Media and Cyber or Digital Literacy Lecture

MEDIA AND CYBER OR DIGITAL LITERACY:
MEDIA LITERACY:
➢ Aufderheide (1993): the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate in a wide variety
forms.
➢ Christ and Potter (1998): the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages across a
variety
of contexts.
➢ Hobbs (1998): posits that it is a term used by modern scholars to refer to the process of critically
analyzing and learning to create one’s own messages in print, audio, video and multimedia.
➢ Media Literacy: the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they
are
communicating.
➢ Boyd (2014): media literacy education began in the United States and United Kingdom as a direct
results of war propaganda in the 1930’s and the rise of advertising in the 1960’s. In both cases,
media
was being used to manipulate the perspective (and subsequent actions) of those expose to it,
thereby
giving rise to the need to educate people on how to detect the biases, falsehoods and half- truths
depicted in print, radio and television.
➢ Aufderheide (1993) and Hobbs (1998) reported at the 1993 Media Literacy National Leadership
Conference: US educators could not agree on the appropriate goals for media educators the scope
of
appropriate instructional techniques. The conference did, however, identify five essential concepts
necessary for any analysis of media messages.
Five essentials’ concepts of Media Messages:

1. Media messages are constructed
2. Media messages are produced within economic, social, political, historical, and aesthetic contexts
3. The interpretative meaning-making process involved in message reception consist of an
interaction between
the reader, the text and the culture.
4. Media has unique “languages” characteristics which typify various forms, genres, and symbol
systems of
communication.
5. Media representations play a role in people’s understanding of social reality.
WHAT MEDIA LITERACY IS NOT

• Criticizing the media is not, in and of itself, media literacy. However, being media literate
sometimes requires that one
indeed, criticize what one sees or hears.
• Merely producing media is not media literacy although part of being media literate is the ability to
produce media.
• Teaching with media (videos, presentations, etc.) does not equal media literacy. An education in
media literacy must
also include teaching about media.
• Viewing media and analyzing it from a single perspective is not media literacy. True media literacy
requires both
abilities to a willingness to view and analyze media from multiple positions and perspectives.
CHALLENGES TO MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION

• According to (KOLTAY, 2011)- teaching it is a subject in itself might not be feasible given how
overburdened the
curriculum is at the moment.
• Livingstone and Van Der Graaf (2010)- identified “how to measure media literacy and evaluate the
success of media
literacy initiatives” as being one of the more pernicious challenges facing educators in the 21st
century.
• Chris and Potter (1998)- “Is media literacy best understood as a means of inoculating children
against potential harms of
the media or as a means of enhancing their appreciations of the literacy merits of the media?”
DIGITAL LITERACY
➢ Digital literacy (also called e-literacy, cyber literacy, and even information literacy by some
authors) is no different
although now the “text” can actually be images, sounds, video, music or combination thereof.
➢ Digital Literacy can be defined as the ability to locate, evaluate, create, and communicate
information on various digital
platforms. It finds its origins in information and computer literacy.
The skills and competencies listed by Shapiro and Hughes (1196) in a curriculum they envisioned to
promote computer literacy
sound familiar to readers today:
• Tool literacy
• Resource literacy
• Social-structural literacy
• Research
• Publishing
• Emerging technologies literacy
• Critical literacy
➢ It should also come as no surprise that digital literacy shares a great deal of overlap with media
literacy; so much so that
digital literacy can be seen as a subset of media literacy, dealing particularly with media in digital
form.
➢ The term "digital literacy" is not new; Lanham (1995) described the "digitally literate person" as
being skilled at
deciphering and understanding the meanings of images, sound and the subtle uses of words. Two
years later, Gilster
(1997) formally defined digital literacy as "the ability to understand and use information in multiple
formats from a wide
range of sources".
Bawden (2008) collated the SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES comprising digital literacy from
contemporary scholars on the matter into four groups:
➢ UNDERPINNINGS - This refers to those skills and competencies that “support” or
“enable”everything else within digital
literacy, namely: traditional literacy and computer/ICT literacy (i.e.,the ability to use computers in
everyday life).
➢ BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE - This largely refers to knowing where information on a particular
subject or topic can be
found, how information is kept, and how it is disseminated- a skill taken for granted back in the day
when information
almost exclusively resided in the form of printed text.
➢ CENTRAL COMPETENCIES - These are the skills and competencies that a majority of scholars agree
on as being core to
digital literacy today, namely; reading and understanding digital and non-digital formats; creating
and communicating
digital information; evaluation of information; knowledge assembly; information literacy; and media
literacy.
➢ ATTITUDES AND PERSPECTIVE - Bawden (2008) suggests that it is these attitudes and perspectives
that link digital literacy
today with traditional literacy, saying “it is not enough to have skills and competencies, they must be
grounded in some
moral framework, “specifically”.
• Independent Learning - the initiative and ability to learn whatever is needed for a person’s specific
situation,
and
• Moral/Social literacy – an understanding of correct, acceptable and sensible behavior in on digital
environment.
INFORMATION LITERACY WITHIN DIGITAL LITERACY

• Eshet-Alkalai (2004) draws attention to Information Literacy as a critical component of Digital
Literacy as “the cognitive
skills that consumers use to evaluate information in an educated and affective manner.“ In effect,
information literacy
acts as a filter by which consumers evaluate the veracity of the information being presented to them
via digital media
and thereupon sort of erroneous, irrelevant, and biased from what is demonstrably factual.
• However, a majority of studies of Information Literacy seem to concentrate more on the ability to
search for information
rather than its cognitive and pedagogical aspects (Eshet-Alkalai,2004; Zinns,2000;Burnett &
McKinley,1998)
SOCIO- EMOTIONAL LITERACY WITHIN DIGITAL LITERACY

WHAT IS SOCIO- EMOTIONAL LITERACY?
• The term Social and Emotional Literacy refers to the competence and level of knowledge of all
social and emotional skills.
• Alongside Information Literacy, Eshet-Alkalai (2004) highlights a kind of Socio-Emotional literacy
needed to navigate the
internet raising questions such as, "How do I know if another user in a chatroom is who he says he
is?"
• Instead, there is a necessary familiarity with the unwritten rules of Cyberspace; an understanding
that while the Internet
is a global village of sorts, it is also a global jungle of human communication embracing from truth to
falsehoods, honesty
and deceit, and ultimately, good and evil.
• According to Eshet-Alkalai (2004), This Socio-Emotional literacy requires user to be "very
critical,analytical and mature"-
implying a kind of richness of experience that the literate transfers from real life to their dealings
online.
• Digitally literate users know how to avoid the "traps" of cyberspace mainly because they are
familiar with the social and
emotional patterns of working in cyber space-that it is really just an outworking of human nature.
DIGITAL NATIVES
➢ The term digital native was popularized by Prensky (2001) in reference to the generation that was
born during the
information age (as opposed to digital immigrants –the generation prior that acquired familiarity
computers, the internet
and connectivity)
➢ Educators and parents alike latched onto the term, spawning a school of thought wherein the
decline of modern
education is explained by educator’s lack of understanding of how digital natives learn and motor
decisions.
➢ Digital literate is popularly defined as the ability to use computers or use the internet.
➢ Our expand view of the term “literate” allows us to see that while the digital natives in our
classroom are most certainly
familiar with the digital systems.
EXAMPLE:
The difficulty many Senior High School instructors have in teaching research: Students who are
otherwise quite familiar
with using the internet for entertainment are suddenly at loss in locating, accessing, and
understanding information from
research journals websites, mainly because they are looking for information on topics they are either
unfamiliar.
CHALLENGES TO DIGITAL LITERACY EDUCATION

• Digital Literacy Education shares many of the same challenges as Media Literacy for example: How
should it be taught?
How can it be measured and evaluated? Should it be taught for the protection of the students in
their consumption of
information or should it develop their appreciation for digital media? According to Brown (2017),
There is no single and
comprehensive plan anywhere for teaching digital literacy the way it should be taught. He asked,
What assumptions,
theories, and research evidence underpin specific frameworks? Whose interests are being served
when particular
frameworks are being promoted? Beyond effort to produce flashy and visually attractive models how
might we
reimagine digital literacies to promote critical mindsets and active citizenry in order to shape our
societies for new ways
of living, learning, and working for a better future--for all?

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MEDIA AND CYBER OR DIGITAL LITERACY:

Five essentials’ concepts of Media Messages:

WHAT MEDIA LITERACY IS NOT

CHALLENGES TO MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION

INFORMATION LITERACY WITHIN DIGITAL LITERACY

SOCIO- EMOTIONAL LITERACY WITHIN DIGITAL LITERACY

CHALLENGES TO DIGITAL LITERACY EDUCATION

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