Topic: Innovative Media Literacy 

Sheila Yoshikawa/ Sheila Webber (see “About me” at the end of this notecard)
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A couple of definitions of  Media Literacy
“ability to access, understand evaluate and create media content” (European Commission, 2007)

“a 21st century approach to education…
…provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate using messages in a variety of forms.
…builds an understanding of the role of media in society, as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.” (Jolls and Thoman, 2008, p22)

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Internationally, Media Literacy is most commonly used to describe literacy with “the media”: that is, the world of published information, in particular as we encounter it in print, broadcast and online news and advertising. There is an emphasis on being able to evaluate information. To start with the emphasis was on being a critically aware consumer of information. Now, definitions tend to mention to literacy in *producing* media as well as consuming them.

As the amount of information that we are bombarded with has increased, there has been increasing concern about the ability of children to filter and critically assess this information. Therefore educating and protecting children is the focus of a number of national initiatives (and also initiatives funded by the media industry, who are concerned to be seen to be “good citizens” and, one might say,  want to avoid what they see as excessive regulation).

Personally, I see media literacy as part of information literacy (this is a subject for discussion, which there isn’t time for in this presentation ;-)

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**5 ways SL can be used with media literacy**

1. *Using Second Life experience itself to examine and reflect on media literacy.*
Very often, the way in which “what really happened” can be distorted is most obvious when you know “what really happened” for yourself (you were at the event, you wrote the paper that started off a news story etc.)
- Comparing learners’ own experiences of SL with the view of SL in different media (stories about SL in newspapers, TV, blogs etc.) This kind of exercise can also be useful in encouraging learners’ to discuss their own expectation and preconceptions about SL, and how they were formed.
- Comparing the kinds and channels of information that they are exposed to in SL, compared with other virtual worlds they may have experienced (e.g. Barbie World, Club Penguin) or in other virtual/web experiences

2. *Bringing Real Life Media into focus*
By bringing a story or advert into SL, out of its original context, people may re-examine it and focus on it more intensely. Metaphor Voom, a fellow Educator’s Coop member, got his students to make big posters of adverts in Second Life, to make an exhibition, and write notecards deconstructing their message. Obviously this is an area where copyright must be respected, in terms of copying material into SL

Learners can also create their own picture of a story, or enact what impact a news story or event had on them, in a more immersive way than may be possible in RL.

3. *Reviewing the output of the SL media, and the messages you get in different parts of SL*
- There are SL newspapers, magazines and TV stations. Some of them just cover SL activities, and some cover a mixture of RL and SL. People from different countries contribute to the English-language SL media, and some RL news agencies have used citizen-journalists (as they do, increasingly, in RL media as well). You can look at which RL stories get covered in SL, whether having more international teams makes for more international coverage, and how the RL and SL media cover the same SL stories. There is also the issue of how advertisements in SL magazines use the same techniques, messages, stereotypes and so forth.

- Exploring areas of SL that are created by people from countries/ cultures other than your own exposes you to different kinds of media and messages. For example, There are many Japanese designers and Japanese sims. Even without understanding the language, this can prompt discussion about media representation, the nature of advertising and so forth.

4. *Understanding trustworthiness and authenticity*
In RL, research shows that people still rely a lot on other people (friends, family, teachers, colleagues, customers) for information, and also may approach complete strangers via email etc. if they think they are sources of expert advice. In SL, avatars present both more and less information than RL people: on the one hand you can immediately look at their profiles, and you can google them or follow up information on their websites and groups, but on the other hand they may be presenting themselves differently to their RL selves. When can you “trust” an avatar as a source of information, and when not? 

Questions about the authenticity and trustworthiness of avatars can stimulate discussion about how you learn to trust people in general, and their publications (blogs, websites, facebook entries etc.) and how/why you make those decisions. It opens up issues to do with affiliations (obvious, via Groups, in SL), their social networks (obvious on Facebook etc., but not on SL), their publications, mentions of (or references to) them, and so forth. In RL people are often not very “logical” in their decisions about who to go to for advice and information; should they become more suspicious in SL? The fact that in SL people have different names can also be a discussion point: anonymity in news sources is not always a source of suspicion (e.g. the Economist does not give bylines) and people in RL choose alternative names, especially in certain professions.

Again, the contrast of RL/SL can prompt learners to think about what they might take for granted in RL, and see it in a new way.

5. *Developing skills which can enhance RL media literacy*
In particular, learning to create media in SL (photos, objects, machinima etc) may encourage development of skills which can be used in creating media in other environments. SL experiences also, for many people, provide material to share in other media (for example via Flickr, Facebook, Youtube) to demonstrate their interests and creativity. 

*** Some resources about media literacy (in general, not specifically in SL) ***

There are lots of sites and resources about media literacy. I have just picked out a few.

* Centre for Media Literacy http://www.medialit.org/default.html
An “independent organization that is self-sustaining” in the USA, which has a good deal of useful material on media literacy and teaching media literacy on its website.

* Don’t buy it! http://pbskids.org/dontbuyit/
This is “a media literacy Web site for young people that encourages users to think critically about media and become smart consumers”. Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service in the USA. Has quizzes and activities: a few years old but the games etc. still seem to work.

* Media Awareness Network http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/index.cfm
A Canadian not-for-profit organisation, which has people mainly representing a variety of public sector organisations on its board. “Our vision is to ensure children and youth possess the necessary critical thinking skills and tools to understand and actively engage with media. Our mission is to be the leading Canadian provider of media education resources and awareness programs for educators, parents, children and youth.”. There is some free material (e.g. an interactive game to educate about promotional websites) and some games etc. which are priced.

* Media Literacy Clearinghouse http://www.frankwbaker.com/default1.htm
Has a lot of useful links.

* Media Smart http://mediasmart.org.uk/
“The media literacy programme for 6 to 11 year olds, focused on advertising” . It is funded by the UK and the European Union  and the advertising industry itself. It includes some simple interactive games for children and teachers can order media literacy teaching packs.

* National Association for Media Literacy Education http://www.namle.net/
“A national membership organization dedicated to advancing the field of media literacy education in the United States.” There is interesting material on their site, and their members have discounts to their conference, publications etc. They (fairly) recently launched the Journal of Media Literacy Education (open-access at http://jmle.org/index.php/JMLE, one issue so far)

* Ofcom: Media Literacy http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/
The UK’s official watchdog for communications is Ofcom, and they have a remit for Media Literacy. They have produced a good deal of research and are currently running  a Media Literacy Tracker market research study, with statistics published in huge detail (linked from http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/stats/)

* Second Life ... revisiting media literacy http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=404
Chatlog of a discussion led by Marty Snowpaw (Marty Keltz in RL) and held on Infolit iSchool in Second Life on 14 May 2009. Marty also started up a discussion from on http://www.schoolnet.com/ called “The new media literacy”

**Health-specific

* Behind the headlines http://news.patient.co.uk/newspaper.asp?ss=15
This is a service from the UK’s National Health Service. (NHS). Selected news stories (about 5 a week) are analysed in depth, discussing the research behind the headlines and how the news report presented it.

* Media Doctor http://www.mediadoctor.org.au/
“The primary aim of the Media Doctor project is to improve standards of journalism as they apply to specific topic media coverage of new medical drugs and treatments”: It is funded by the Newcastle Institute of Public Health, Australia. They use a star rating and specific criteria to rate news articles. For example, and article "Melbourne's Southern Health makes world-first asthma breakthrough" in the Herald Sun, 26 August, only rates one star (out of 5) with the annotation “Unfortunately this article is lacking in detail which is reflected in its poor score from Media Doctor. In particular there is no mention of what the new imaging equipment is, nor whether it is widely available. There is no evidence regarding its effectiveness, diagnostic accuracy or potential harms. Information about the cost of the test would have been useful but was also omitted.” http://www.mediadoctor.org.au/content/article.jsp?intArticleID=1693)

*** References
European Commission. (2007). Media literacy: Do people really understand how to make the most of blogs, search engines or interactive TV? http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/1970&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Jolls, T. and Thoman, E. (2008) Literacy for the 21st Century: an overview & orientation guide to  literacy education Part I: Theory CML MediaLit Kit™ A Framework for Learning and Teaching in a Media Age. 2nd ed. Centre for Media Literacy. http://www.medialit.org/default.html

*** About me

In RL I am Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer (=Associate Professor) in my Department, and my key areas for teaching and research are information literacy and information behaviour. I am Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research (CILR, http://infolitresearch.ning.com/) and Director of Learning & Teaching in my Department. I am a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals & of the Higher Education Academy, and am a member of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Information Literacy section committee. I blog on information literacy at http://information-literacy.blogspot.com 

In SL I own the Sheffield University island, Infolit iSchool. This is funded jointly by my Department (Information Studies) and the School of Education. I teach undergraduate and Masters students on the island, and run the CILR discussion series (so far with 50 events since July 2007). I am also a member of the Educators Coop. 
I am currently lead organiser of Information Literacy week in Second Life 9-15 November 2009
http://infolit-week-in-SL.ning.com/