Media must teach Media Literacy

For several years I’ve worked to spread the “Media Literacy” gospel. But starting a couple of years ago, my interest began to wane.

Media literacy sets out to get the citizenry thinking “critically” about media and its impact on us, as individuals, as a community, as a society and as pebble in space.

It also encourages us to act on our findings.

Laudable objectives all. So why have I drifted away from the movement?

I haven’t given myself the opportunity to explore the answer to that question. The short answer, I suppose, is that other things came up. Another more compelling answer is that media literacy, despite its importance, has never seemed to gained much traction.

But why?

A List of Questions and Answers

This week I was confronted with these questions in another form by a colleague in the media literacy movement. Erik Vidstrand first pulled me into the media literacy orbit when he founded the Northwest Media Literacy Center, now called Media Think.

This week Erik invited me to join him for two You Tube discussions about Media Literacy. I declined but promised to address a list of questions he sent.

In trying to answer them, I found myself exploring my flagging relationship to the media literacy movement.

So here are my answers to the the most challenging questions on Erik’s list.

What does media literacy mean in 2010?
It continues to mean questioning content and assessing media’s motives and impact. Literacy results from an awareness of several principles, the most telling being “All media messages are constructed.” Who is constructing this message? Why? For whom? etc.
But media literacy is about more than the messages. It’s about media themselves, as separate from content. How does each new medium (Twitter, texting, Facebook, iPad etc.) change us as human beings? How does it change what we do with our time, with how we relate to each other? Media shape and define us. We need to be aware of how and what should and can be done about it.

Has the ability to access on-demand multimedia changed the conversation over media literacy?
I’m not sure there was a “conversation” to begin with. And if there was, I don’t know what it was. If anything has changed conversations in the past decade it’s not the on-demand nature multi-media. It’s the interactive aspect of the internet. We now can talk back to media. Indeed, all that talk becomes powerful content. It’s a sprawling, messy “conversation” writ very, very large.


What is the responsibility of the public when it comes to checking the "credentials" of a media source, including blogs, legacy media and podcasts?
The question implies a public responsibility. The first responsibility rests with the communicator, not the audience. Today that first responsibility is crumbling. Money has always motivated communicators, communication and messages. It only gets worse as media expand.
And credibility, fairness and civility are less and less valued largely because they are money losers.
Today media are largely about entertainment — often masquerading as “information.” The public has given up on making distinctions between journalism and entertainment. Along the way, the susceptible have bought into preposterous, anger-inducing claims.
What’s the need to be responsible when the media assumptions have nothing to do with responsibility. Does entertainment, as opposed to journalism, need to be responsible?

What are the impacts of citizen journalism on society?
We need to teach journalism as a fundamental skill — like arithmetic and reading — so that future citizens can create it and assess it responsibly. In general, citizen, watch-dog journalism has made “professional” journalism better.

With the rise of hyper-local journalism due to the continuing decay of international and even national news coverage, whose responsibility is it to inform the public?
The rise of hyper-local journalism is possible because of technology, not the decay of international and nation coverage. The decline of the latter has more to do with economics of journalism and drive for ever higher profits in the industry.
We all have a responsibility to inform the public of matters that have serious consequences to us. Those matters may be happening as far away as Afghanistan or as close to home as our neighborhood’s preparedness for disaster.

As media have become largely a series of sound bites, what is the modern value of extensive and detailed coverage on important new and cultural issues?
I don’t agree with the premise that “media have become largely a series of sound bites.” The internet allows us to probe for information at great depth. The problem is that we don’t use that capacity. Instead, we stop with the superficial. Media now presents “bursts” of information and has conditioned us to having flea-like attention spans. And that means we have trouble connecting information, or following an argument. As noted, media have changed us and how we receive and process information.

What are three guiding principles for the public to apply when assessing the media?
I don’t know about principles, but here are a few questions: Ask whether what you are seeing or reading is true. Is it creating a “false reality”? Is it “enemy-making”? Is it making you unduly afraid? Complacent? Dangerously angry? Is it appealing to your intellect? To your emotions? Is it harmful to your physical and mental health? Is it beneficial? Is it a waste of your time and energy?
Consume media with a constructive purpose. Never consume it because you “have nothing else to do.” You always have something else to do. Do it!

Answering my own question

In answering Erik’s questions, I see that I haven’t answered my own. Why have I drifted away from the media literacy movement?

I think it is largely because media control the agenda and the public consciousness, and the one thing media don’t want is to have media literacy on that agenda.

The great media critic Neil Postman wrote at the end of his classic “Amusing Ourselves to Death” that the only hope for a change in awareness about media is for media literacy to be part of the educational curricula.

But as I write this, schools and education are losing in competition to personalized, fragmented, pervasive media.

I predict that in 10 years virtually all classes will be on-line. Students won’t be taught by flesh-and-blood teachers but, at best, by images of teachers — and images of the world. And an image world, as we have seen, is quite different from the real one. Likewise “image teachers.” Students must be able to make the distinction between the two worlds, but will they be taught to? I doubt it.

McLuhan famously noted that the medium is the message. It may be worse than that: In a media-saturated world, the medium is reality.

To change reality, change the medium. Or better yet, experience reality directly, media free. On those occasions when you do expose yourself to media and their messages, compare them to what you know to be true from your direct experience of the world.

Media managers, of course, have no reason to spread the profit-threatening media literacy message.

Until there is one, or until it is required (like warnings on cigarette packs), media literacy will be adrift.

Media Think's media-use survey

As some of you know, I'm active in Media Think, a Northwest media literacy organization.

We are conducting a on-line survey of parents to learn more about media use in families. If you are a parent, please take the survey. If you aren't a parent, please pass the survey link onto those you know who are. We are trying to get as many responses as possible, particularly in the Portland area.

Go HERE to see or take the survey. It shouldn't take longer than five minutes to complete.

Thanks.

Getting a parental grip on media

The Internet played a frightening role in the recent attack by six teenage girls and two boys that took place in Lakeland, Florida. The assailants of 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay, a cheerleader, seemed to be inspired by the prospects of posting a video of the beating on the Internet.

The New York Times story about the assault referred to several media connections to the beating. Joan Rutkowski, my friend and colleague at Media Think, the Northwest media literacy center, has highlighted the following references made in The Times article.

- Authorities say the young assailants intended to use the attack to become Internet celebrities.
- The case should raise awareness about the Internet’s power to desensitize young people to violence, said one expert.
- The victim’s mother commented: “For whatever reason, this MySpace, my-you, this YouTube has gone too far. It’s just too much.”
- Her husband went even further, declaring that Internet companies were to blame for what happened. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “MySpace is the Antichrist for children.”

There's no doubt that parents — of potential perpetrators and potential victims — have a problem. Of course, the perpetrators are also victims — often of parental neglect.

Simply put, parents can not allow impressionable, unsupervised children to spend hours in an “alternate Internet universe” with norms that often encourage abusive, bullying or violent behavior. In one form or another, the video experience gets played out in the real world. Manifestations range from being inured or insensitive to violence to behaving violently.

The Florida attack seemed like an episode from a video "Lord of the Flies" desert island.

In our work with Media Think, Joan and I have heard parents vent their frustration at their inability to retrieve their kids from cyberspace. In response, Joan and I are preparing a discussion course to be offered through the community education program of Portland Community College this fall. If possible, we would like parents from the same elementary or middle school school to enroll the course. As was discovered too late in Lakeland, entire school communities must address this issue head-on. (By the way, next week is TV-Turnoff Week, an excellent time to begin.)

Here is how the course will be listed in the catalog:

The Media-Mindful Family:
Creating Alternatives to a Screen-Filled Childhood

Concerned about how media harms your child’s health, self-image, social life and school performance? Learn how to address media issues in your family and peer group through this practical, group-centered discussion course.

And here are some of the topics we hope to cover over the eight weekly sessions:

- Media: The Competing Parent and the Importance of Story
- Framing the Conversation with your Child: Principles of Media Literacy
- Social and Cultural Effects of Uncritical Media consumption
- Health Consequences
- Identity, Social Needs and Values in Cyberspace
- Cultivating Media Mindfulness at Home and in the Peer Community
- What’s Next: Networking and Staying Ahead of Media Change

If you know of any parents who might be interested, let me know. You can write me at ricks@mediathink.org.

An "Essential Skill" for the 21st Century

One of the most “information-rich” sites devoted to media literacy is Frank Baker’s. He occasionally looks in on my media literacy musings here to comment and counsel.

As you will see when you visit his site, Frank has been a prime mover in persuading schools to offer media literacy to kids.

Here in Oregon, the subject is barely beginning to get much needed attention. The media literacy movement has begun with a handful of parents, teachers and activists, including health-care professionals concerned about health consequences of excessive screen time.

School district administrators and officials have been largely out to lunch. When they get back, the rest of us would like them to sit down for a chat and a strategy session.

We might invite Frank to join us.

The State Board of Education is circulating a draft of “essential skills,” which would be phased in and required of all high school graduates, starting with current 8th graders when they graduate in 2012.

The skill that comes closest to media literacy (without explicitly saying so) tops the list. It reads:

1. Read and comprehend a variety of text* at different levels of difficulty. This skill includes all of the following:
• Demonstrate the ability to read and understand text.
• Summarize and critically analyze key points of text, events, issues, phenomena or problems, distinguishing factual from non-factual and literal from inferential elements.
• Follow instructions from informational or technical text to perform a task, answer questions, and solve problems.

* Text includes but is not limited to all forms of written material, communications, media, and other representations in words, numbers, and graphics and visual displays using traditional and technological formats

The term “text,” an academic term of art, can confuse and obscure. Notice that television, computers, cellphones and the internet are not mentioned although our children, on average, spend five to six hours a day with them.

A couple of other "skills" listed in the draft apply broadly, namely:

#5. Think critically and analytically across disciplines

and

#6. Use technology to learn, live, and work

There is a link to a full description of the draft diploma skills on a survey that I mention at the end of this post.

The point is this: We need desperately to talk and teach about communication in all its forms, including — and perhaps especially — omnipresent visual communication.

That’s where Frank Baker, our own local Media Think and other media literacy advocacy groups come in.

We must press Oregon school administrators, elected public officials and the Oregon Department of Education to establish media literacy as an “essential skill” for citizens in this century.

If you want to weigh in on this issue, go to the “Essential Skills” survey that the state department of education has put online.

Seeing is believing — or is it?

Do birds, squirrells and coyotes sing together in Jeep Liberties?

Will adding something called Benefiber to your diet make you look like a supermodel?

Will a kid’s head be blown off by the yoghurty taste of Fizzix?

Will a bored “Neopet,” a cuddly, online ‘virtual’ fuzzy pet, be satisfied if you buy it virtual “costumes” with your real dollars?

Last week two Media Think colleagues (Joan Rutkowski and Matt Stockton) and I presented a televised discussion about television advertising.

We examined four ads for the above products in some detail.

In the course of the Metro East, cable access program, “Community Hotline,” we considered several questions:

Who made these ads? How were they made and at what cost?

For whom were they made?

What devices were used to appeal to the “target audience”

How successful were the ads in appealing to the audience?

What were the ads NOT telling viewers that they needed to know about the product.”

One hour wasn’t enough time to do justice to the questions or the answers, but we made a start. (The program will be rebroadcast, and I’ve listed the times below if you are interested in seeing what we had to say.)

The ability to “read” visual images critically (yes, I know, words are also visual images) is a necessity in our media-saturated culture. The field of media literacy tries to address that need. Media Think, one of dozens of groups around the country, is lobbying to make media literacy a “life skill” and a required subject in our schools.

Without the skill, we will be increasingly vulnerable media messages aimed not at our minds but at our emotions and basest instincts—never mind the cost to us, our society or the planet.

As I’ve done my own critical thinking about our on-air ad analysis, I wish we had shared some key concepts of media literacy and applied them to the ads.

Better late than never.

You can find varying lists of these concepts, but here are the ones that the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA) circulates. After each. I’ve included my own parenthetical comments in hopes of giving you a sense of the concept’s significance.

1. All media messages are “constructed.” (This very list was constructed with a purpose and an audience in mind. How was it constructed, by whom, for whom, why? Now ask the same questions of all media messages.)
2. Each medium has different characteristics, strengths, and a unique “language” of construction. (What messages are best suited for television, the internet, magazines, radio, billboards? How does the message change to fit the medium?)
3. Media messages are produced for particular purposes. (Sell, inform, deceive, convince, frighten, etc.)
4. All media messages contain embedded values and points of view. (patriotism, eternal youth, consumerism, motherhood, loyalty, security, beauty etc.)
5. People use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages. (No two people see the same message in the same way. Your understanding of, or reaction to, a message is uniquely yours. Helpful hint: check perceptions.
6. Media and media messages can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and the democratic process. (Why do you think those political candidates are spending all that money on advertising? Why do you know what ‘Aflac’ means?)

Here’s that schedule for the rebroadcast of our discussion:

• Mon., Feb. 4 through Fri., Feb. 8, 12 p.m., Ch. 22
• Mon., Feb. 4, 9 p.m., Ch. 11
• Mon., Feb. 4, 8:30 a.m., Ch. 21
• Mon., Feb. 4, 5:30 p.m., Ch. 21
• Wed., Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m., Ch. 22

Replays on Channels 11 and 21 will reach Portland and the East Metro area.

Screen time: How much and what kind?

I represent the media literacy group, Media Think, on a "screentime awareness" coalition consisting primarily of public health advocates.

Often, I find myself being the odd person out in the group. My colleagues are concerned primarily about the health consequences of excessive screen time for children. At the top of their list is childhood obesity and diabetes, both of which have been described as epidemics among today’s children.

I don't disagree with them, but we have a running debate in the coalition about whether, in addition to the amount of time spent in front of screens, we should be equally concerned about the content of the screen media. Should we make judgments about what is harmful and what is helpful, regardless of how much children watch it?

My cohorts don't want to go there. To make our task simple, they want to focus on limiting screen time, which is easily quantifiable. Our guide has been the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP says that children shouldn’t spend more than one or two hours a day with "quality programming" on screens. Children two years old and younger should spend NO time in front of screens. (Throw out the Baby Einstein, parents!)

The reasons to limit screen time are numerous. You can check them out on the excellent AAP Media Matters web site.

That said, I like to remind my colleagues that, as a community college teacher, I routinely make assignments that require my students to write on computers. They can easily spend three or more hours doing homework in front of screens.

I maintain that how we use screens (as tools, as entertainment, as teachers, as escapes, as addictions) is as important as how much time we spend with them.

Now comes an article in today’s New York Times about the growth of online schools. If a child is "in online school” for three or four hours a day, is that bad? Many educators and parents don’t think so.

I don’t think so either.

I’m not about to resign from our "screen time" coalition, but it seems to me that anyone working on media issues must be flexible and open.

Technology, education, ways of learning and even human behavior are constantly and rapidly changing. We need to be nimble and alert to the changes, and adjust accordingly and wisely.

Getting to know GameBoy

On Tuesday evening, the night PBS’s Frontline ran a scary “Growing up OnLine” program about adolescent cyber-anarchy at 9 p.m., I was a Media Think presenter guiding a group or parents of elementary school children through a discussion about video games and on-line fantasia.

The metaphors the parents used to describe what had happened to their children were troubling. “Kidnapping” and “addiction” topped the list.

I invited them to share their concerns. Several said they thought they had the situation under control. They limited “screen time” and had placed computers in “family areas” where adult surveillance ruled. Their kids were forbidden to have computers in their rooms where they could be free to roam the wild, salacious web with abandon.

Others — nearly all were parents of boys — felt they had lost control. Power struggles had ensued. Gameboys had become addictions. The Penguin Club turned out to be training wheels for “Facebook” and ”MySpace” where hormonal urges eventually would be manipulated and exploited through video cliquishness, flirtation, flaming and even seduction.

Later in the evening, “Growing up OnLine” laid out the terrain.

I interjected advice as the parents recounted their stories. My main point was to take control, but in ways that required considerable tolerance and understanding. Rather than demean a child’s inevitable involvement with electronic media, a parent should venture into the child’s cyberworld. Sit down with your child and have him or her explain it. Get to know the vocabulary, the video landscape of Pokemon, meet the heroes and the villains and learn the rewards of achieving each new “level.”

Once parents have explored with their children this odd and often violent, amoral world of cyberspace, they can raise “adult” questions about good and evil, violence and non-violence, conflict and conciliation, war and peace. The cyberworld is only as alien to us as we adults make it. If we segregate ourselves from it, we become irrelevant.

Video games are the fairy tales of our times. To ignore them results in, yes, ignorance. To demean them is to distance yourself from your child. I know, because I did a long, long time ago and regret it to this day.

The negative metaphors of addiction and kidnapping need to be replaced with those of opportunity and even community. We need to reframe our attitudes toward the cyberworld. If we do that, we can use it as a gateway to the real world of real levels of achievement, of right and wrong, good and evil, peace and war, love and hate.

Parents surrendering, then losing kids to "screens"

My friend and fellow media activist Jean Rystrom of Kaiser Permanente is a great source of information about trends in excessive, damaging "screen-time" use among children.

In the last two days, she has sent me and others two telling e-mails. The first is a link to a Wall Street Journal column, "Teenage Zombies," which echoes many concerns I've heard recently from parents. The primary one is that kids are becoming addicted to video games and are isolating themselves from their families and others.

The second lays out the alarming exposure of very young children to screen images, despite the medical community's warnings about the dangers posed, particularly to those under two. Parents, it seems, are turning over responsibility for their children's well-being to television programmers and TV hucksters.

Here's her report, which I have edited slightly:

I'm sending you a four-part series (one a week) of my brief impressions from important medical studies in 2007 pertaining to screen time (you'll be happy to know that I'm leaving out articles which pertain primarily to content as opposed to time). Consider all of the usual caveats: I'm not a researcher, and I "might" be biased.

This first message is simply an update, particularly about younger children. The issue continues to grow in importance and urgency as more opportunities to watch are developed and marketed, and aimed at younger and younger kids. Clearly we continue to have a lot of work to do: raising awareness is still a priority. Most parents are not aware that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time at all before age 2 (which has more to do with brain development than obesity, although that too is an ever more serious problem).

* 20 percent of children under age 3 have a TV in their bedroom

* 43 percent of children age 3 and 4 have a TV in their bedroom

* Most common reason cited by parents (54 percent): "it frees up other televisions in the house for other family members to watch their own shows"

* 27 percent of 5 and 6 year olds use a computer on a typical day

- Vandewater et al, Pediatrics, May 2007

* By 3 months of age, about 40 percent of children regularly watched television, DVDs, or videos

* The median age for introduction was 9 months

* Average 1 hour per day by age 12 months

* Parent reasons: education, entertainment, and babysitting

- Zimmerman et al, Archive of Pediatric Adolescent Med, May 2007

Jean and I are part of a coalition making a major push in the next two years to ensure that the dangers of early childhood exposure to screens are widely known and addressed in Oregon. Jean represents Kaiser Permanente (see its excellent website on screen time and its impact on kids); I represent Media Think. Other members include the State Health Department, Multnomah County Library, the County Health Department, WIC (Women, Infants and Children), Community Health Partners and the Oregon PTA.

We'll keep you informed of our progress.

Issuing a restraining order on media use

I received an invitation today to give a media literacy presentation at a Portland elementary school.

Each time I give my presentation (under the auspices of Media Think), I try to tailor it to the needs of the audience.

According to my PTA contact, the school's parents are particularly worried about the proliferation of media in the lives of their kids. For instance, the cell phone/text messaging/cyber-bulling issue has arrived in their elementary school.

After we settled on details via e-mail, my contact asked me for a title to use for publicity.

Coming up with a title is always a revelation. After I dispensed with the prosaic “What to do about Media in your Child’s life” and “Smart media decisions for your child,” I explored some new metaphorical territory about media and its impact on families.

The idea of media being "the other parent" has been around. James Steyer used it as the title of his book about media and kids. But I sensed that the parents had deeper concerns than competing “other parents.”

No, for them, media are actual abductors. Their kids are being enticed away from family. The role models aren’t “other parents” with quasi-parental concerns. Rather the role models are aliens with values diametrically opposed to parental ones: violence, cyber-bullying, hyper-sexuality, crudeness.

So I played with “Protecting your child from media abduction” and “Is your child a media run-a-away?” I also considered with the judicial term “Restraining Order” to suggest the seriousness of the problem and the need for strong measures to combat it.

I confess I worried that the idea of media abduction might be too strong, so I decided to simply throw it in with a mix of suggestions for my contact to choose from.

My contact wrote right back, “I think I like a combo: ‘Restraining Order: Protecting Your Child from Media Abduction.’"

Bingo.

Together we have arrived at a new, more urgent way of looking at media’s influence on kids. The metaphor suggests criminality (enticement, abduction). And that suggests new, tougher approaches (restraint, restraining order).

The school’s invitation was more than an invitation to give a presentation. It turned out to be an invitation to explore new ways of understanding a growing problem and finding a solution.

A Scary Test

Here is a scary test. Name the product associated with each of the above fonts.

If you need help, ask a child. Adults usually can name only four or five of the fonts, but children identify most of them, particularly those that belong to highly sugared food.

For both adults and children, the results are sobering because they tell us about what our children are learning and how it shapes their awareness.

In light of the results, who or what are the most persuasive and pervasive teachers in the lives of our children?

If the objects to be identified were leaves, could our children name the tree each leaf comes from?

Those of us who teach media literacy through Media Think sometimes use this exercise as part of our presentations. As the school year begins, consider inviting us to present to your school's PTA, or to your congregation or service club.