3 Situating Media Literacy in the Changing Media Environment Critical Insights from European Research on Audiences 1 (original) (raw)

2014, Audience Transformations. Shifting Audience Positions in Late Modernity

Media literacy matters. We begin by acknowledging the longer traditions and purposes of media literacy plus the recent rise of media literacy on academic, educational and media policy agendas, given advent of digital/convergent media landscape. We note the persistent struggles over terminology and evaluation, linked to continued challenges of implementation and delivery. Thus we turn to critical, theoretical and empirical research for insights on future directions. Media literacy and media audiences. We frame media literacy within audience, which foregrounds the long history of media persuasion research and the shorter history of receptive/critical/resistant/creative audiences is promising for new directions in media literacy research. It is important, we propose, to conceive of media literacy as not only an individual skill but also as a cultural capacity (c.f. locating il/literacy, asking the critical question of to whom the lack of media literacy matters). Situating media literacy in the changing media ecology. The chapter then asks, is media literacy the same across all media? There are advantages to conceiving of generalisable, platform-neutral skills focused on content, this also acknowledging historical continuities (from print through audiovisual to digital networks), resulting in a practical, pan-media definition capable of redeveloping itself along with changes in media. But this prioritises questions of skill or competence, neglecting the textuality and technology that mediate communication – for critical scholarship and policy, literacy does not simply demand knowledge and ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages through a medium but rather demands “applying this knowledge for specific purposes in specific contexts of use” (Scribner & Cole, 1981, p.236). Technological complexity and the media literacy burden. This section seeks to demystify the technological complexity of digital media as the cause itself for the need of media literacy. Why is so different for the audience, making it somehow risky to be online? How does literacy depend on conventions of interface and database as well the cultural transcoding that define digital media? Debunking myths of media literacy. Last, the chapter will elaborate selected key myths and critique them based on recent empirical research in order to draw out main points from the foregoing and show how recent European research is useful; it can then summarise debunked myths as conclusions for research and policy making, and end with suggestions for the research and policy agendas.