This week our guest speaker was Andrew McLuhan. He brought forward the work of Marshall McLuhan and discussed the 4 laws to media. Understanding the history behind media and how we have come to media literacy or digital citizenship studies helps to see where we may be headed, as well. The 4 laws to media were as follows:

1. Enhance: enhances some human function.
2. Obsolesce: obsolesces a previous way of achieving that function.
3. Reverse: When pushed to the limits, new media will reverse it’s original characteristic.
4. Retrieve: The new media brings back some features of earlier media.

I think these 4 laws of media are the starting point of a much more complex understanding of media but important to remember when looking at media literacy and what it means to be media literate in today’s world. For instance, when looking deeper at some examples of these 4 laws in a way I could better understand or in a way I could connect better, I found an article that provided some examples when looking at social media:

• Enhance: online connections and non-local friendships; the image of the user of the social media site.
• Obsolesce: face-to-face socialization and real life.
• Retrieve: long distance correspondence; Narcissus and masquerade.
• Reverses: into social isolation; online virtual life and socializing; fake identities and fake news.

We can see that McLuhan’s work continues to be relevant in today’s society with the rapid growth of technology and media. With that rapid growth comes the importance of teaching media literacy and understanding the media we are seeing.

This week’s catalyst content was provided by myself and classmate Kelsey. From both resources provided, we can see the Media Literacy it a broad concept, or an umbrella term, with many pieces to it. From my research, it was apparent that media literacy skills are crucial in today’s world with the ever developing media and technology, spread of misinformation, and our overall lack of critical thinking skills. When looking through resources and various articles, I was trying to find more recent resources. Many I found were from 2020 or earlier, and although the content provided would still be relevant, I felt that media continues to change quickly, and our media literacy skills may be falling behind.

Consistent across most resources found, was the importance and ability to critically think about the media we are consuming. Media literacy educator Renee Hobbs states that there are five inter-related competencies that are now needed to participate in the digital world.

Access refers to technology skills such as keyboard, mouse and interface skills, understanding hyperlinking and digital space and using effective search and find strategies.

Analyze and evaluate refers to the ability to identify the author, purpose and point of view of a message; evaluate credibility and quality; and recognize and resist stereotypes.

Create and Collaborate refers to being able to brainstorm and generate ideas, work collaboratively to create messages using language, image, sound and digital forms like curation and remix, using feedback to edit and revise

Reflect involves examining the impact of media messages and technology tools on our thinking and actions in daily life.

Act refers to engaging in using digital and media in solving problems and at the same time take advantage of global connectivity.

When I reflect on my own media literacy skills – or whether I feel I am a media literate person – I had always felt I was. However, after reading and learning about these various competencies, or even thinking about the questions when consuming media, I unfortunately think I fall into the middle ground. I have always found myself as not a strong critical thinker, and when thinking about media, I am not sure I truly take the time to think about what I am seeing, listening to, reading, etc. As highlighted in my video, there are lots of questions you could ask yourself when consuming media. There are questions geared towards understanding advertisements, news sources, social media content, and the list goes on.

As I know not everyone in the course is a teacher, I am curious about your own reflections:

If you have younger family members or friends, how do you think your media literacy skills can influence them?

 

**Use of ChatGPT: I am terrible at creating a blog title, so I used ChatGPT to help me come up with something! I actually didn’t like the 3 it generated for me and used a mash of them for my title.

 

 

Thank you for engaging in the discussion questions during our zoom (and for your patience with my lack of Zoom knowledge!). Here are the additional questions to reflect on:

Thinking about your media literacy skills when consuming news (our group started discussing this as well so maybe you already did):

Can you describe a time when you encountered information that seemed questionable? What steps did you take to verify its accuracy?

Thinking of your media literate skills from a social media perspective:

How has social media influenced your views on current events? Have you noticed any changes in your critical thinking as a result of your online interactions?