Media Literacy I

This segment's readings take up the impact of technologies that enable human beings to engage their environment, particularly how these technologies shape how information, in the form of messages, is received and processed.

Protectionist vs. Empowerment Perspectives

Hobbs (2011) outlines two approaches to media literacy.  Protectionist approaches define media literacy "in relation to the goal of reducing negative effects of exposure to mass media."  Empowerment perspectives, on the other hand, approach media literacy as a way of making individual more deliberate consumers and producers of media (p. 422).  Protectionist approaches see audiences as victims, and empowerment approaches see audiences as active participants in the making of meaning (Hobbs, 2011, p. 424).  In Hobbs' (2011) view, the educational goal of media literacy, from empowerment perspectives, is critical autonomy on the part of media consumers and producers.  She specifically mentions the techniques of close reading and media production in advancing the educational goal of media literacy (p. 426).

Hobbs (2011) places Potter (2010) in the category of protectionists who primarily view media literacy as an "antidote to mass media exposure" and "blinded inadvertently to the wider range of aims of media literacy education (Hobbs, 2011, p. 421).  I think Hobbs (2011) is a little unfair to Potter (2010), who notes a general consensus that the "purpose of becoming media literate is to gain greater control over influences in one's life, particularly the constant influence from the mass media" (p. 681).  A number of the definitions Potter (2010) offers in his list of "Sampling Definitions of Media Literacy" highlight the role of audiences in actively creating meaning from images generated - or accessed? - through mass media devices (p. 676).

Something that we (or I) need to give more attention to is thinking out the difference between media literacy and digital literacy, both terms that Hobbs (2011) uses in her piece.  However, I do not see where she defines digital literacy.  In my novice mind, I could see how those concerned with digital literacy, focusing on digital technologies that enable users greater opportunity to be producers of content, could more easily see active audiences engaged in the production of meaning.  Let me be clear, I think human beings are always engaged in the activity of making meaning.  They are not always engaged in the activity of producing content, but digital technologies have made this production of content much easier for a wider range of people.  It is a historical phenomenon.  Media literacy seems more tied to dealing with mass media, e.g. radio, movies, television, etc.  These are medium that flow in one direction; there is not a feedback loop, necessarily.  Radio is broadcast out to thousands, and these individual thousands do not broadcast back.  Focusing on mass media could lead one to neglect the ways audiences do push back against the messages they receive.  The cultural studies scholarship of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s went a long way in advancing our understanding of how audiences engage with mass media, highlighting the power these audiences have in constructing the meaning of, or interpreting, the messages they receive.  These cultural studies scholars were working in response to media scholars of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s who recognized the potential of mass media for controlling audiences, for shaping opinions, e.g. propaganda, advertisements, etc.

Extensions of Man (and Woman)

The potential digital technologies hold for enabling more individuals to become producers of content - and the information and communication technologies that support such production - makes a nice segue to a discussion of McLuhan (1994), who examines various technologies - media - as methods of interfacing with the environment.  Media, in the context of McLuhan (1994), does not refer to content but rather to the technologies that "extend" human beings into their environment.

I found Understanding Media a difficult book, and I'm still working out the main ideas.  McLuhan's thesis does come early in the book.  The first technology McLuhan takes up is literacy, which he writes provided human beings with the "power to act without reacting,"  Literacy - and the machine age technologies - fragmented human beings and allowed them to carry out the "most dangerous social operations with complete detachment."  However, in the electric age, in the age of automation, technologies have extended human beings to such an extent that the "whole of mankind" is incorporated, and therefore human beings "necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of every action" (McLuhan, 1994, p. 4).  This has ushered in an "Age of Anxiety," born of an "electric implosion that compels commitment and participation" (McLuhan, 1994, p. 5).  A cultural lag exists, however.  McLuhan (1994) writes, "we continue to think in the old, fragmented space and time patterns of the pre-electric age" (p. 4). 

There do appear to be at least three pieces to McLuhan's discussion:

1) Technologies - used in a very liberal sense to include the written word - are tools / methods by which human beings "extend" their mastery of their environment, both in terms of scope, e.g. geographic distance, time, etc., but also in terms of control.

2) Technologies shape or impact the interaction between human beings and their environment, e.g. "hot" and "cold" technologies.

3) There is a historical argument here as well.  At some point, the technologies shifted from providing a fragmentation and "explosion" to integration and "implosion."  Automation, electric technologies mark the shift.

Right?  So there is this theoretical piece about what technologies do, an empirical component that deals with experiences of environment via particular technologies, and this historical piece.

Hobbs, L. (2011). The state of media literacy: A response to Potter. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 55 (3), p. 419-430. 

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (Original work published 1964)

Potter, J. W. (2010). The state of media literacy. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 54 (4), p. 675-696.