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Media Literacy: Toward Youth Empowerment in Mass Communication

Michael McDevitt and Bob M. Gassaway, seminar leaders
Department of Communication and Journalism, UNM

The mass media are windows on the world that provide a rich flow of information into our homes, schools and businesses, but the view through those windows is distorted and filtered by the people in the media industries who decide what information is presented and how it is presented. This seminar showed teachers how to analyze media messages and then took them inside a television station and a newspaper to meet media professionals and watch them at work. The teachers improved their understanding of media operations and the roles media organizations perform in modern society.

We demonstrated to the teachers that the media function to carry out their own agendas, but we also demonstrated that individual members of the media audiences are, in fact, active participants in mass communication processes, as much so as are the media industries themselves. The meaning of a newspaper story, for example, does not reside in the story content itself  readers participate in the subjective construction of meaning in how they interpret and use the information. As theorist James Carey asserts, Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.

By virtue of their involvement in mass communication, audience members are important agents in the creation and maintenance of their own culture. Further, they can and should participate knowingly in communication activities and rituals. This points to the importance of media literacy is the ability to effectively comprehend, use, and benefit from mass communication.

The central premise of this seminar was that media literacy is an essential survival skill as we begin a new millennium. Media literacy, in fact, is now emphasized in primary and secondary education in many parts of the country, with 38 states mandating coverage in school curricula. In particular, we focused on the influence of mass communication on children and adolescents in areas such as advertising and socialization, cinematic portrayals of gender roles, violent video games, and the use (or non-use) of news media in citizenship.

We also presented specific skills that allow youthful audiences to comprehend, and even resist, potentially harmful attempts at media influence. For example, we discussed how to deconstruct and analyze messages in various media. We applied theoretical perspectives and skill techniques to the following media-production areas: print journalism, broadcast journalism, advertising, public relations, and various entertainment genres. Our analysis considered the economic imperatives, occupational norms, and ethical orientations of each area so that teachers could appreciate the limitations and the potential of each media profession as producers of content. We also explored the use of media literacy in new media contexts such as the Internet.

The teachers participated in the analysis of media content, and then developed curricula units that they can use in the classes they teach to help their students develop a clearer understanding of the media and their messages, both implicit and explicit.