Our children and media infringement, why we need media literacy

In our society, media has taken an active role in how we learn about politics, weather, global economy as well as other outlets. There are many other facets of the media that affect us without us even knowing it. Our children are being saturated with media messages everyday without our awareness. Messages, images, and opinions are being bombarded and “downloaded” all at once. It makes it hard for a young child to comprehend it all. This poses a major problem when dealing with our child’s education.

Many parents like to sit their child in front of the television to watch cartoons or Power Rangers. Let it be known that a simple show like Sesame Street offers many media messages to our children, but we just us it as a babysitter. The long-term effects of media saturation in a child has yet to be research in depth, but analysis’s are concerned that our youth are being transformed into media machines without the comprehension.

According to a Kaiser Foundation study, kids today spend an equivalent of a full-time workweek in front of media messages such as television and gaming systems. Who are teaching our children, the media or the parents? Parents need to take an active role in what our children are picking up from the media and regulate it if need be. We need to teach them how to “read” the media messages and how to interpret them.

There are some websites out there that can act as a guide to parents to help them make better decisions about what our youth are seeing. Adults are increasingly finding out that they need to teach media interpretation skills to their children.

The Connecting Youth to a Brighter Future website offers important resources that can aid in teaching our youth. Just as we teach our children to read and understand what they are reading, we should be doing the same for media. The visual world we live in now offers vast amounts of pictures that flash bay the screen without much thought. We must teach them to look closely at these images and interpret the meaning. There are some techniques to teach our children:

- Us a newspaper or a magazine and occasionally discuss the main topics and what they mean.
- Show a random photo and ask the child to write a caption for it.
- Show a clip of a television sitcom and ask them to write their impressions.

These techniques are proven by the CYBF to enhance a child’s skills in understanding our media and how to decipher through it all.

How well do you know the media and how it is affecting you? Test your knowledge; take the media literacy test to see how much you really know!

Violence and Our Media Set Point

Media outlets are often a great source of information, but are there many long-term effects that could arise from viewing too much television. I wanted to learn more about the effects of media messages so I turned to W. James Potter’s book, Media Literacy for some insight. I conducted one of his exercises in the book and he wanted the reader to analyze a media effect with its pattern of factors that would influence the probability of the effect actually occurring. (Potter, 260)

Potter states there are 13 factors that define the influence on a person through various viewpoints and how they will be affected by these messages. I conducted this exercise and chose to investigate how a violent film might influence my behavior. Let’s say I’m watching Terminator. My emotional ties might hinder my judgment on what is right and wrong. This is especially true to a young child; Developmental Maturities have not yet developed enough to distinguish what is right.

To a four year old, Terminator would have a deep impact on that child’s cognitive, emotional, and moral maturity. When you reach a higher level of maturity, viewing such a film, would have little effect on you. Your knowledge structure has allowed you to developing a knowledge frame-work, or the skill to block out bad messages. There are factors that will allow me to make the right decision instead of acting violently. Socialization factor states that a set point is hard to increase when a person has been exposed to anti-aggression norms for a long period of time.

In conclusion, Potter’s exercise has allowed me to further expand on me ability to determine if I am being affected by media messages. Potter states, “People who have active lifestyles where they interact with many people and institutions are generally less affected by the media.” Media messages are affecting our lifestyles whether you know it or not!

Two and a Half Men Vs. The Networks

Every week many T.V. networks, such as ABC, CBS, FOX, The CW, and NBC, utilize Nielson ratings reports to judge whether their show is catching the viewers they need for the show to survive. Without the targeted ratings the show is either pulled from the show list of not renewed for the next season. Placement of the show is crucial, whether it be shown at a week night or during the weekends makes or breaks the show. Networks spend a vast amount of time juggling shows to their right show time and spend large amounts of money promoting these episodes.

Two and a Half Men had one of the highest viewers rating than many other 9:00p.m. Monday T.V. shows. With 14,235,000 viewers, it was ranked 8th on Nielsen Ratings list. It beat out Deal or No Deal by 4 million viewers. Two and a Half Men has a rating of 8.6 and a share of 13.0. As rating Vs. a Share plays its role, this show has different viewer numbers. Ratings are a bit lower than shares due to the fact that a rating only records when the television is either turned on or off.

The time slot that Two and a Half Men currently occupies has very little competition it that kind of entertainment. If it were to move to a different time slot, it might have to face better competitors, like Dancing with the Stars. Now if it were to move to a different day, the network faces losing their viewers all together. If it were to move to Tuesday nights the ratings would defiantly decrease. It would have to share their viewers with American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, both having higher viewers than Two and a Half Men. The ratings would decline and the network would then have to make the decision to either keep the show or cancel it.

In the end, ratings and shares make all the difference when it comes to your favorite entertainment. Without Nielson’s rating system, advertisers would not know where to place their ads that pays for our shows. We would not be able to enjoy our late night comedy show like Two and a Half Men or How I Met your Mother. So when watching you television, keep in mind that many thought has gone into when and where you can view these showings!

Media, how amusing...

Neil Postman in “Amusing Ourselves to Death” delivers delightful insight on how our society has become media saturated. The novel was written in 1985, and many of his views can still be referenced today. In the first section of the book, Postman states that “our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”
Postman bases his main theory for this book on entertainment. Entertainment is the sole culprit for our lack of media literacy. Postman believes we use television for various reasons but for the most part we use it for our personal entertainment. He puts a negative spin on T.V. by saying that our youth uses television as an education tool. Through various shows like Sesame Street, our youth is learning facts from a big yellow bird instead of from teachers and parents. I found this hard to swallow due to the fact that a child has to have some knowledge of learning prior to watching these shows or he/she would not be able to comprehend what the child is watching.
But to be fair, Postman brings up a good point that television has become another source of education for our youth. Shows like Blue’s Clues and Barney are leading educational shows that re-enforce what they learn in school. Things like counting, the alphabet, and proper hygiene are some topics children learn on these shows.
The habits we learn as a child carry throughout our lives. We might not want to admit it, but adults still use television as an educational tool. Discovery and History channels teach adults on various topics that we might not be interested in otherwise.
In conclusion, television was mainly invented to televise national information to its viewers. But it has evolved to be so much more over the years. Children and adults alike use its marvel to further ones education on certain topics. Postman had it correct when stating, “The classroom is, at the moment, still tied to the printed word, although that connection is rapidly weakening. Meanwhile, television forges ahead, making no concessions to its great technological predecessor, creating new conceptions of knowledge and how it is acquired.”

Are you sure you are getting the right facts?

Many readers of local media truly belive they are getting all the facts from their home town reporters, but this might not be the case. What if you could gather your own information and share it with your community? Well, now you can. Media outlets are emerging into a new era of informing the public. Many news outlets are now introducing online posting sites where readers can add and debate a certian topic. The Chicago Daily News is an online newspaper that is written soly by and for Chicago residents. Their mission is,"dedicated to brining you Chicago stories you wont find anywhere else."

This form of cyberjournalism is an "open source" journalism method. Here the news topic becomes a conversation or blog between readers and the reporters themselves. They are striving in educating the community by giving them the chance to investigate the issue and report it. Since its debut in December 2005, The Daily News has has attracted well over many thousands of visitors to their site per month.

When reading your local newspaper, one can only wonder if journalists are being objective and bias in there reporting of the topic. With this new form of news information, the reader can find out for his/her self. The Daily News states," We encourage readers to take part in gathering and writing the news that appears on the site."

In conclusion, the only way to be confident in that you are receiving all thew facts. Is to start digging for the truth for yourself and share it with your community. Local media only has so much room to report the news, so there might be some gaps in the story. The Daily News is showing true leadership in reporting the news to its readers.

Fans Vs. Favorites

"I think the fans versus favorites setup is the ultimate challenge because we have the favorites who have obviously played the game before, coming in here with experience. But at the same time you have us (the fans) and we know their game. We know not only their strengths but weaknesses too. So I think that puts us at a huge advantage."
by: Alexis

To this day, I have only seen a handful of Survivor Episodes. If you have seen one, you have seen them all! I feel Alexis has a good point. The fans are at an advantage over the favorites due to the fans learned all their habits and methods of playing the game. The media has established "Triggers" in the fan population, in a sense, making them watch Survivor religiously. Any time a message appears about the show, the fan immediately focuses on the message, no matter how insignificant it really is.

In the end , the fans have a lead over the favorites, but who's to say they wont change their game plan for this season. It will be exciting to see how this competition plays out for the participants and also the spectators.

Max Headroom "War"

In this episode of Max Headroom, the main character, Edison Carter works for one of the leading media networks, channel 23. He is a reporter and an investigator that is trying to discover who is behind these terrorists attacks by the White Brigade. The opposing network, Break thru T.V., is utilizing all these attacks to their advantage in raising their ratings.

This episode truly depicts a society that is media saturated controlled by a few leading networks. These networks seen to go to any length to raise their ratings during their so called "global sweep." To survive in this type of industry, the network with the best news wins the ratings. Break thru T.V. is stealing the sponsors from network 23 by funding this White brigade to raise ratings. Instead of the population revolting to the monopoly the networks have on the media, they follow every headline without hi station or thought. This is a society that is media saturated. In the end, Carter catches the bag guys and restores order to the networks.