s, communities of people became increasingly concerned about media and its prevalence. In other words, protectionism was the cultural influencer that rose out of the fertile ground sensationalism provided. Watch this video from 1:27 to 5:00
Social media and Internet 2.0
Now that we live in a world inundated with media, Protectionism and defensiveness around media sources aren't actually helpful. Most media literacy advocates now want to prepare people with the tools they need to interoperate and understand what sources are trustworthy and which sources aren't. Social media specifically has democratized media and content sharing to a degree never before seen.
So how does media literacy affect your mind?
First, understand that your mind is a pattern recognition machine and will follow thoughts or triggers for information on its own. There is only so much attention that you have access to at any given time; this is called cognitive load. The more complex or nuanced information is the more cognitive load that information takes up. Unfortunately, to circumvent overstimulation and load excess, your mind uses a mix of prior knowledge and mental shortcuts to make sense of your surroundings. This makes your mind vulnerable to misinformation.
Next, do your best to avoid confirmation bias--interpretations or information sources that provide information that already agrees with your preconceived ideas. Social media company algorithms are programmed to give you content that you like, that you already agree with, and can lock you into an informational echo chamber. Checking the ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos of information you've never encountered before--or even information you've encountered multiple times--can help you think critically about the media you encounter online.
Finally, accept that you will fall for some media tricks during your time online. It is very difficult to keep track of your cognitive processes while you are in the middle of using them. Critical thinking is a skill you must continue to pursue. One of the easiest ways to track your own thinking is to note what you already believe and interrogate them with a skeptical eye. How can your beliefs be understood by others? How would you explain them and why do you believe this way? From there, you can analyze what media online would most appeal to you and why the creator of said media has made content. Every piece of media has a purpose, focus, and intention. Understanding these factors and representations of ideas can help you better navigate social media and other media sources.
Comprehension Quiz
Finally, as you review the course information one final time, please take this quiz to see how much you remember. Practicing new information is a key step in remembering it in the future!