By Dr Laila Abdel Aal Alghalban
Last week’s article discusses the critical need for media literacy in an age of unprecedented influence of media tsunami that makes us vulnerable to biased, fake and unhealthy media feed. Casually touching upon some media literacy events in America, Canada as well as those organised by the UNESCO, the article closed with raising this question: how can communities equip young people with essential media literacy to function in a world severely hit by biased, profit makings, aggressive media? Let us give it a try!
What is it like to be a media literate?
To be a media literate, one should generally have some basic skills: to access, analyse, criticise, and synthesise media. The UK’s Communications regulator Ofcom defines media literacy as “the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts.” Decoding media language is a top priority, including questioning everything in order to understand the way the media works, take good care of their personal information and avoid scams or snares, and uncover the way news get constructed and the agendas of media makers. More specifically, one should be versed in deconstructing media, figuring out opinion from fact, and working out the underlying messages or the subtexts of texts. As human communication is largely inferential, getting the right messages from the media input empowers us and save us a lot of time, energy, heartache and headache and, sometimes, life losses.
A multi-party process
Most of media platforms prefer sensational material to truth; this is how they make money. Media giant corporations gingerly invade our brains, changing their chemistry and the way they normally function, gather information on every one of us and compile big data deposits, prioritising benefits over protecting consumers or users from harmful media intake. Although lots of nations try to regulate this media jeopardy, the fact that media corporations are global undermines the possible effects of such ventures. Nurturing a media literacy culture involves many parties: governmental agencies and institutions, international organisations, youth organisations, media makers, legislators, media literacy educators, fostering multidisciplinary research and integrating media literacy in curricula.
Our responsibility as media consumers
Media is a two way street: makers and consumers. According to media analyst and author Brooke Gladstone, consumers are recommend to cultivate a critical instinct and avoid the herd or gang mentality, which makes people blindly follow the crowd wisdom to feel secure and not to look weird. This is a huge fallacy. It is our duty, she also points out, to factcheck media news, be our own media watchdog, cast doubt on the initial news, look for reliable sources, examine the views that are counter to yours. Don’t distrust them altogether.
The ugly side of media
From paedophilia, pornography, credit card theft, computer viruses as threats, bomb-making and blackmail, it is too easy to become a victim of these pressures and crimes if you are not a media literate. The fight for looking perfect or the ideal body image badly influences people’s mental health and could develop into a disease called Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), pushing patients to undergo frequent and repeated plastic surgery procedures, some of which are undergone in cheap, underequipped areas, putting the patients’ lives at risk. Latest surveys show that contrary to the common beliefs that girls and young women are the most vulnerable to the myth of a perfect body image, boys and young men are equally put under the same pressure. They might go too far in this respect, causing eating disorders, dieting and extreme exercising.
A protective move
Children represent almost a third of media consumers. They need to be taught some media literacy to understand that all the airbrushed images they see are not real and can create unrealistic body expectations. In this regard, China banned airbrushed ads, which is a very protective move. The relationship between body image and “media literacy” should be taught in schools and more sports activities offered instead.
Fake news as a weapon
Every moment, we get swayed by a hurricane of fake news, some of them have deadly consequences. A case in point was triggered in India by a WhatsApp message that had gone viral, asking people to look for a group of people claimed to be human traffickers, the result is that those allegedly criminals were killed by the mobs and later on the Indian police said that the victims were innocent people. A similar story in Mexico left two people rumoured to be members of a “child lifting gang” in ablaze in the vicinity of a police station. Rumours of “plastic” rice sold in Africa many years back was another robust example of the power of rumours in causing tremendously negative repercussions. A further case has to do with people who regularly pick their shopping list from review sites and unchecked comments that flood the media. Last but never least, the voluntary work internet users tried for days to identify the perpetrators of the Boston bombings “crowd-sourced investigations” was another glaring case of putting the lives and the safety of innocent people in harm’s way.
Regulations are not enough
As mentioned previously, media regulatory bodies are supposed to lead any defensive strategies that protect people, especially the vulnerable groups and enhance the role of education, family and other social bodies. Awareness of modern media is a collective and individual mission.
Let me finish by the BBC Young Reporter, an initiative launched in partnership with schools, colleges, youth organisations and charities. Out of its social responsibility, the BBC invites young people to write their own reports, teaching them how to create media and the ethical criteria that must be observed to produce reliable, balanced stories. The target is to have well-rounded, active and informed consumers who are not easily fooled by media false glittering.
By Dr Laila Abdel Aal Alghalban
Professor of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
Kafr el-sheikh University
Email: [email protected]
