Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Media literacy is a term that has been used to refer to a great many ideas. It has been treated as a public policy health issue; a critical-cultural issue; as a set of pedagogical tools for school teachers or suggestions for parents; and as a topic of scholarly inquiry from a physiological, psychological, behavioral, sociological, and/or anthropological tradition. Some writers focus primarily on one culture, such as American culture, British culture, Canadian culture, or Chilean culture, while others concentrate on several countries and/or cultures. It is a term applied to the study of media industries, textual interpretation, context and ideology, production, and audience. The term is also used as synonymous with or as part of media education. While the range of writing about media literacy is a positive characteristic that indicates widespread interest in the topic, it is difficult to make sense of all these ideas. For example, the media scholar Herb Zettl (1998) complained that the large amount of information on the Internet along with books, articles, and classroom materials does not help much in defining what media literacy is, because most of that material consists of recipes for how to prevent children from watching too much or unsuitable television programs. It is possible, however, to group most of the writings on media literacy into two general categories. One of these ... log in or subscribe to read full text