Situating the Interdisciplinary Concepts

Situating the Interdisciplinary Concepts

Literacy, meaning alphabetic literacy, is no longer the keynote of Western culture.

That is to say that capital-L Literacy is obsolete, having been done in when we killed

the reading public, the ground of literacy. As with the Hydra (once her head was lopped

off, new heads sprang up in its place), so with Literacy: now we see dozens, nay entire

litters of (small-‘l’) little literacies springing up spontaneously here and there with

evident abandon. (McLuhan, 2009: 9).

It seems that everywhere we look in the modern Western world we see

using, and creating media content for specific outcomes (Aufderheide, 1993), it

primarily attends to the content of the messages—both intended and unintended—

especially concerning how human subjects are represented (Jolls & Wilson, 2014).

This chapter situates media literacy within the broader fields of communications

and education. I investigate current ways of defining media literacy and call for an

expansion of media literacy in order to include the medium and the context within

which the messages are enacted. While more than a cursory overview of media

literacy, this chapter will not exhaustively explore the field in its entirety. Rather, I give

an overview of some of the current and historic aspects of media literacy and point out

important areas that it often does not include. This provides a setting to bring in a

Lundby, 2014); media ecology (Anton, 2006, 2016; Logan, 2011; McLuhan, 1994;

Postman, 1974, 2000; Strate, 2017; Van Den Eede, 2012, 2016); and even the study

of the biography of things (Kopytoff, 1988; Lesage, 2013).

The next step after including the medium is to further expand media literacy to

include the context within which we engage with media. I use the example of

domestication theory in order to do so. By including the environment, the complexity

of our media relations become more apparent, making the case for expanding our

approach to media literacy to include, as Shaun Moores (2016) says, a non-media-

centric media literacy. My goal is to describe the current field of media literacy, situating

it at the intersection of communications and education. I make the case that expanding

delving into the literacy aspect, I explain some of the background and different

approaches in the field of communications. For much of the second half of the

twentieth century, the dominant way of understanding communication was through the

transmission model, where ‘communication is a process of sending and receiving

messages or transferring information from one mind to another’ (Craig, 1999: 125).

Claude Shannon (1948) and Shannon and Warren Weaver (1964) developed a

mathematical model in order to understand communication, reducing a complex

process down into a simple and easily graspable model, which ‘is widely accepted as

one of the main seeds out of which Communication Studies has grown. It is a clear

example of the process school, seeing communication as the transmission of

destination where the message arrives. In the process, there is also noise, which

interferes with the clarity of the message. A common example of this model is a

telephone call. The person initiating the call is the information source; their phone

encodes the message; the telephone line or wireless network is the conduit; the

person’s phone receiving the call is the receiver that decodes the message; and the

destination is the person who hears the message. The noise is any interference: static

on the line or network, noises in the background, etc.

While the transmission model is still frequently used in information and computer

sciences, it has drawn criticism from social sciences (Carey, 2008; Deetz, 1994;

Pearce, 1989) as well as from media ecology for being too reductive and for

transmission model being ‘supplemented, if not entirely supplanted, by a model that

conceptualizes communication as a constitutive process that produces and

reproduces shared meaning’ (125). In other words, there is more to communication

theory than a one-way transmission of a message from one source to another. There

is shared meaning-making occurring. Craig advocates for the creation of a meta-model

transmission view’ (xviii), both of which are needed for a modern society to exist.

Antonio López (2014: 47–48) builds upon Carey’s view (with somewhat more criticism)

and cautions against the transmission model:

In terms of media literacy, using mechanistic models of cognition and

communication will reinforce the paradigm of industrialism, remaining stuck in a

system of ‘bad ideas’; the essential bad idea being the assumption that communication

is a matter of autonomous beings transporting ideas between each other as

messages, and that such communication is disembodied from the thinking system that

comprises our cultural patterns and embeddedness within living systems.

López continues by describing an ecological intelligence where a person is ‘not

simply an autonomous self but is part of an interconnected thinking system that not

only includes socially constructed knowledge but knowledge that is co-produced with

the living environment’ (48). This moves from an approach where people construct

their own knowledge of the world to an approach that understands the co-constitution

that occurs during communication. Marshall McLuhan (as cited in Eric McLuhan, 2008)

calls Shannon and Weaver’s communication model a theory of transportation, not

merely one of transporting messages from point to point. Shannon and Weaver laid

the foundation of all Western ‘theories of communication’ with their model. […] But this

only is a transportation theory, not a theory of communication. They are concerned

merely with getting a bundle of goodies from one place to another, while keeping

dreaded Noise to a minimum.

constitutes (transforms) the people involved in the communication.

Media Literacy Overview

The term ‘literacy’ in media literacy reflects the underlying echo of reading or print

literacy. However, media literacy focuses on a person’s competence and knowledge

of media. And, with the swift speed of change in current media trends, it is becoming

more and more difficult to keep abreast of the many new developments. As Lev

Manovich (2013) points out, the world ‘is now defined not by heavy industrial machines

that change infrequently, but by software that is always in flux’ (1–2). The need for

literacy are discussed, concluding with an overview of the approaches currently found

in media literacy.

Education, Literacy, and Agency

One of media literacy’s core aspects is education (e.g., Alvermann et al., 2018;

Hobbs & Jensen, 2009; Kellner & Share, 2019; Livingstone & Van der Graaf, 2008;

Potter, 2018; and the journal Teaching Media Quarterly). This focus on education

them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves’

(n.p.). Media literacy’s focus on education is key for developing awareness and thus

agency. Since this educational component is not as heavily stressed in the other fields

of inquiry that I analyze (specifically post phenomenology and philosophical

The term literacy in education has its own socio-cultural baggage and should not

be thought of as a neutral term. Carmen Luke (1989) points out that the basis of public

schooling standardized ‘what and how all children should be taught; it would provide

all children with basic literacy skills and simultaneously facilitate the mass transmission

of centrally selected and controlled knowledge’ (5). Sonia Livingstone (2004)

summarizes Luke’s (1989) points by saying, literacy ‘masks a complex history of

of media, Jay Lemke (2006) suggests, ‘We need a broader definition of literacy itself,

one that includes all literate practices, regardless of medium’ (3). At the start of the

chapter, I referred to a quote by Eric McLuhan (2009) which points out that there are

many variations of literacy. Two variations that are close to (and can be considered

part of) media literacy are digital literacy (Buckingham, 2006; Gilster, 1997; Van Dijk &

Van Deursen, 2014), and social media literacy (Ahn, 2013; Burnett & Merchant, 2011;

Livingstone, 2014; Vanwynsberghe, 2014). Livingstone (2004: 5) states,

[P]eople now engage with a media environment which integrates print,

audiovisual, telephony, and computer media. Hence, we need a conceptual framework

that spans these media. Literacy seems to do the work required here: It is pan-media

in that it covers the interpretation of all complex, mediated symbolic texts broadcast or

published on electronic communications networks; at the same time.

youth (and their parents) and the implications this has for media literacy. Jialei Jiang

and Matthew Vetter (2020) make the case for becoming more literate concerning the

effects of algorithms, specifically analyzing algorithmic writing bots on Wikipedia.

These postdigital challenges point to future directions that are emerging in media

Neil Andersen and Carol Arcus write, ‘Agency is knowledge in action. In media literacy,

agency is the exercising of awareness through critical thinking skills to effect change

personally, locally and/or globally’ (3). While agency of technology is discussed in more

(2012) say, ‘Technologies affect our actions not just by altering the course of action

(like billiard balls act upon each other) but by mediating our reasons or motives to act

in a particular way’ (160). In support of media users having agency, Douglas Kellner

and Jeff Share (2007) focus on audience theory to point out ‘the moment of reception

[is] a contested terrain of cultural struggle where critical thinking skills offer potential

for the audience to negotiate different readings and openly struggle with dominant

McLuhan’s aphorism—the user is the content—means that ‘each reader or viewer

brings his or her own experience and understanding to a medium and transforms the

content according to his or her own need and abilities’ (76). Logan further explains,

‘information does not have an intrinsic meaning independent of the user’ (77). Media

literacy plays a key role in helping educate people with regards to their media-rich

lives, facilitating their awareness and thus increasing their own agency.

Defining Media Literacy

studies. Masterman, from the United Kingdom, and Barry Duncan (2010), from

Canada are often considered the founders of media literacy (Jolls & Wilson, 2014).

According to Masterman (1989), ‘The central unifying concept of Media Education is

that of representation. The media mediate. They do not reflect but re-present the world.

media literacy. As the U.S.-based National Association for Media Literacy (NAMLE)

states, ‘Media literacy is the ability to encode and decode the symbols transmitted via

media and the ability to synthesize, analyze and produce mediated messages’

documentary. We were studying representations of these things. We were studying

the ways in which these subjects were being represented and symbolized and

packaged by the medium.

While Masterman (1989) is making the case against a simple contentcentered

approach, the conceptual framework he advocates for is still directed at reading and

analyzing (decoding) media content and does not, for example, include the influence

of the specific technological medium. Another definition that comes from the Center

for Media Literacy (CML) (2019) in the U.S., builds upon Masterman’s (1980, 1989)

concepts and contributes a more extended definition of media literacy, stating that it

provides,

[A] framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with

messages in a variety of forms—from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy

used by many organizations involved with media literacy— from government agencies

to educational organizations. Arguably, more important than defining media literacy is

how organizations have put into practice the development and implementation of

competencies, core concepts, and questions.

Competencies, Concepts, and Questions

literacy from being defined to being implemented, focusing on the abilities of a media

literate person. Renee Hobbs1 (2010: 19) describes five essential competencies of

digital and media literacy as:

1. Access: Finding and using media and technology tools skillfully and sharing

appropriate and relevant information with others.

2. Analyze & Evaluate: Comprehending messages and using critical thinking to

analyze message quality, veracity, credibility, and point of view, while considering

potential effects or consequences of messages.

3. Create: Composing or generating content using creativity and confidence in

self-expression, with awareness of purpose, audience, and composition techniques

4. Reflect: Applying social responsibility and ethical principles to one’s own

identity and lived experience, communication behavior and conduct.

5. Act: Working individually and collaboratively to share knowledge and solve

problems in the family, the workplace and the community, and participating as a

member of a community at local, regional, national and international levels.

Similarly, Ben Bachmair and Cary Bazalgette (2007: 84) describe the claim from

• Use media technologies effectively to access, store, retrieve and share content

• Use media creatively to express and communicate ideas,

information and opinions;

• Identify, and avoid or challenge, media content and services that may be

unsolicited, offensive or harmful;

• Make effective use of media in the exercise of their democratic rights and civic

responsibilities.

These core competencies are additionally reflected in the CML’s handout, which

is an effective example of bringing the concepts for media literacy into one useful

document. In addition to the five core concepts, CML also has created questions for

students to ask themselves since the core concepts can be somewhat theoretical. The