1.4.6 The Competent Communicator Is Media Literate

     Media literacy, of both mass media and social media, covers a range of skills that are vital to dealing with media. Because these skills are so important, Expanding Media Literacy boxes are presented throughout the text, reminding you that the media are influencing you in ways you need to be aware of. Supplement these brief discussions by searching the Web for related and more detailed discussions. Citizens for Media Literacy and the Media Education Foundation maintain especially useful websites.
     Because the media influence you in numerous ways (only some of which you may be conscious of), it’s crucial that you learn how this influence is exerted so that you, rather than the media, can determine what influences you and what doesn’t. Looked at in this way, media literacy is a form of empowerment. It can help you to use the media more intelligently: (1) to understand, analyze, and evaluate media messages more effectively; (2) to influence the messages that the media send out; and (3) to create your own mediated messages. Let’s look at these three interrelated skills a bit more.

• Media literacy aims to enable you to understand, analyze, and evaluate the messages from the various media (television, film, music, radio, billboards, advertising, public relations, newspapers and magazines, books, websites and blogs, Facebook, Twitter, newsgroups, and chat rooms). Instead of just accepting what the media tell you, media literacy requires that you understand the purposes of the media message (from the media’s point of view) and be able to analyze it for truth and fairness. Media literacy requires that you understand the difference between news and advocacy—something that gets blurred in most television and newspaper reporting. Most of the Media Literacy boxes in this text address this function.
• Media literacy aims to empower you to interact with the media, to talk back to the media, and to provide the skills for your influencing the media rather than only the other way around. This function is addressed throughout the book; the skills of human communication are the skills you need to influence —whether it’s your friend, a small group, a public speaking audience, or the media.
• Media literacy aims to educate you to use the available resources to create your own media messages. Blogs, Twitter, websites, and social network sites are making this function relatively easy. At the same time, many media are inviting readers and reviewers to comment on their articles and in most cases posting your comments along with the original articles.

     Media literacy, then, may be defined as the ability to understand, analyze, and evaluate media messages, to interact with the media, and to use the available resources to create your own media messages.