Media Literacy involves a complex set of skills. In Ontario, The Association for Media Literacy developed Eight Key Concepts which, together support our understanding of media literacy. We’ll get to them all by the time this course is through, but in this unit, we're going to start with just two.
The first Key Concept is: Media construct reality.
Much of what we understand about ourselves and our world is understood through media –through language, through images and video. We experience reality with all our senses – touch, taste, feel, smell and sound.
Every media experience is a little bit less than the real experience because we are not using all of our senses. The media experience might be realistic, but it’s not real.
Now, the second key concept in Unit 1 is: Media construct versions of reality. Every medium and every media creator have biases that influence the media experience. And every media experience then is not only not fully real - but is only a version of reality.
We hope that you can understand that each key concept is fully integrated with every other key concept. The first two key concepts explore one of the most important ideas in media literacy: representation.
Representations do not present us with reality but rather they present us with the versions of reality so the idea of representation combines both of the key concepts.
Now you're ready. You have some ideas and we're going to ask you to work with those ideas. You will complete two challenges in this unit. First, you are going to explore how media construct reality, by completing the challenge of documenting an everyday experience. As your second challenge, you're going to take a look at the ever-popular selfie—your selfie—and explore how we create versions of reality when we represent ourselves.
Enjoy!
Source: Association of Media Literacy “Eight Key Concepts of Media Literacy “https://aml.ca/resources/eight-key-concepts-media-literacy
Association for Media Literacy The AML is a not-for-profit, charitable association of teachers, librarians, consultants, parents, cultural workers, and media professionals concerned with helping people develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of media, their techniques, and their impact.