Media Literacy

According to Wikipedia, Media Literacy "is the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms." To go along with this, media literacy gives people the opportunity to question the things they are reading, watching and listening to. Media literacy also gives a reader, viewer, or listener the opportunity to use different types of perspectives in a way that lets them view things "outside of the box".

While searching on Google for this assignment, I found some good websites that stood out to me to help us all gain a better understanding and perspective of what teens nowadays are growing up with in the media. Here are the following websites:

The first one I found on the Media Education Foundation (MEF) website. On this website, I found three pieces that I thought would be great for the use in this class.

• The first piece talks about media violence and how it is now worst than ever. This piece also shares some facts about media violence. One fact that worried me was that media violence is especially damaging to young children under 8 especially because they cannot tell the difference between real life and fantasy. This one was worrisome because I have 4 nieces and nephews all under this age frame.

• The second piece was more about how to be a critical media viewer. I feel like this one can be very important for us in this class. For example, one question that we have discussed and have been to asked to focus on throughout this course was: Question why certain messages are consistently present in mainstream media and why others are absent.

• The third piece is a critical viewing activity; in which suggestions and questions are made to help someone view media with a more critical eye. Once again this would be very helpful for us in this class.
  

The following website that I found focused more on media literacy from a teacher's perspective and slightly from a parent's perspective. It talks alot about what we focused on in the beginning of the semester with focuses on popular television characters and how kids are being bombarded with ads that may be affecting them.

Media Channel- Advertising and Marketing