Media Literacy
A friend sent me this video by Willow Reads Books talking about media literacy. This is a big topic right now because…I don’t know why. I’m buried in research on hillbilly horror as it pertains to folklore and I’m only catching bits of the conversation. However, this is something I was recently talking to another friend about. I am always screaming about how people can’t read (there are many rants about this here on my site), and the last round of that came from something another student, also taking the same seminar on Sothern gothic literature, said in class in response to a scene in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. I have ranted to everyone about this incident. What bothers me the most is this person is a high school teacher getting their MA.
I should start by defining media literacy. It is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media.
This is not my slide, I pulled it from Slide to Doc. It was created by Frank Baker from the Media Literacy Clearinghouse.
This involved all media: books, newspapers, magazines, TV, podcasts, YouTube and other social media, news reports, etc. It involves fiction and non-fiction. It not just about understanding what you read or consume but the ability to think, talk, and write critically about it.
Over the last two years the majority of my professors have echoed is more and more students are entering college not knowing how to write a paper or engage with a book. A lot of this has to do with the pandemic and Zoom classes. It really did change education and learning. Many teachers were of the “let’s just get through this” mindset and did the bare minimum for a variety of reasons. It was hell for me as a university student in undergrad at the time, I can’t imagine what it was like for high school and elementary school students. All I know is that time on Zoom did a number on all of us.
Another area of contention is the consumption of social media, and how everything is in chunks of information. There have been studies that show this is contributing to shorter and shorter attention spans. Whether or not it is a contributor to ADD is up for debate. Some studies say it is, while others will argue more cases are just being diagnosed because of better healthcare and screening and more people talking about because the stigma of mental health is decreasing. It could be some combination of this. The affects of social media on the brain, on the emotional and mental well being of individuals, is a new area of study.
One of the things that has come out of all of this is the rise in conspiracy theories (I’m looking at you QAnon and MAGA). I did an entire research project on this and the short explanation for the rise in conspiracy theories (or in the case of QAnon/MAGA, conspiracy without theory) lack of critical thinking skills, shoddy research, and the lack of media literacy.
Another problem is people who consider themselves readers don’t understand what they are reading. Willow talks about this, as does Jack Edwards in his video about Booktok ruining reading, although he never mentions media literacy. It is still what he is talking about.
Sometime back I wrote some book club questions for the book Glitterati, and I sometimes see book club questions in the back of books now. I know by publishers providing these questions it is a starting point for book clubs to talk about books, but they aren’t designed to talk about books critically, at least not in the same way English majors are taught to engage with something.
This brings me back to Sing, Unburied Sing. There is a traffic stop scene where the characters are pulled over because their car was swerving.
The characters:
Leonie – black woman
Michael – white guy and the boyfriend of Leonie
JoJo – 13 year old boy and son of the two
Kayla – 3 year old daughter of the two
Misty – the white friend
This traffic stop goes all kinds of sideways. Michael, Leonie, and JoJo are put in cuffs. Leonie because she was driving. Michael because he was just released from prison. JoJo just because. Misty, the pretty blonde white girl, is not and Kayla is ordered by the cop to take her. She was specifically picked by the cop. Not JoJo who was originally holding Kayla and who Kayla is screaming for. The cop also pulls a gun on JoJo because he didn’t know that the object in JoJo’s pocket was a rock from a medicine bag his grandfather gave him. The cop even says, after searching him, “Kid had a stupid rock in is pocket.” So the cop does recognized that JoJo is still a kid.
The student I mentioned before proceeded to explain how the police officer did nothing wrong because “procedure is never wrong.” They even continued about how the cop did not know why these people were in a car together and he was not targeting anyone.
This scene is written to be racially charged. It was there for the reader to engage with and critique and question how police treat black males. Said student failed to see this as the intent of the author. As for the cop not knowing who these people were, I find it difficult that the cop couldn’t read the room, as it were, and make the conclusion that the mixed race kids belonged to Michael and/or Leonie.
What strikes me is that even someone who is charged with teaching high school English lacks a degree of critical thinking and/or media literacy.
I have no idea how to fix this problem. However, it is something we all need to be aware of. It is something we all need to work on, both on our own and by helping others. I’m considering doing more with this, but I am not sure what. I don’t know how to approach this myself to help others. If anyone has any ideas, I’m listening.
