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What is Media Literacy

Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyse, evaluate and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. Education for media literacy often uses an inquiry-based pedagogic model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, hear, and read.

 

The online impacts of what you might say!

The much-reported case this week of a woman, known only as Lindsay, who was fired for posting negative comments about her boss on Facebook is not the first – and surely not the last – instance of the very public nature of the web getting people into trouble. What it really emphasises, however, is how careful everybody needs to be. Many web evangelists argue that the internet brings people around the world closer together by making them understand each other’s concerns, but, in fact, the opposite is often the case.


 
 

Social networking tips

1. Don’t post in anger Comments committed to the web are almost without exception permanent; even deleted messages posted to Twitter can be found with a simple Google search.

2. Manage your social circle Ensure that only those you trust are privy to your innermost thoughts, which means being careful who you invite in to your social circle.

3. Protect your identity Safeguarding your personal “brand” online is important – employers and universities now check the social profiles of applicants. If you must share pictures of a drunken night out, ensure that only trusted friends can see them.

4. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it online The sense of anonymity afforded by the web can be misleading and it is easy to overstep the mark.

5. Participate Sites such as Twitter live and die by the quality of their “conversation”. If social media is to fulfil its true potential, then it needs to reflect and embrace the wisdom of the crowd.

 

The Social Media Revolution

Media literacy education provides tools to help people critically analyze messages, offers opportunities for learners to broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in making their own media messages. Critical analysis can include detecting propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public affairs programming (and the reasons for these), and to understand how structural features—such as media ownership, or its funding model affect the information presented. Media literate people should be skilful creators and producers of media messages, both to facilitate understanding of the specificities of each medium, as well as to create independent media. Media literacy can be seen as contributing to an expanded conceptualization of literacy. By transforming the process of media consumption into an active and critical process, people gain greater awareness of the potential for misrepresentation and manipulation (especially through commercials and public relations techniques), and understand the role of mass media and participatory media in constructing views of reality.  Media literacy is sometimes promoted as a way of protecting people from what are alleged to be mass media's ill effects and/or as simply appreciating the achievements of the media industries, although neither of these perspectives can properly be regarded as a "literacy".
 
 


The size of the social media marketplace!

Watch this video and discover how massive the world of social networking sites have become.  Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace are hailed as the future of the internet, many millions of users communicate to each other daily and hundreds of thousands of campanies are now engaged in social marketing.

Social media is a global communications tool

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Attending Media Literacy Workshops - It's FREE!

Media Literacy workshop activity looked closely at methods of improving how we communicate using digital technology, desktop publishing and Internet skills.  This evolving workshop is currently being future-scoped to incorporate both off-line and on-line media activities, which includes for example digital photography, mobile, film, audio, multimedia, digital storytelling, podcasts, videos, websites and social networks.