Why Do We Need Media Literacy Based Curriculums?
In this era of information overload, it is important for children as potential media consumers to know how to declutter the gigantic amounts of information that a student comes across on a daily basis. It is said that an average human being consumes almost 34 gigabytes of data per day and when so much of the information is relayed through different social media outlets, it might understandably distort our perception about a lot of things. Media literacy is all about engaging students to be critical consumers of media. In other words, rather than passively reading through data, media literacy helps students to be active participants in being recipients of information. These are certain specific media related skill sets that would help the students to access media and analyse it in a profound sense. The resultant analysis is vital in stimulating the creative and innovative faculties of future media producers.
Due to the pervasive nature of media even students are negotiating information and perspectives at a micro level. Greta Thunberg, a 15 year old climate change warrior was able to be an agent of change because of her awareness of climatic problems and her sheer conviction to change the world. Children like her epitomise what active consumption and internalization of constructive media looks like.
For this very purpose, media literacy becomes a channel to start a dialogue for solutions and networking to enhance personal and societal development.
Media literacy uses a strong blend of media education and media tools to deliver the skills of critical thinking. It helps students be cognizant of the impact and potency of media production by engaging with it directly. This could be done through encouraging students to explore diverse aspects of media like Television, video games, magazines, news papers, etc.
Media literacy is becoming increasingly important in the present day context because of the widespread adoption of popular culture values in everyday life. Being literate in the field of media helps students to navigate through massive amounts of complex media routed information through critical analysis. This course allows students to acclimatise themselves to the media ecosystem through the lens of evaluative judgement. Students get to understand the fundamental ideas behind popular questions like:
- Who are the target audience of media houses?
- What are the perspectives through which they represent information?
- What is the rationale behind their political stances ?
- How do varied audiences interpret information from media houses?
- What are the responsibilities of a media consumer in today’s day and age?
- What are the responsibilities of media producers at the same time?
- How to determine the validity of the information produced by media houses?
Media literacy should be taught in schools to encourage students to question and appreciate the nature of media. It helps students understand and make associations with interdisciplinary studies by integrating different subjects for the broadening of the knowledge base of students at school.
At the end of the day, since even students are content creators in their own rights, media literacy prods them to be more ethically responsible and reflect on the content they consume. If information is internalized without any reflections then that leads to passive reception of information, rendering the purpose of seeking knowledge, absolutely useless. It is important to engage with data at an intellectual level to form some perspective about everyday situations. Merely knowing about policies is not enough, putting the knowledge in the context of present day political scenarios is what makes information truly valuable. Media is an important outlet of information as that landscape shapes our opinions about contentious matters by giving us their perspective. Media is such a powerful form of influence because it can drive and dictate how people think, that is why it is all the more important that both the consumers and producers be careful of how the use the medium.
In a pluralistic society like India, it is necessary that students acquaint themselves with the principles of media literacy to be aware of real world problems that are outside the bounds of their classrooms. It should sensitize them about the portrayal and representation of various ethnic groups and cultures in popular media.
Written by: Kalyani Nair, TEGS
