Media Literacy: An Incomplete Project

Pages: 3-10

DOI: 10.4324/9780203076125-10

Abstract:

He can mess up our TV remote. And he can turn up my Bose radio, usually to the classical music channel. Yet, despite Tigger’s media experience, I wouldn’t classify him as media literate, certainly not possessed of critical media literacy… Let’s call it the Tigger Paradox, the gap separating experience and adeptness from critical analytical ability. (Cortes, 2012, 24) Whilst educating people to be literate is broadly understood as part of citizen entitlement on utilitarian principles, there is a clear and important distinction in policy and rationale discourses surrounding media literacy. The reading and writing of words is rarely discussed as response to anything other than the obvious benefits of using language. Media literacy, however, is often justified as a response to something-the development of mass media, and more recently, digital and social media. Whilst there is great variance in how the axes of affordance and protection are drawn and how media literacy policy is mapped across them, this obvious difference is important to recognize. Before educators can successfully integrate media literacy into the ‘day job, ' there must be agreement that media in some way make a difference. In this sense the (incomplete) project of media literacy education is not the same as either literacy development in general or education’s usual epistemological arrangements.

Source: Scopus