Reflective Journal: BOUNDARY IN MEDIA LITERACY

Recently, I have been taught about media literacy and I would like to evaluate one of the barriers to it given by Silverblatt (2008). Also, I want to connect figure 1 to demonstrate my point of view.

Silverblatt (2008) states that there are several barriers to media literacy that prevent us from understanding the media. One of which is the fact that the media consumers tend to believe what they see or read are accurate due to their appearance on the media. Therefore, they assume all the images they see are the realities that the media captures for them. However, according to Silverblatt (2008), 'we only see what the photographer or the filmmaker wants us to see'. To demonstrate the idea, I would like to apply key question 1 provided by Center for Media Literacy–'Who created this message?' to figure 1. As I understand, the advertisers want to convince the audiences that the bird will pick up the trash unless they do it for them. Thus, it dies. It is quite persuasive because when I first see the ad, I instantly think the bird was actually killed because of the human beings' lacking in discipline. Nevertheless, only the advertisers know what they did to the print ad. In other words, I consider the audiences as well as I do not know whether what figure 1 represents is real or not. The constructors could have created a fake bird with various effects to deliver a message that have a strong impact on their audiences.

To sum up, I realize that every information presented through the media is not always true. The messages are carefully constructed to influence the media consumers. Hence, it is important to keep a doubtful mind and to improve the ability of selecting the accurate information on the media.

(RMIT Vietnam - Communication & Social Relations - Reflective Journal)