Visual Literacy And Social Justice Education

Kellner and Share, Peters, and Storey’s texts all exhibit themes of media and power in modern day society and how media influences culture. Kellner and Share’s “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education” emphasizes the role of critical media in communication and technology; whereas, Peters’ “The Facebook Purge” focuses on the network societies found on social media platforms. Storey’s second chapter in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture hones in on media’s corruption on people and how social classes become established. All three texts additionally have a focus on the importance of power in the media and its effects on an audience.

Bailey, D. (2005). Mind over media: An APA-supported summit plugged teens into how the media persuades. Monitor, 36(2). Retrieved from: http://apa.org/monitor/feb05/mind.aspx

Mass media is not only built on entertainment value alone, but it also has political importance. By the time the average high school student has graduated, they have spent more time in front of the television than in a classroom, and in that classroom time, often the information that

The ability to use multi-media communication technologies will increase in importance the more those technologies are deployed in education. The more technology proliferates in education, the more students will need skills to critically analyze such texts for validity and applicability. If those students will be the workforce of the next generation, the workers we manage will need critical multi-media literacy skills in order to separate authoritative text from say advertising or politically biased messaging in the workforce and daily life.

Kids are growing up on the internet in this new age world. That's why media Literacy is an important topic to teach high school and middle school students. It helps them stay well aware of the world around them. All in all keeping them accurately up to date with truthful information.Making sure they don’t post misleading things or share bad information that could cause disruption. Media literacy helps them see every angle and not stay one sided. Furthermore insuring their safety on the internet.

The mass media plays a large role in modern society. Indeed, many have argued that people spend more time in "mass-mediated" interaction than in actual human interaction. The mass media, then, would seemingly be an excellent position to initiate social change, positively affect social problems, and help combat social ills that are considered normal patterns of behavior. Yet, the mass media has largely failed in addressing and helping to solve social problems. As seen through its presentation of the three major variables of race, class, and gender, the mass media has actually served to contribute to the social problems it covers, reinforcing them, and creating an inter-related

It would be important to teach middle and high school students media literacy because media is now a bigger aspect in our lives. Anybody that receives news either gets it from television, the radio, or any social media app. Teens do not read the newspaper to get information but instead use social media.

| Media literacy can help with responsible media consumption as people are aware of what is going on in the media. They won‘t get sucked up into the dependency of the media. They know when to disconnect themselves from the source of the media. When you can disconnect yourself you know that there are disadvantages to the media convergence and you have to draw a line. People who use media literacy responsibly know the difference between what they are hearing, seeing, or witnessing. There are however differences that don’t make people responsible because they don’t know how separate what may be true or not true during the watching and listening of a story. People who, can understand media literacy and become more responsible will not get dependent upon modern media.

In the technological visual age, students are exposed to visual stimuli more now than in any time in history. According to Topiel (2015), “students move away from strict print reading, and journey into a world of literacy that is predominantly visual, sensory and technologically loaded in other ways, visual literacy instruction is becoming paramount for [learners]” (para. 2). Visual literacy is the ability to “read” images portrayed through a visual medium. Much of the literature agrees that reading the images equates to understanding the messages communicated through the visual mediums within an image and selectively convey information from visual mediums into the teaching or presentation material (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan, 2006; Schaffhauser, 2012; Topiel, 2015). Knowledge of visual literacy impacts learning by providing learners opportunities for better recall, understanding, and connections to the material presented because the message within the images which, when purposefully chosen will add to the meaning (American Library Association, 2011; Murphy, 2016). Therefore, understanding the reasons and how to apply visual literacy in educational formats to convey the intended message within the curriculum is imperative to the curriculum developer and educator.

Some of the fiercest, most passionate, and most widespread debates in America involve education, and rightly so. Education lays the foundation of knowledge and skills for the kind of person one will become, what actions one will take, and overall what kind of society these people will create. Given this, it's of the utmost importance to ensure that our education system is giving these children a basic knowledge that will help them get through life. But society is changing. Media is everywhere in our lives and information is abundant. For Education to fulfil its purpose it will have to change as well to accommodate for the ever changing times. Therefore I believe that our education system’s neglect of media literacy is condemning its students to ignorance. // Media literacy as defined by the National Association for Media Literacy Education is, ”the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.” Media literacy also means being critical thinkers when it comes to media.

When an individual takes a glance at the current status of the media world, there is generally a quick understanding to the fact that there is a wide range of theories under which mass communication can be examined. As learned, sometimes these theories complement each other...other times, they oppose each other. In the textbook, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory, there are five general theories listed that are effective for the research of mass communication theory and are “described as: social scientific, cultural, normative, operative and everyday theory,” (McQuail 13). While these are the specific theories that can be viewed, there are underlying perspectives that are useful for the clarification of an individual's personal stance to mass communication theory. By looking more closely at my personal stance in regard to mass communication theory, one should be able to see that I understand social-materialism to be the current standing of media, however, social-culturalism is a better alternative.

Often as adults, we dismiss the culture that children see as valuable in opposition to what is perceived as superior, to adults. Adults often see children’s culture as dumbed down or innocent. Dismissing children’s pop culture as just entertainment or as fluff, misses the overt and covert messages embedded in the medium and the value these items can possess for literacy.

The 21st Century has seen a huge boom in the amount of media being created and consumed. It seems as though the world revolves around media content, with people having more ways of consuming media than ever before, and this consuming more media than ever before. The average American spends over half of their day consuming some sort of media. It is because of this that it is more important than ever for people to be able to read, interpret, critically assess, and productively use media texts; a practice called media literacy. People who are media-literate should be able to display seven key characteristics that are necessary for true media literacy.

At the core of media literacy are the notions that all media messages and products are constructed using creative production techniques, that messages can be interpreted differently by different people, that media have embedded values and points of view, and that messages are generally created to gain profit and/or power (Thoman & Jolls,2004). Furthermore, for the past two decades, scholars have generally embraced the idea that media literate individuals should be able to access, analyze, evaluate and create media content (Aufderheide & Firestone, 1993).

Much like understanding different perspectives on youths participating in politics, media literacy is a tool that many can use to establish, first, what is accurate and what is false information, and second, their own perspective on the given information. There are four core media literacy competencies as described by Mihailidis and Thevenin in “Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy”: participatory, collaborative, expressive, and critical competency. These compentencies are as its names suggest; participatory competency is being able participate, collaborative competency is being able to collaborate, and so on. Of the four core competencies, it seems that critical competency is most overlooked. In a generation of passionate voices, the better option seems to be being heard and being louder when voicing an opinion than assessing the information that has already been made available.