The challenge of media literacy

Every semester I face this same problem.

I am a university professor of mass media, and the challenge I face is threefold:

Should I focus on the new media delivery systems, or on the nature, purpose, and impact of the media on news and entertainment consumers?
If I focus on the delivery systems, how can I be sure my 20-year-old students don’t already know more than I do about them?
Is anyone really paying attention to the kind of content we are getting from the media these days and, if not, shouldn’t I focus on that?
A Mickey Mouse photmosaic puzzle shows images from 19 diferent Disney films over a 60-year span. Disney and other media companies have such influence in our lives that becoming media-literate is the way to harness their power for good in our lives, while protecting us from any collateral damage. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

The challenge of time

The challenge is exacerbated by the fact that I have less than 48 total contact hours with these kids over three months time. In that time I must try and detail the traditions of the news and entertainment media since Day 1 while also going over the sea changes occurring just over the past decade alone.

Can I have a lifeline?

Speaking in tongues

Oh yeah, and add this problem to the mix: Few people have the same idea of what the following terms even mean, at least operationally, today:

Media
New Media
News
Journalism
Journalists
Objectivity
Editorializing
Interpretation
Radio
Television
Magazines
Books
Media Convergence

We’re not talking textbook definitions here, although even those change from generation to generation. We are talking about the nature, purpose, and impact of these terms.

Remember the old song lyric, “You say tomato, I say tomahto.” Just substitute any of the above media terms and you get the Tower of Babel scenario existing on college campuses existing between student and prof in talking about the media.

A relic from the past

A couple years ago, for example, I was talking about newspapers in a media class, and I held up an ink-on-paper copy of the Los Angeles Times.

A hand shot up in the back of the class and a student, who acted like he’d never seen one of these artifacts before asked: “Where do you get one of those things?

I’ve become used to what others might perceive as a startling phenomenon, so I suggested simply that the student walk just outside our building and buy one from the newspaper rack. I have no idea what he thought that sidewalk structure was for, since he had undoubtedly passed it several times a day.

Media literacy

The first chapter in the media text I’m using is called, “Media Literacy,” and I’ve come to understand why the author put that topic front and center. It simply means becoming literate about the most powerful institution in our lives today.

Not only is it important, given the huge influence the media have on how we run our daily lives, but it is also something a lot of young people have not thought much about.

Adrift at sea

Here’s what author John Vivian says about this in his book, The Media of Mass Communication.:

“We swim in an ocean of mass communication, exposes 68.8 percent of our waking hours to media messages. So immersed are we in these messages that we often are unmindful of their existence, let alone their influences.”

I mean, they know how to use the technology better than most of us. But what that technology can do for — and to – them is another matter that often escapes their attention.

A loaded weapon

In another realm, one might ask what kind of society we would have if everyone understood how to shoot a gun but gave no thought to how one should behave with that gun.

That’s not such a far-fetched analogy. Just ask the families of those young people like Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi who committed suicide after a sensitive video of him was uploaded to the Web. Or ask the families of the 25 passengers killed on an L.A. commuter train in September, 2008. The driver of that train was texting when he crashed head-on into another one.

Thinking back to my opening dilemma, I recall a saying that suggests we should always play to our strengths. That makes sense to me.

I’ll assume the students know how to pull the trigger of their iPad.

As for me, I’ll focus on gun safety.