Critical Thinking and Media Literacy

 Critical thinking and media literacy

Mass media is all around us. Think about the following questions based on your own experience with media before reading the article.

Have you ever noticed arguments and values implicit in the stories you watch on TV?

• Have you ever wondered how fictional stories seem so real in the movies?

• Has it ever seemed to you like the news you read is not as neutral as it appears to be?

• Have you ever felt that advertisements are selling you something more than products?

These questions lead us to the key themes of the article below: media literacy. Read and listen to this article with some definitions of key terms and main ideas to talk about critical thinking and media literacy.

Believing what you see?

Developing a critical eye through media literacy

First, some key terms...

Media are the channels through which humankind communicates. Media conveys meaning through different mediums such as television broadcasts, newspapers or films. Media includes radio, videos, recorded music, magazines, junk mail, comic books, computer software, the internet, video games, and advertisements. The word mass refers to a large number of elements, so mass media is a means of communicating to numerous audiences. All media present a message in a text. In the context of media analysis, a text is not only as something that is written. A text is anything that communicates a message. Some examples of non-conventional texts are: commercials, webpages, songs, billboards, advertisements, or even illustrations.

One cognitive skill that is essential in approaching media texts is critical thinking. You, most certainly, know the meaning of the words critical and thinking separately. But combined critical thinking has a special meaning. It is a term applied to the analysis of data or ideas by using observation, experience, reasoning and logic in order to arrive at a conclusion. When we think critically, we try to go beyond understanding just the superficial elements of a text, idea or problem and we try to decipher the implicit intentions or arguments behind them and question these.

Through critical thinking, we can analyze messages to which we are exposed in the media. Critical thinking aims to help us understand the messages that might be implicit, hidden, or subliminal. Let's take a look at a specific type of critical thinking and analysis that is used particularly in the context of media analysis: media literacy.

What is media literacy?

Media literacy is all about taking a second look at media texts. This basically means that when we hear or look at media, we can miss elements that are not obvious or explicit. Media literacy is about learning to "read" media in order to find those underlying meanings in a text. By listening or looking twice we will be able to catch information that that may contain important clues to these messages. This kind of double checking can be intentional or accidental. For example, you might have been listening to an artist for many years before you notice that there is a deeper message in the songs. Or, you may intentionally analyze an advertisement to understand the strategies used by the marketer to sell the product.

So why should we develop media literacy?

You cannot always believe what you see. Though some media is based on real events, people, and places, media nowadays have millions of ways of making things that are not real appear so. Special effects, stunt people, camera tricks, editing software and great acting construct images, texts and scenes that appear real but are actually only simulations. Simulating reality can trick viewers into believing that what they are seeing is the truth, and this is most often the objective of the creators, making you believe what you see. Every word, image, sound, and color has a purpose in constructing a strategy to convey a message. Things are not there, or are not omitted, on accident. Media literacy is important because it helps you avoid being manipulated by these strategies.

Media strategies: persuasion and perspective

Media texts have a target audience and specific purposes. Media texts, like other texts, seek to achieve something. Each text has a clear reason for being. Purposes can range from entertaining, to informing, to persuading, to making money, to explaining, to arguing and the text's purpose is always linked to the target audience. When creators of media texts compose, their characterize the target audience in terms of sex, age, education, economic and social status, occupation, lifestyle, values, beliefs, tastes, etc. Those characteristics shape the construction of a successful media text.

The advertising media uses techniques in order to help messages reach their targets, most often to persuade. The first technique is identification. With this strategy, advertisers use something that individuals can identify with. In the examples, you will see a woman who who looks like e som someone many woman can identify with. By using her, the advertisers aim to connect with the common woman. In the second image, we see a representation of the generalization strategy. Here, the ad tries to persuade by suggesting that all women use the perfume. Next, we see the strategy emotional appeal in play. Here, advertiser tries to make the observer believe that by using the perfume she will feel pampered and luxurious. The focus is the feeling the product will generate. Finally, the last image, makes use of celebrity endorsement. By placing someone famous in the ad, and showing this person using the product, the advertisement tries to sell the product using the authority of the celebrity as the selling point.

Other strategies used in media are more common in texts whose aim is to create the illusion of reality. Sometimes certain events are portrayed in the news. Or a "true story" is retold in a documentary. Yet, every story being told is done from the perspective or point of view of the author or director. Even when the creator of the media tries to be objective and stay as close to the facts as possible, you will always be seeing the story as it is represented from the perspective of the creator. You cannot take for granted that what is said to be true or real really is. Objectivity does not exist.

Media interpretation depends on you

What you conclude after being exposed to a media text depends greatly on you.

At some level, media messages are like people; they express values, intentions and ideologies. Whenever we are exposed to a media text, we must try to identify what the ideas of the people who produced it are, and decide if we agree. Remember that the elements in a text message are not there for no reason. They have a purpose. In order to deconstruct the text, you will have to take a second look, or a third, or a fourth and reach your own conclusions. By doing so, so, you will be able to interpret and make decisions based on your own opinion and not only on what you have been told to believe. (Worsnop, 1999).

Key concepts and questions to keep in mind