Critically Using Digital Media is a Superpower
Rapid variations in the use of information and communication continues to cause significant amounts of restructuring in every part of our society. The easy access and ubiquitously reliance of multimedia devices has become the normal, and the basic tools to maneuver through this world of constant changing technologies. In an article by Gutierrez (2012), he remarks how the weight of its presence is predominantly associated with the younger generations of users, who tend to approach information in ways that makes media a practice that has become an essential life skill, (para 3). Education systems raise the question of traditional assumptions about the design of learning and the effects of widespread social and cultural needs within media forms, content, practices, and skills. The inquiries of how to read, think, and respond to media to understand the underlying message is a big issue that young people must deal with daily. Schools should also consider how to teach their students how to use this platform to obtain more knowledge critically. But how exactly should adolescents critically use digital media? Through looking at different responses about what digital media is in today’s society, and how it can benefit young people, it is clear that they must look at the representation, production, language, and who the audience is within the media they are reading to form questions, interpretations, and arguments to decode the underlying meaning and understand what they consume online.
As seen the picture above, there is 98 percent of the world that uses the Internet, and one recent article (“Media Benefits,” 2017) claims that it can have many positive influences on children and teenagers, especially if educational purposes and media platforms are considered. It can help develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills, helps form social benefits by communicating with others, along with political and social awareness. This article also suggests that such things as creating “avatars and games can give children the opportunity to develop identity and empathy by letting them ‘try on’ different physical psychological characteristics” (para. 17). However, the process on finding what is “good” for young people to carry with them in life, like learning how to deconstruct what they have read, is one of the most important skills to have to transform into a decoder of hidden agendas or underlying messages in media.
Through reading digital media, students should ask questions as they read along while trying to interpret what they think the texts says, then produce and defend arguments they form from the texts. But it should go further than that, as Buckingham (2007) states, “most discussions of Internet literacy remain at the level of assessing the reliability or validity of online information” and “neglect some of the broader cultural uses of the Internet” (p. 46). He suggests that students must not only learn to locate information, but evaluate and use information critically to transform it into knowledge. This means asking questions about what they are reading, like the sources of that information, the interests of its producers, how it represents the world, and how it relates to the broader social and economic influences. Additionally, that requires taking a step back and asking who wrote it and how they wrote as well. This is the basic backbone or concept to critically using digital media.
Another major idea to help people who spend at least seven and half hours on media a day, as stated by Quijada in the video above (2013), is that we must know that media could be coded, therefore we must ask questions like, “what is the text and sub text of this message?” By asking questions, students can gain a super power; seeing through adds, articles, and even news, which is something they can use every day within school and home. She stresses the importance to connect school with their 21st century daily lives, which Warner would agree with. Warner (2017) states, “Critical literacy practice for the 21st century should thus offer a way to teach young people to recognize this advertising as part of critical literary (p. 153). They both claim that young people are bombarded with ads, commercials, and students must deconstruct the media to understand exactly what is going on in order to function in the world full of news, and media that may not share all the information, or the wrong information. To prepare individuals for the life of a digital and diverse world, education must, as Gutierrez (2012) argues, “transcend the narrow focus on test scores and grades to embrace students’ existing knowledge, skills, and practices, learned outside schools” (para. 8). This will also support and encourage critically using media within their daily lives.
References
Buckingham, D. (2007). Digital media literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the internet. Research in Comparative and International Education, 2, 43–55.
Gutierrez, A., & Tyner, K. (2012). Media education, media literacy and digital competence, 19(38), 31+. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com.libproxy.clemson.edu/apps/doc/A305370207/AONE?u=clemsonu_main&sid=AONE&xid=2508004f
Media benefits for children and teenagers. (2017, July 12). Retrieved October 21, 2018, from https://raisingchildren.net.au/pre-teens/entertainment-technology/media/media-benefits
[Photograph]. (2018). In Health News. Retrieved October 20, 2018, from http://www.health-articles.info/how-to-improve-your-mental-health-with-technology/
TEDx Talks. (2013, February 19). Creating critical thinkers through media literacy: Andera Quijada at TEDxABQED [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAApvHZ6XE
Warner, J. (2017). Adolescents’ new literacies with and through mobile phones. New York: Peter Lang.
