Download Media literacy – being able to control one`s autonomy?

Media literacy – being able to
control one’s autonomy?
Halliki Harro-Loit
Institute of Journalism and Communication
University of Tartu
Media literacy - media
education
• … can be delivered
-via formal education (school based)
- via informal education (family
communication, interaction with media
and friends;hobbies etc.)
Information literacy? (since
1970s, higher education)
• …the term used to describe a number of initiatives
that seek to meet the broad demands of the
information society ( Johnston and Webber 2003)
• … educational response that focuses on information
use as distinct from use of information
technology
• IL is the adoptation of appropriate information
behaviour to obtain, through whatever channel or
medium, information well fitted to information
needs, together with critical awareness of the
importance of wise and ethical use of inf. In society
(( Johnston and Webber 2003)
Media literacy
• Media literacy is a practical solution for
regulating a rapidly diversifying media and
communications environment.
• … necessitates communicative
competences: e.g active listening,
functional reading, use of language
Ability to use technology
Create and communicate information in variety of forms,
from print to video
Self-reflection concenrning attitudes and values
Critical thinking
Formal education
• Curriculum: special subject (elective)
• -cross-curricular themes / Estonian
national curriculum 2002)
• Main function of the national curriculum: to
create „gateways‟ or „key competences‟ for
further development
• Need for dynamic pedagogy that identifies
learners’ needs and experience?
Media and communication a
cross-curricular theme
• -cross-curricular objectives need
special events or blocks of activity
• cross-curricularity in a subject-based
curriculum depends on the individual
competence and beliefs of the
subject teacher who is not a media
specialist.
Knowledge structures in
curricula
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Aesthetical education
Arts
Communication education
Language education
Civic education
Technological education
Some problems in National
curricula:
• Is this feasible?
• children by the age of 9 years old should be
able to recognize and create are invitation,
congratulation, announcement, story, retelling,
and description.
• Estonian national curriculum provides the
possibility to educate a critical information
seeker, an interpreter, a creator but the
competences are not clearly divided into skills,
knowledge and attitudes; no clear indicators
Implementation of media literacy
into the national education policy
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•
•
•
…is multi-dimentional process:
development of national curriculum
teacher education
various projects that support adulteducation
• Media itself
What parents can do?
• Make restricions on a child‟s access to certain
channels or content?
• Active mediation via critical discussion of
content and possible problems with a child (+
value clarification) ?
• Reflect critically the general style of
communication patterns that exist within the
family (Srole models)?
• Intentionally motivate or train certain
communicative competencies
Case: communication
competencies
• LISTENING!
• Text analysis – e.g. one can not write a
news text if he does not understand the
“news value”, the structure elements of
the news story;
• Ability to creat texts for different
mediums
Case: value-conflicts concerning
public communication – how to learn?
• Privacy: possibility to decide by myself who,
when and and to what extent gets access to
my data, my home etc. – public interest;
security + delegation of responsibility
• Universal values: human dignity; no harm to
the innocent – truth?
• The meaning of the freedom of speech and
RESPONSIBILITY (for hate speech,
defamation, misuse of someone‟s data etc.)
Case: interpretation of information and
hybrid discourses
• e.g. the border between (independent)
journalistic information and marketing
communication is diminishing: e.g.
advertorial embedded in the configuration of
a news report
• Marketing communicators not only send PR
texts but create articles, news, magazines
and TV programs
• How the hybrid discourses are interpreted
and decoded by the reader ?
Information society brought
the need for communication
education to the surface: we
can not evade the need any
more
Thank you!