Unit 4: Media Literacy

Media literacy is something that I could consider myself fluent in but before this class I would not understand what that meant. I also have learned that it is our perspectives and how we interpret the meaning of the media.  It is causing us to be pushed away from some our skills and forcing us to develop other skills. Media literacy focuses a lot on the changing world we live in today. It is our ability to recognize that and organize the information in order to interpret the meaning of a message.  We find out so much of our information and knowledge through media. If we have never seen or experienced something, we are able to know so much about that topic through the media we encounter. We are able to relate that to our lives and then continue to share that information with other people which I find is incredible. Our media literacy depends on our personal locus, our knowledge, and our skills. If we have motivation to learn about the media and combine that with our previous knowledge and our skills we will be very media literate. Someone who is not mediate literate is able to become media literate with practice. We can analyze the media very carefully in order to find the medias real meaning it is trying to portray. Media literacy is a continuum meaning there is many different levels of being media literate, it is not black and white. There are different stages depending on your knowledge and ability to decode media. Many people go through most of the stages at a very young age. Some people move into the later stages but some people do not depending on their interests in learning to become more media literate. We need to increase our media literacy because information is constantly changing as time goes on and also because we need help deciding which actions are beneficial and which ones will hurt us.