2 Media Literacy: Becoming a Critical Media Consumer by Checking our Diet

It seems that, in one way or another, our relationship with media and “the media” is one of consumption, satisfaction, frustration, and complacency.  From the moment we wake up until the moment we shut our eyes and fall away to sleep, we are bombarded with mediated messages.  Whether we are watching messages through various screens, reading them through (more often than not now) those same screens, listening to messages through noise-canceling, form-fitting, oversized OR microsized speakers for our ears streamed through our phones or from our curated playlists and collections … perhaps even experiencing our media through augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) equipment … the negotiation is almost non-stop and quite real.

When it comes to our diet (though many may not listen to this, given the obesity rates in the United States and other “modern” countries), we are told to ensure that we are eating right: get the vegetables, watch your meat intake, work out regularly.  The same can be said regarding our finances.  Such attention and practice is often referred to as “literacy.”  When it comes to our media, we should be doing the same thing.  Authors like Potter and Silverblatt (and me, usually with my students), often speak about “media literacy” as both a discipline and a daily conscious practice.  What we and many others are arguing is that we all need to be “critical media consumers.”  It is far too easy to just scroll through our feeds or channel surf through our cable.  We do this passively – without thinking about it. Research points out that, even if we do not stop, that few seconds makes an impact.  Each image, headline, or idea plants a seed.  Advertisers pray that this will happen … that we will be “duped” into buying what they are selling (and EVERYTHING in our media is there to be bought or, like clickbait, direct you down this or that digital rabbit hole).  We need to move past the “passive dupe” that content creators are hoping we are and was often considered the average audience member during the majority of the 20th century (at least in the academic world – most messaging from media creators still works under this model).  We need to become active participants, co-creators, and critics … who are also consumers.  If you watch what you eat, why not watch what you, well, watch.  This probably sounds like common sense.  Chances are that, if you are reading this text, you have been thinking about the same thing in one way or another.  Often, though, we are challenged with the “how.”  The “how” is great to know, but the “what” and “why” needs to be figured out and established first.

The purpose of this chapter is to broadly cover what it might mean to be a critical media consumer.  First, the idea of “media literacy” as an area of study and practice is considered.  Once we do that, we figure out how to use those ideas to begin moving towards our goal of critical consumption.  Our job is to make media literacy a) understandable and b) usable.  We will work through each idea in turn, breaking it down to make sure that the definition actually does what it is supposed to do – help us understand what it means to be “media literate.”  This, in turn, will help all of us become critical media consumers … and that is the idea, right?  As with the last chapter, here are the essentials:

The Essentials

• We talked about it a bit in the previous chapter, but we really dive into Media Literacy here.  The whole point is that we understand what we are watching, listening to, reading, etc. … what we are putting into ourselves on a daily basis.  The more we work to understand it, the more we “get it” and what it does.

• At the end of the day, we are audiences … but we are also creators.  This is a relatively recent phenomenon but it is our reality.  If we can keep this in mind, we will be able to stay active and in control of our media spaces – or as much as we think we can.

• If you think about your media like a diet (and, as we know, we cannot escape the perpetual discussion of diet and exercise in our society, right?), consider the process of reading the ingredients label.  We want to know what we are putting in our body – we should also want to know the “what”, the “how it’s made”, and the “why it exists” about our media as well.  After all – we only get one brain.  Better make sure it is running on all cylinders.

What do you mean by “Media Literacy”?

That is a fantastic question.  There are several working definitions that I have gone to repeatedly to wrap my head around the same thing.  Art Silverblatt suggests that media literacy is a “critical thinking skill” (check out the link for more info).  James Potter, on the other hand, considers media literacy “a set of perspectives that we build.”  Renee Hobbs suggests that media literacy is as much about analyzing as it is making media.  Personally, I think this video might sum it up the best.  Media Literacy is the practice of understanding our media: How it is made, promoted, and consumed (by us).  We see it defined by federal governments, local school boards, departments of education, teachers, researchers, and YouTube sensations.  These definitions all get us to a similar place, but are often loaded with a political agenda or philosophical position or perspective on how the world works/should work … which is often based on a socio-political agenda.  All of this is great for conducting research, speaking with governmental agencies, or applying for grants.  However, these definitions can get a little wonky for our day-to-day media life.

For our purposes, there is going to be a little of column A, B, C, etc. scattered throughout this chapter and the book overall.  Why?  Because each of the ideas listed above have aspects that are important – if not vital – to how we understand what the media actually is AND ensuring that we can become active critical media consumers.  With this in mind, let’s define media literacy as learning and understanding ways to make sense of media industry, production, and culture as both audience members and media producers and how we co-create meanings through those same media.  We are still a little jargony here, but give it a second.  Each idea will be broken down in turn.  Notice that the primary subjects in this definition are “audiences.”  That’s us.  We are the audiences.  We are audiences to the primary message (the movie, the TV show, etc.) as well as audiences to the advertisers that are connected with that message, the corporations and creators that bring the message to you, and those that work behind the scenes to ensure that the message does or does not align with their own beliefs and ideas.  Let’s explore this idea of “audience” just a little further.

Being an active audience member (not snoozing while channel surfing)

As an audience, we need to recognize that we have some power here.  We choose what to watch and not watch.  We make choices about which music/video/videogame streaming services we will subscribe to, how to watch those services, and when to trade in some sleep for (insert your binge-worthy title here).  We choose if and when we will raise our voice in praise or protest to say “Hey! That show is great/terrible/not appropriate/a scourge on society!” and, well, you get the idea.  We choose! Sign up for a thing?  Choice.  Post or don’t post?  Choice.  Binge out Buffy the Vampire Slayer … again?  Choice.  We must understand that everyone that interacts with media messages, artifacts, or texts as audiences, are audiences that not only consume but create and co-create meanings through and around those same messages, etc.

The idea of “audience” has been explored as long as there have been things that attract a group of people … or even one person.  If on a college campus, your basic public speaking course (the one everyone dreads) teaches students to consider their audience as they create their message.  If you are trying to persuade people to agree with you about a thing, you are not going to attack them, call them fools, or demean them (that, as this quote from Point Break suggests, “would be a waste of time”).  All that will do is cause the audience to dig into their beliefs further.  You have seen this happen around the dinner table, on a particularly intense social media post, or in the comments of an online news story.  Why?  Because then they have no reason to change their minds and agree with you.  No … as a public speaker, you are going to demonstrate that the audience is smart … though they may have missed something.  Perhaps something is missing in their lives or a bit of information was not presented to them.  Then, in a stroke of genius, you get the audience to listen along as you tell them what you know, line it up with what they already believe, and then – like magic – they may start to agree with you.  Even if it is just a little bit, you have planted the seed.  It takes a little while to “grow” that crop of ideas and influence with repeated messages over time, until that seed has fully taken root, but it happens.  I give you “persuasion.^[1]”

The act of persuasion itself gets us to watch, listen, buy, and believe.  This is nothing new.  Advertisers, politicians, product developers, parents, teachers, preachers – everyone uses this same strategy.  Speak with your audience, get them to recognize a potential lack in their information, then fill in the blank.  Think about our discussion surrounding the telephone previously – consider why you might be thinking about buying a new one.  What were you told was lacking in your current device?  What problem will the new one solve for you? Once we move persuasion into the mass media/mass messaging space, it starts to become clear that, since the goal of any mediated message is to get you to read/watch/listen/see it over another message (even this text is doing this … right now), we are talking about good ol’ persuasion.  We have studied the art of persuasion AT LEAST since the time of the ancient Greeks, even earlier if you really want to dig deep.  There are so many mediated messages out there that a particular media moment needs to attract you somehow to make it through the noise.  How? By understanding the audience that is desired the most.  That gets us to what we are as audiences to media creators and promoters.  We are numbers.  We are information to be bought and sold.  We are data.

Yes – we are all data.  Demographic (groups) and psychographic (individual) data.  To be media literate – truly literate – we need to understand that we are constructed audiences that are built to consume mediated messages.  I often ask my students to consider how many times they have freely and easily given their age, gender, marital status, income level, zip code, personal interests, and the like away just to get emails with, wait for it, mediated messages.  One of the more telling moments with my students is when I have them watch a PBS Frontline documentary called The Persuaders.  In this documentary, students are allowed to see how data is collected, analyzed, made sense of, and used to persuade us to buy products.   The datasets we become are the number one currency that is sold and traded between and amongst media companies, advertising agencies, political parties and candidates, manufacturers, think tanks, etc.  Every profile created, link clicked, thing bought, and cat video watched (is that still a thing?) all becomes data.  We need to recognize this and be active with this information.

When it comes down to it, these three areas – audience, persuasion, and media literacy – are all connected.  As an audience, we work to understand (become literate) how we are persuaded through our media choices.  As we become more literate, we also become more critically aware. With that awareness, we start to understand how it affects us and we affect it.

We don’t just consume it – we produce it!

At the same time we are consuming media, we are also producing content.  Posting on Facebook?  Producing content.  Responding to a subreddit with a comment?  Producing content.  Running your own podcast, TikTok profile, or YouTube channel?  DEFINITELY producing content.  How media messages are produced may seem like a strange thing to focus on when talking about media literacy.  But, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.  When we study a language, we not only study how to speak it but how it is structured or built.  Grammar – those atrocious boxes with verb tenses, everything – we learn the construction process as well as the performance.  Understanding how a message moves from idea to finished consumable product gets us to the same place – a literate understanding of the media.

You do not need to become a photographer, blogger, social media influencer, publisher, or journalist to understand the media production process.  James Potter has multiple editions of his media literacy text that really forces us to focus on the production side of the language.  Renee Hobbs mentions above how middle school students as early as the 1970s were producing media content as a way to understand how it works (it’s a shame that, from what I have tried to find out, this is not normalized today).  By knowing the process, you know the product.  Once you know the product, you know how to read/interpret that same product.  I encourage all of my students – and now you – to play with your technology.  Understand how it works, how you can create through it, how you can edit what you create, and how you can put it out into the universe (aka “sharing”).  With this in mind, time to talk about our “diet.”

Our Media Diet: What we take in and how it affects us

The previous discussion gives us some definitions and ideas to think about.  Silverblatt, Potter, and Hobbs all have working definitions to consider.  From those, we put together something to help us out here.  That is great … but so what?  That is the starting point – now we need to figure out what it means for us.  We need to keep in mind that, first and foremost, media is made for you to consume and respond to.  No one typically talks without the intent of being heard.  The same holds true for producing media, so let’s talk about what we’re taking from and getting out of our media.

Often, our media is built around a narrative – a story that either is known or feels rather familiar, comfy even.  Whether it is 15 seconds (for a TV ad) or 2+ hours (for those MCU summer blockbusters) in length, all of our media contains some sort of narrative.  Why?  Because we love stories.  Unlike stories around the campfire (those still happen, right?), these narratives are specifically crafted media products.  Their goal: To keep you along for the ride.  The more you consume, the more valuable you are as data (see my little tirade above about that).  Media products are not only used to tell stories but stories are connected with and to media.  Advertisements are the easy ones to spot.  They are there to get you to buy what they are selling.  Other narratives are a little more nuanced.  News stories (why is the local news formatted the way it is?), social media feeds (why do I keep seeing these ads for things I JUST thought about?), and even the order of songs during a typical hour of radio (… you know … for those that still listen to radio) are all banking on you following along for the ride by constructing these particular narratives.

When we talk about narratives and media literacy, this is where we start getting into the idea of the “grammar” of media products.  Each piece of media content is constructed out of parts.  A song, a TV show, or a piece of graffiti all have some sort of organizational structure.  So … tear it down.  Just like when you received those terrible worksheets in middle school and were asked to identify the parts of a sentence, paragraph, or an essay, we can do the same thing with a media product.  As you start to think about the “what” and the “how” and the “why” of a particular media message, start working through these questions (by the way … this is just a starting point):

(Fun Fact – I have taught the following “what/how/why” approach and philosophy to my students for as long as I can remember.  If they can answer these questions, they can understand the thing they are studying.  Works the same way for us here.)

What

• What is being talked about?

• What is being sold?

• What is the goal of the message?

• What is NOT being talked about?

How

• How was it made or produced?

• How was it distributed?

• How was it received?

Why

• Why was it made?

• Why does it exist?

• Why are you reacting to it the way you are?

Who (suggested by one of my mentors, Dr. Raymie McKerrow)

• Who is creating the content?

• Who is the content created for?

• Who is funding the content?

• Who are the intended and unintended targets (not audiences) of the content?

Again, this list of questions is anything but exhaustive.  As you dive into your own media consumption and creation, more questions will come to mind.  We all need a place to start, though, right?  That is the goal here – to offer a place to start.

A particularly illuminating exercise I do with my students (first year students, grad students, does not matter) is to have them keep a media journal for anywhere from a week to a month (depending on the goal I have for them).  The idea is this – track all of the media you take in on a daily basis.  Everything.  Every time you scroll through your social media.  Every time you listen to a podcast, stream, or (dare I say it) a radio station.  Every movie.  Every YouTube binge.  Every billboard you see.  Every news story you read (pick your medium of choice).  Everything.  Random TV show that is on in the background?  Yes.  Music that is just sort of noise while you fall asleep?  Yes.  All of it.  We often do not realize how much media is pumping through our brain at any given moment.  For example – I am writing this via Google Drive.  That same Safari window has one tab with Facebook and one with our shopping list for the day.  I also have NPR streaming across my smart speaker in the home office.  My email client is open, constantly scraping for new emails in several accounts.  That is what is happening right now … while I write this … and this is my reality while I am “working.”  Imagine what you have going on while you are working or at work … now imagine the same reality when driving, relaxing after work, before you go to bed, etc.  Give it a shot for a week.  Write everything down: what you are consuming, how you are consuming it, start time, stop time, and for how long.  Many of my students discover that in a 24-hour period they – due to doing more than one at the same time – they are consuming 24 hours or more of media.  The reactions are anywhere from “it’s fine” to “WHATTHE_____!”  It is these realizations that lead us to the focus of this chapter and, really, this whole project.

The big question at the end of this is “why is this skill set even necessary?”  These different questions, exercises, and strategies help us to begin to fully develop our own critical media literacy skills, both as consumers as well as creators and producers.  When we start to ask questions on what we are “putting into our bodies” and track what that “diet” looks like, how we are influenced by media intake starts to reflect we start to feel bloated, full, sick, or just right after a meal.

So … what’s next?

The rest of this book provides starting points to help you dig into your own media more.  What you take in, what you put out there, and all points in between.  Read this in order, from page 1 to the last ideas.  Use it as a resource – dig around for things that are relevant to your needs at the moment.  If something is missing that you would love answers to, let me know.  You can reach me with questions, ideas, etc. at _____@____________.  My hope is that we can keep growing this text organically.  Develop it as it needs to develop in whatever direction it moves.  With that said … let’s get to work.

Resources

Since this chapter is the starting point, let’s list some of the big organizations, sources, etc., that you might want to check out regarding media literacy at a broad level.  So …

• Center for Media Literacy – https://www.medialit.org/ – This is one of my go-to places for ideas, articles, videos, training – the whole thing.  The organization is more geared towards educators, but that does not mean you should not check them out.  Their newsletter always has some good ideas, announcements, current events, and sessions you can attend.  Definitely worth checking out.

• US Department of State Media Literacy Design Manual – https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Media-Literacy-Design-Manual-FINAL.pdf – This just came out this past Spring (of 2022).  I have started working through it, taking notes, finding concerns, etc.  The fact that they have something like this is promising.  I recommend just seeing what is being discussed here.

• US Media Literacy Report – https://medialiteracynow.org/policyreport/ – If you want to see what your state is doing … or not doing … start with this report from 2021.  There is definitely some slant in the report front he organization that put it together, but that is part of the process.  Read through and take from it what you need.

• CrashCourse – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtM6jSpzb5gMNsx9kdmqBfmY– I am not sure if he was in my head when he created this in 2018, but I am happy he did.  Jay Smooth worked with CrashCourse to develop this series on media literacy.  It is a great channel, easy to watch, and has some great information.  I highly encourage you to check it out.

National Association for Media Literacy Education – https://namle.net/ – NAMLE is a fantastic, one-stop shop, for resources for parents and educators when it comes to media literacy.  If you are looking for things to do in your home, in your classroom, or just to read through and consider, I highly recommend this space.