What is media literacy?

Julie Smith states media literacy as the “critical questioning” about the media we use in our daily life (Miller & Smith, 2021). Education in media literacy is intended to allow more people to understand the use of media. It is interesting that media is changing every day, and media literacy is about analyzing various media and learning from them.


Why is it important?
It is important because not many people fully understand media even though they use it every day. In the interview, Julie Smith says that there is a mess of information on various media and from different information sources, and people tend to choose the information that they believe but not what is critical (Miller & Smith, 2021). News media presents news that people want to view but not what people should view. People should have the ability to know what to believe and what to not. Media literacy will allow people to have a critical understanding of what media is and how can it change our daily life.

Why is it dismissed?
Media is blended in our day-to-day life, and it is commonly used that we ignored its importance. People see what they want to see so that they never debate the correctness of what they see. Media literacy is not widely taught nowadays, and people didn’t recognize the importance of learning it.

Why should you aim for varied views but the factual consensus in your PLN?

Everyone has a different opinion on the same thing, and a person will only see one aspect if he is not open to other views. We make a conclusion to an incident based on our previous experience, but people have unique experiences; therefore, they can see things that we cannot see and hold a different opinion than us. Learning new knowledge is about being open to new things and open to other opinions.

Reference

Miller, J. & Smith, J.(2021, June 6). EDCI 338 – media literacy with Julie Smith. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57r3-aEnci0.