Media litteracy

MEDIA LITERATE

MEDIA LITERATE recognizes the rhetorical arguments and techniques being used to persuade an audience to accept a specific political position, buy a specific product, or watch a specific program. And it's the instinct to question what lies behind media productions - the motives, the money, the values and the ownership - and to be aware of how these factors influence content.

COMPREHENSION

Exercise 1

What kind of text is this? What is its function? What is its message? Who is the addresser? Who is the addressee? What is the context? Which are the contact and the code used by the author?

Exercise 2

Read the article again and insert the headings listed below in the correct spaces before each paragraph.

a. All media are construction

b. Audiences negotiate meaning in the media

c. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form

d. Form and content are closely related in the media

e. Media contain ideological and value messages

f. Media have commercial implications

g. Media have social and political implications

h.

The media construct reality

Exercise 3

Decide whether the following statements are True or False according to the article.

1. Media literacy is the means by which we can take apart the messages we read, see, and hear, in order to understand them more fully.
2. Our sense of reality is formed entirely by the media.
3. The content of media messages is never influenced by commercial concerns.
4. Most media messages contain ideological content.
5. Politics is never influenced by the media.
6. Poetry and prose are more enjoyable than other media forms.

VOCABULARY

Exercise 4

How many times is the word media repeated? ……

List all the words linked to the media (synonyms, derivatives, hyponyms, antonyms)…

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…. and all

1. Identity chain: a collection of words that refer to the same thing.
2. Similarity chain: words or phrases referring to things that are similar.
3. Lexical reiteration: takes place through:
• Exact repetition of words or patterns of words.
• Repetition of words from the same semantic field: war, army, shooting...
• Synonymy (words with similar meaning): values/ideological messages.
• Antonymy (words with opposite meaning): explicitly/implicitly.

big/small - superordinates and hyponyms: country/Italy, animal/reptile/snake...

GRAMMATICAL - ellipsis: instead of repeating words, verbs or entire clauses, we often omit them. Ex: - What time are you going? - (I'm going) At 8 o'clock. We often avoid repeating a subject: I went to town and (I) spent the day shopping.

substitution: instead of repeating words, verbs or clauses, we often use one, do, so, same. Ex: - I offered him a seat. He said he didn't want one. Did Mary take that letter? She might have done. Do you need a lift? If so, wait for me. She chose the roast duck; I chose the same.

reference words: they are another means of giving a text cohesion and of avoiding repetition. They are implicit coding devices within a text, that is, they are words, usually personal pronouns or demonstratives, but also articles which refer to other words (usually nouns, but also entire clauses) that are placed before or after them in the text. We divide reference words into...

There are three types of references:

1. Anaphoric: when a word refers back to something already identified in the text. This is the most common type. For example, "Mr. Rossi is Italian, he is not Spanish." In this sentence, "he" is an anaphoric reference, referring backwards to Mr. Rossi.
2. Cataphoric: when a word refers forward to something which will be identified further on in the text. For example, "What I'm going to do first is introduce the other speakers." In this sentence, "What" is a cataphoric reference, referring forward to "introduce..." This is often found in news stories to engage and hold the reader's attention.
3. Exophoric: when a word directs the reader outside the text, implying shared knowledge of a context. Exophoric references often imply presuppositions, especially in the press.

instance asentence such as “The cold war has ended” presupposes the existence of something called ‘cold war’whose knowledge is shared by the reader. The article the gives the sentence an implicit meaningwhich is in some ways “taken for granted”. British popular newspaper headlines often make use ofthis device assuming the reader to have followed certain stories in the press.

- tenses (like the present simple for explanations and descriptions, the past simple for narrations, thepresent perfect for hot news in broadcast and written news reports, etc.)

- conjunctions and connectives*: there are 4 basic types of connectives:

1. Addition connectives (ex. and)
2. Opposition connectives (ex. but, yet)
3. Cause connectives (ex. therefore)
4. Time connectives: (ex. then)

*See the Grammar Note at the end of this unit for further reading and exercises.

Text 2 – A Propaganda Model

Before reading the text, look at these two cartoons. What do you think they mean?

Mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.

In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.

In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite.

It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community.

A propaganda model focuses on the inequality of wealth and power and its multi-level effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters (such as the size and wealth of dominant mass-media firms; advertising as primary income source; "anticommunism" as a national religion), leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. These filters fix newsworthy in the first place, and make it difficult to detect the bias that is inherent in the priority assigned to raw material, or the possibility that the government or dominant elites might be manipulating the news, imposing their own agenda, and deliberately diverting attention from other material.

propaganda model, we would not only anticipate definitions of worth based on utility, and dichotomous attention based on the same criterion, we would also expect the news stories about worthy and unworthy victims (or enemy and friendly states) to differ in quality. That is, we would expect official sources of the United States and its client regimes to be used heavily – and uncritically – in connection with one’s own abuses and those of friendly governments, while refugees and other dissident sources will be used in dealing with enemies. We would anticipate the uncritical acceptance of certain premises in dealing with self and friends – such as that one’s own state and leaders seek peace and democracy, oppose terrorism, and tell the truth – premises which will not be applied in treating enemy states. We would expect different criteria of evaluation to be employed, so that what is villainy in enemy states will be presented as an incidental background fact.

The case of oneself and friends. What is on the agenda in treating one case will be off the agenda in discussing the other. [adapted from Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 1988] GLOSSARY inculcate= /ˈɪnkʌlkeɪt; AmE ɪnˈkʌl-/ verb [vn] ~ sth (in / into sb)| ~ sb with sth (formal) to cause sb to learn and remember ideas, moral principles, etc., especially by repeating them often: to inculcate a sense of responsibility in sb to inculcate sb with a sense of responsibility inculcation /ˌɪnkʌlˈkeɪʃn/ noun [U] malfeasance= /mælˈfiːzəns/ noun A wrongful act that the actor had no right to do; improper professional conduct; he charged them with electoral malpractices. [French expression malfaisance, from malfaisant = injurious, doing ill; mal=ill, evil faisant=doing, present participle of faire=to do.] spokesman=/ ˈspəʊksmən; AmE ˈspoʊks-/ , spokeswoman / ˈspəʊkswʊmən; AmE ˈspoʊks-/ noun (pl. -men/-mən/, -women /-ˈwɪmɪn/) ~ (for sb/sth) aperson who speaks on behalf of a group or an organization: a police spokesman. A spokeswoman for the government denied the rumours. Newsworthy = interesting and important enough to be reported as news. Nothing very newsworthy happened last week. There is a newsworthy event on the agenda. Agenda = a list of items to be discussed at a meeting. The next item is at the top of the agenda. Education is now high on the agenda for the government. In our company, quality is set the agenda. Bias = a strong feeling in favor of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgement. There are accusations of political bias in news programs.