Media and information literacy as citizen engagement

Literacy
- Ability to read and write

- Lately there has been a stress on functional literacy to stress the idea that reading and
writing skills dhouls enable an individual to tackle the tasks that unfolds in everyday life

- Its twin sister is the concept of numeracy

- The United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (UNESCO) cites the
importance of literacy in the modern world
- “Literacy is a fundamental human right and the foundation for lifelong learning. It is fully
essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives. For induvial,
families and societies alike it is an instrument of empowerment to improve one health,
one income and one relationship with the world” (UNESCO, 2003)

Media literacy: a definition

- Throughout the years, educators have come out with various definition of the word media
literacy
- Media literacy is most validly seen as a repertoire of skills and capacities. The most
common definitions are “the ability to access, analyze and respond to a range of media
(sargant,2004)
The ability to access
- It is your knowledge in finding an information given by the media
- Ability to have technical competence
Ability to analyze
- Reflective critical thinking
- Connected to reliability
Ability to respond
- How media texts shape our insight, perspective and identities
- Creation

Information literacy
- The set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and
have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information
Information age
- The internet arose in 1969 but it was in 1989 when a fully developed world wide web
arose and turning it into the global platform for knowledge sharing, communication and
archiving

Internet
- It is a vast network of computer networks in which has anyone has access to a computer
with internet connection can publish their documents
- All of these networks are linked together via digital technology. Thus, the internet allows,
transmission of a variety of file types, both written and non-written multimedia
- There are millions of internet sites. If you are looking for certain information, you might
end up with more than a dozen sites in the course of your search. These sites are created
by different people or organization with the different objectives

Sources of information
1. Popular publications
- Usual source of publication, can anyone publish
- To inform, to entertain
Ex. Blogs, article
2. Scholarly publications
- If you have research can be related here
- Academic papers
3. Trade publications
- Specific to particular industry
Ex. Motor publication
 Constructedness: when do we say something is constructed?

How media is made?

 Representation
- The ways in which media represents reality. More appropriately, it is how the process of
media creation and production re-present reality through the decisions and perspectives
of its creators. Media and information literacy is concerned with how certain groups,
ideas, faith system and topics are presented from a particular perspective or value system

 Codes
- System of signs and symbolic meanings embedded in a media and information text

 Conventions
- The established and socially accepted ways of doing things. In media, these are the styles
and approaches that have been standardized into the content

 Genre
- A system of classification of works of art, based on established conventions

 Format
- Manner of presentation and style that provides a structure for media and information texts

- We have tackled how in the earliest days of interpersonal communication, messages

passed from one place to the next, or from one generation to the other by word of mouth
- Today the capacities of the human mind aided by technology enable the process called
construction of media and information messages
- The media employ more than words to construct a more complex reality of society
- The tools and technique of editing
- The power of words as dialogue and narration to capture the world of a story
- What and what not to include
- What to highlight and what should serve as backdrop
- Constructions create representation
- Representation is the construction in any media of certain aspects of reality and the
constitutive elements that make up reality people, places, time or historical period,
objects, ways of life, even identities
- It would be better appreciation if we read representations as re-presentation
  Construction
- Process
 Re-presentation
- Out put

- Media texts present reality again as it intentionally chooses, writes, composes, frames,
edits, lights, crops, filters, scores through music, engineers the sound so that what we see
are entirely constructed and artificial versions of reality we perceive

Code and convention

Codes
- Are systems of signs that when put together create meaning
Conventions
- Are generally established and accepted ways of doing something

 The “grammar” of the camera

1. Extreme long shot

- Shot of e.g., a large crowd scene or a view of scenery as far as the horizon
2. Long shot
- A view of a situation or setting from a distance
3. Medium long shot
- Shows a group of people in interaction with each other, e.g., a fight scene, with part of
their surroundings in the pictures
4. Full shot
- A view of a figures entire body in order to show action and/or a constellation of
characters
5. Medium shot, mid shot, and medium close shot
- Shows a subject down to his or her chest or waist
6. Close-up
- A full screen shot of a subject’s face, showing the finest nuances of expression
7. Extreme close-up (shot) detail (shot) for objects
- A shot of a hand, eye, mouth or object in detail
 Point of view (view points)

1. Establishing shot
- Often used at the beginning of a scene to indicate the location or setting, it is usually a
long shot taken form a neutral position “the scene starts with an”
2. Point-of-view shot, POV-shot
- Shows a scene from the perspective of a character or one person. Most newsreel footages
are shown from the perspective of the newscaster
3. Over the shoulder shot
- Often used in dialogue scenes, a frontal view of a dialogue partner from the perspective
of someone standing behind and slightly to the side of the other partner, so that parts of
both can be seen
4. Reaction shot
- Short shot of a character’s response to an action
5. Insert (shot)
- A detail shot which quickly gives visual information necessary to understand the meaning
of a scene
6. Reverse-angle-shot
- A shot from the opposite perspective