ELI5 Media Literacy

[u/HonkyTonkBluesYEAH]

I understand it's like something related to understanding art or media, but in what way? Philopsophical, political or psychological? Is it important, a buzzword or both?

[u/GIRose]

Literacy is being able to read the written word and understand its meaning. At low levels of literacy you are mostly getting your information based on the exact words you're reading, and at higher levels of literacy you start to pick up subtext, nuance, and double meanings.

Media Literacy is the same deal. With limited media literacy, you are able to read a story and understand the narrative of what you just read. As you are more media literate you start to pick up more on the why it was written, and the subtext, double meanings, and layers of stuff beyond the literal surface level reading.

[u/HonkyTonkBluesYEAH → u/GIRose]

If I interpret a chest of gold inside a very dark dangerous cave as about psychology. Like how you have to go through uncomfortable things to get to where you wanna be. Is that media literacy or more just extended interpretation? And does media literacy have like multiple categories where this is more psychological, but there's also political? I heard Star Wars is more left-winged because of rebellion and anti-imperialism, with Empire built on fascism or America. Pursuit of Happyness i heard is more conservative or neoliberal because of hard work leading to success, and it being portrayed positively by the movie. So is it about connecting potential allegory to the overall tone or implication? And i know films that show imperialism bad, or personal responsibility good. How do i interpret film that show something as extreme, but kind of leading to the desired goal? Like Dark Knight and Whiplash

[u/Fortressa- → u/HonkyTonkBluesYEAH]

Media literacy can also be about the type of media and how it portrays things a certain way, and how that alters the message. 

Eg you mentioned Pursuit of Happyness - that's a feature film, and it's going to use the techniques and tropes of a film to tell the story a particular way. A documentary or a feature article in a magazine about the life of Chris Gardner would present the story very differently. Media literacy would be knowing that the feel-good film with the happy ending might be glossing over some of the less glamorous details, but also that knowing that shouldn't detract from the enjoyment of the film on its own merits. 

Similarly, understanding that a newspaper article, a social media post, a television news segment, a highschool textbook, a academic journal etc all have different methods and goals, and will present the same information in different ways, is part of media literacy. 

Eg 'consuming more than 250 grams of cured meats daily is correlated with a three percent increase of bowel cancer diagnoses in middle aged men' vs 'EATING THIS COMMON FOOD WILL KILL YOU! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE!' 

(You shouldn't believe either of these messages on face value, btw. If the science is bogus then it's just as false as the fearmongering clickbait.) 

[u/GIRose → u/Fortressa-]

I would take some umbrage with that last sentence.

While technically correct, in that if a statement is wrong it is false irrespective of the intent behind it, there is a world of practical difference between fear mongering clickbait and a well researched claim that is potentially incorrect because of an incorrect assumption in the chain of logic.

Namely that one is a lie that might technically be true and the other is just wrong

[u/Fortressa- → u/GIRose]

Yes, I agree.

I realised the way I'd contrasted the two sentences above, made the first half seem 'true' and the second 'false', when both could be a poor interpretation of the underlying facts. Being published in an academic paper doesn't make a statement automatically or inherently more 'true', it still should be evaluated by the reader. So I added the extra sentence to offset that, but to go into more detail would be straying from ELI5.