The term “media literacy” gets thrown around everywhere on the internet, whether that’s a video discussing a book, pointing out specific lyrics in a song, or arguing over what a character really meant in a TV show.
At WHS, language arts classes spend a lot of time analyzing media, annotating a controversial assignment, with some loving it while others grumble through it. From freshman to senior year, a highlighter can be found searching for information that means more.
Kate Coreson, resident librarian, uses correlation to understand what works mean. She explains media literacy as “taking the time while you’re reading to draw those connections to reality or draw the connections to other books you’ve read about dystopian societies.”
To unearth the true meaning of an author’s creation, you need to find something out of nothing.
Junior Taylor Nichols finds, “I think that it’s [media literacy] being lost because people are lacking the skills to look into something and understand more than just what is being told to them.”
In fictional media, a “show-not-tell” rule is in place, in which storylines are meant to progress through emotion, dialogue, and subtext, rather than spoonfeeding the meaning into a viewer’s gullet.
Nichols worries that this “rule of storytelling doesn’t work when the whole population isn’t able to process something that’s not said directly.”
Media literacy doesn’t just have to apply to fiction; in a generation of AI, slander, and anonymity online, fake and biased news can be found in every corner. Coreson emphasizes “learning to know what’s real and what’s not and how to cross-reference and cross-research when you’re reading [news].”
Reading news headlines has become a sort of “Where’s Waldo” experience, searching for the one story that can actually tell you what’s going on in the world.
In a world of sensationalism, viewers need to increase their level of understanding, not regress. Media literacy isn’t a talent, it’s not even particularly a skill; it’s just an ability to put forth effort and connect.