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Media Literacy Education: Why is it Important?


Media Literacy


Media literacy is, in simple terms, the ability to analyze and understand numerous forms of media. It is a critical component to our society, especially with how quickly our digital world is expanding. There are many important aspects of Media literacy, and education needs to be implemented into our school systems immediately. The core principles of Media Literacy education include teaching students of any ages how to gain the expression skills and learn how to ask the required questions in order to be critical thinkers, effective communicators and functioning society members.


Current Media Literacy Education Study


Media literacy education is severely lacking in schools right now. During 2015-2016, the Stanford Graduate School of Education conducted a study that tested over 7800 students throughout middle school, high school, and college on their media literacy skills. The results of the study were not ideal, with 82% of tested middle schoolers not being able to tell the difference between real news stories and sponsored articles. 30% of the tested high school students identified a fake article to be more reliable than the real one shown. Even the Stanford college students had trouble identifying real news. More than 80% of them could not identify biased information from independent news sources supported by groups such as lobbying firms as being less reliable than a mainstream news source.


Media Ownership and Regulation


"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind".

- Jim Morrison


90% of the media is owned by just 6 companies. Comcast, Walt Disney, AT&T, ViacomCBS, Sony, and Fox are publicly known as "The Big 6". It is very important to understand where our media comes from. This media consolidation is harmful to the U.S. citizens because it restricts the information released to the public, and can push incorrect narratives regarding different topics.


Social media platforms have become increasingly regulated since their entrance into the world. Due to the fact they are all privately owned companies, they are allowed to regulate any content they feel is a violation of their terms of service. Regulating user's social media posts can be dangerous to the public in certain situations. Erasing one side of the story can change the narrative and alter opinions.


In other situations, social media regulations are very important to have, due to the censorship of media such as brutal violence, pornography, etc. Being media literate in media ownership and regulation can help you analyze the information you see and understand why it was said, who said it, who their intended audience is, and how they wanted the viewers to feel.


Misinformation in Media


In the digital world today, we are constantly bombarded by information wherever we go, and much of the information we see online comes from unreliable sources with misleading information. Teaching media literacy can help our society become smarter as a whole. Being media literate means questioning every single piece of information you come across. All media messages are constructed with a purpose and it’s important to uncover what they mean to us and who created the piece of media. Media is extremely powerful, and written information is not the only thing to be skeptical about. Due to advancements in technology, there is now the possibility of viewing a video that is completely untrue, such as deepfakes. In September 2019, an AI firm by the name of Deeptrace found 15,000 deepfake videos circulating on the web.


The photoshopped videos are very realistic and easy to misinform the public with, but there are ways to protect yourself from falling victim to a deepfake. The Washington Post fact checker discovered the key components needed to decipher a misleading deepfake video from a real one. Being educated in media literacy is integral to helping slow down the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and malformation amongst everyone. Misinformed hoaxes as well as conspiracy theories have spread a fair share of negative emotions, including panic and anger within viewers. Gaining a higher percentage of media literacy and having the ability to never be misinformed by fake media will make our society stronger.


Privacy and Security


One important aspect of media literacy education is privacy and security. It is crucial to know how to protect yourself and your data from companies that want to profit off of you, as well as hackers. Children as young as five years old need to begin learning about online privacy and security. In 2018, students from The London School of Economics and Political Science conducted a study on children, including 5-7 year olds, and found that they are not very familiar with digital privacy, and yet they are already emerging in the online world.


According to the results, a whopping 71% of the children aged 5-7 are active users on YouTube, and 3% are already active on social media platforms. It’s dangerous for these children to be providing data to companies so early on in their lives. The federal laws set in place are supposed to prohibit companies from storing and selling children's online data without consent from parents, but researchers have discovered that the rules are not always followed. According to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, children raised by parents that have not completed college have a higher risk of having their data taken. The study stated that the children are two to three times more likely to have their information delivered to third party companies.


The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk created a poll to determine how Americans feel about the current security levels of our online information. The results concluded that 64% of participants do not feel like their personal information is currently secure. 50% of participants also felt that their private messages were not secure. Luckily, there are many ways to increase your personal security. Media literacy in privacy and security can help secure personal information and encourage citizens to fight harder for their online privacy as well as security.


Representation in Media


Representation in media has the ability to alter an audience's knowledge or opinion about certain topics. How you see someone portrayed can change your understanding them. Women are underrepresented in all forms of media. According to a study created by UN Women, throughout 114 different countries, women only make up 24% of everyone we watch on TV, listen to on the radio, read about online and in the newspaper.


The group of people most at risk when being media illiterate about underrepresentation and misrepresentation are children and young teens around the globe. Children are very impressionable and often fall victim to the persuading tactics used during misrepresentation in media. Women are often heavily sexualized in the media and are far less likely than a man to be shown as the breadwinner of the family. Even though women account for half of the global population, less than one third of all speaking characters in films are female. Being media literate can help to lower and eventually eradicate the harmful representations of women in media.


Advertising and Persuasion


Advertising has always been a large portion of the media. Persuasion and Advertising go together like two peas in a pod. Companies are constantly trying to persuade viewers and bring in new customers. With the digital world advertisers publishing such an influx of persuasive advertisements, it has gotten much harder to decipher them from non-sponsored content.


The rise of Instagram Influencers has changed media advertising completely. Influencers have the power to persuade their users into performing an action, such as following an account or purchasing a product. With great power comes great responsibility when living the digital influencer life, because they also have the ability to manipulate their followers opinions and actions. In the world of highly personalized ads, online consumers are the targets and most at risk of being manipulated by advertising propaganda. Being media literate in terms of advertising can help you see through the propaganda and manipulative tactics that we are forced to interact with every day.


Media Literacy Is Important


We must integrate Media literacy education classes into our nationwide curriculum. Media literacy is crucial to our society because it gives us the keys to understand the media and messages that are being presented to us. With an endless supply of digital information circulating online, it is very beneficial to be media literate in order to filter out misinformation and identify reliable sources that will provide the truth.


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