Three Steps to Success

"Media Literacy" is a term that incorporates three interrelated approaches leading to the media empowerment of citizens of all ages:

• The first approach is simply becoming aware of the importance of balancing or managing one's media "diet" — helping children and families make healthy choices and manage the amount of time spent with television, videos, electronic games, films and various print media.
• The second approach is teaching specific skills of critical viewing — learning to analyze and question what is in the frame, how it is constructed and what may have been left out. Skills of critical viewing are best learned though inquiry-based classes or interactive group activities as well as from creating and producing one's own media messages.
• The third approach — social, political and economic analysis — goes behind the frame (through which we see media images) to explore deeper issues of who produces the media we experience — and for what purpose? What is the impact of media in our culture and how do we approach issues such as media violence, racial stereotyping and consumerism?

Through inquiry, discussion and action projects, both adults and young people look at how each of us (and all of us together in society) take and make meaning from our media experiences and how the mass media drive our global consumer economy. This approach also can set the stage for various media advocacy efforts to challenge or redress public policies or corporate practices.

Although television and electronic media may seem to present the most compelling reasons for promoting media education in contemporary society, the principles and practices of media literacy are applicable to all media from television to T-shirts, from billboards to the Internet.