Media Literacy

After a while of googling, I came across a few sources that better helped me to understand media literacy, & all that in entails. At the end of this entry I'll give a few links to the web pages I came across.

The way I now understand media literacy is as a medium to communicate concepts through not just words, but photos, movies, music, newspapers, and even our mail. We're exposed to millions of images on a weekly basis, & most of the time we're not aware of it. We subconsciously process these images, which further instill dominant codes & representations within us.

Media literacy is a way to better help people understand the messages that these images/photos/music generate, it also helps to build critical thinking & analytical skills. The mass media affects how we understand & relate to the world at large. Thinks that are sometimes made to seem real in the media, aren't things that are true for us in reality.

Some things that I don't quite understand is why realities appear as distorted as they do sometimes appear in movies, books, ect. . For instance, in the modeling industry the women who model only represent less that 10 percent of the population at large in America.


For more information on Media Literacy you can visit :

http://www1.medialiteracy.com/

http://www.mediachannel.org/classroom/

http://www.kidsplay.org/medialit.html