Journal of Communication, Winter 1998

Media Literacy Perspectives

by James A. Brown

Media literacy education involves cognitive processes used in critical thinking. Media
workshops and curricula emphasize moral values (the defensive, inoculation
approach), discriminating responsiveness (the critical viewer), antimedia resis-
tance, and consumer revolution. Inductive media literacy programs promote in-
dependent critical thinking. Media content is a limited predictor of potential effects
of media exposure. Meaning is situated in what audiences bring to their media
experience (selective perception), the context in which they use media (accommo-
dation), and how and why they use the medium (uses and gratifications). To
succeed, a curricular program of media literacy requires collaboration among
teachers, administrators, specialists, and parents.

The term media literacy means many things to many people. Traditionally, it has
involved the ability to analyze and appreciate respected works of literature and,
by extension, to communicate effectively by writing well. In the past half-century
it has come to include the ability to analyze competently and to utilize skillfully
print journalism, cinematic productions, radio and television programming, and
even computer-mediated information and exchange (including real-time interac-
tive exploration through the global internet).
In this essay I review the range of approaches to media literacy education in
various parts of the world, with emphasis on the United States. I outline major
patterns of mass media study in recent decades, noting differing theoretical bases
as well as common conceptual approaches. Because definitive research on out-
comes lags far behind widespread entrepreneurial efforts, it is difficult to assess
measured effectiveness of most media study projects. So here, I note trends that
suggest important considerations for mounting media literacy programs. Key con-
siderations are posited at the end of some sections in the form of recommenda-
tions, drawn from the experience of practitioners to date as interpreted by this
author. Final observations based on those experiences offer pragmatic consid-
erations about embarking on projects and curricula for media literacy education.

James A. Brown (PhD, University of Southern California, 1970) is an associate professor in the Tele-
communication and Film Department at the University of Alabama. His research interests include
broadcast management, ethics, history, and media literacy education.

Copyright @ 1998 International Communication Association

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Media Literacy Perspectives

Varied Concepts of Media Literacy

Proponents of media literacy programs refer to literacy analogously. They relate

the cognitive and affective processes involved in viewing film and television,
including commercials, to similar processes in reading, mutually reinforcing those
central abilities and reflecting holistic human development (Cavanaugh, 1994).
Media literacy training or education involves cognition processes used in critical
thinking related to language, literature, and other disciplines in the liberal arts,
such as perception, reflection, reasoning, and evaluation (Bruner, 1962; Samples,
1979). Gross (1973), Fiske (1987), Carey (1988), Anderson and Meyer (1988), and
others have referred to the need for cultural and media-specific “competencies.”
Competence of senders in crafting media products is related to the competence of
receivers in interpreting communications distributed through mass media. The
process is based on the viewer’s “media consciousness,” which Altheide and Snow
(1979) identified as a “general logic that media professionals and the audience use
to ‘make sense’ out of the phenomenon presented through the media” (p. 200).
Further, widespread media experiences by the mass public contribute to the col-
lective consciousness of society (Snow, 1983).
Ploghoft and Anderson (1981) termed receivership skills as teaching young tele-
vision viewers the ability to respond to media stimuli creatively with sensitive and
individualized discrimination. They and others, especially in South America, refer
to competence in the total language of communicating through written, visual,
and aural symbols or codes (Raines, 1991). Competence in media receivership
involves cognitive skills related to what traditional education has treated as critical
reading and critical thinking (Anderson, 1981).
Media literacy projects studying contemporary mass media differ because they
are shaped by several factors. The sociopolitical and cultural contexts obviously
differ widely among First World and Third World countries. Many U.S. media
workshops and curricula are protectionist and defensive. They seek to inoculate
consumers against blandishments of images and messages of media entertain-
ment, news, and advertising. Western Australia’s universally mandated curricular
training stresses aesthetics and semiotics with a liberal humanist approach to popular
arts. In the U.K. and some Latin American countries, empowerment of media
consumers is paramount, often focusing on industry control through corporate
and governmental hegemony. Media education there stresses “representational”
and oppositional ideologies, power, and politics and ways to participate in main-
stream media or construct alternate media outlets. Critical literacy looks beyond
media content to potential empowerment because it “entails an understanding of
the relationships between language and power together with a practical knowl-
edge of how to use language for self-realization, social critique, and cultural trans-
formation” (Knoblauch & Brannon, 1993, p. 152).
Of course, media literacy varies with the pedagogical context and source, for
example, consumer activist group, religious organization, school district, univer-
sity degree program, individual teacher, or regional government agency. Most
study programs are aimed at children and youth. Many are directed to adults,
teachers, and parents, for their own growth in understanding media and to pass

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Journal of Communication, Winter 1998

along to their children and students. Workshops, customized clinics, short-course

training, weekend media literacy retreats, and summer intensive curricula reach
out to various subgroups.
Some media projects look primarily to instruction by transmitting information
and a priori principles reflecting leader-oriented ideas and values. Most others
strive to mount student- or participant-oriented exploration leading to discovery
and realization, helping students construct understanding inductively from their
individual and group experiences. Most media literacy efforts deal with concepts
and reflective reasoning. Many also include learning to emulate professional pro-
cedures and production practices to understand how media products are con-
structed and factors influencing them.

Thematic Patterns in Media Training

Early years of media training and criticism often presented a moralistic stance.
This was especially true with organizations promoting public-interest perspectives
and agendas. Groups of concerned citizens, sometimes entire memberships of
churches, sought to remove allegedly objectionable media content from libraries
and newsstands, then motion picture theaters, and later, radio and television pro-
grams and record stores. Educators and researchers gradually entered the field of
media analysis with more objective and dispassionate views and purposes. Media
criticism became increasingly pluralistic, nondirective, and nonvalue-laden. A dif-
ferent wave of media concern in parts of the world grew out of desperate social
and economic contexts, with strong valuative judgments directed against mass
media “empires” often linked with economic and political interests. Instead of
religious perspectives distressed about language and behavior (particularly that
depicting sexual and violent activity), or the later cultural-aesthetic analysis, more
recent media criticism stressed audience responsiveness, responsibility, and reac-
tion to media structures in order to liberate the common people from cultural,
economic, or class domination. Although patterns overlapped through the de-
cades, they successively emphasized religious values and moral rightness (the
inoculation approach), then sensitive discriminating responsiveness (the critical
viewer), and, more recently, especially in Third World countries, antimedia resis-
tance and rebellion, even consumer revolution in extreme instances such as com-
munity media. These three patterns are reflected in Media Education (1984), a
review put out by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organi-
zation (UNESCO; see also Masterman, 1997).
Theoretical grounding for evolving approaches to media, of course, is reflected
in successive communication models: direct stimulus-response (hypodermic needle
effect); uses and gratifications (what people do with media); cultivation theory,
cultural studies, and semiotics (symbols, images, myths); and Marxist theory (he-
gemony and ideology as driving forces in media). Piette and Giroux (1997) rightly
noted that American media studies tends to reflect the first two theoretical founda-
tions and some of the third group, whereas European media education shares
some of that third cluster, but stresses the last one.

46
Media Literacy Perspectives

Why Is Media Literacy Important?

Why study mass media? Beyond important transfer values in learning skills related
to critical thinking, noted above, is the phenomenon of mass media’s pervasive-
ness in contemporary society. In recent decades, print and motion pictures have
been supplanted by radio and television as dominant forms of communicating
entertainment and information to mass publics. Television continually grows in its
influence on individuals’ and society’s use of leisure time, on awareness of politi-
cal and social reality, and on forming personal values in culture and ethics.
As much as media content, the media’s ubiquitous presence and their role in
daily living constitute much of the “message” for society: the media’s impact on
leisure time, on perception and judgment about society, and on the social, eco-
nomic, and political environment. Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism, “the medium is
the message,” in the late 1960s was anticipated by Lewis in 1948 and UNESCO in
1962 (see Anderson, 1983; Hodgkinson, 1964). Gerbner (1981) echoed McLuhan,
noting that television is not just one more successor of other mechanical-electrical
media, but a reviver of tribal transmission of myth and story. Television’s rituals,
symbol system, conventions, and continuous involvement confront the partici-
pant-observer. Thus, learning to understand and assess TV in daily living goes
beyond viewing skills to virtually reinstituting the liberal arts by liberating the
individual from unquestioning dependence on immediate cultural environment.
Television is the central socializing process in society.
Therefore, a major goal of media education is to help recipients of mass com-
munication become active, free participants in the process rather than static, pas-
sive, and subservient to the images and values communicated in a one-way flow
from media sources. Alvarado, Gutch, and Wollen (1987) looked to epistemologi-
cal aspects of media “to learn about the ways in which our knowledge is medi-
ated” (p. 4), for example, how we come to know about the world, other people,
ourselves, and values.
A positive, practical goal is to develop selective viewers who seek out and
appreciate distinctive high-quality programming and who develop a critical sense
of form, format, and content in mass media. Most researchers, critics, and practi-
tioners (see especially, Carey, 1988; Newcomb, 1994) emphasize that aesthetic,
humanistic role of media curricula.
Masterman (1985) enumerated other reasons why media education deserves
“the most urgent priority” (p. 2). Typically, his British, and somewhat neo-Marxist,
perspective stresses sociopolitical considerations, including their influence as “con-
sciousness industries,” the “manufacture of information” disseminated by them.
He looked to media literacy education to help citizens learn how media presenta-
tions can reflect, modify, or distort aspects of reality and how symbol-systems
(conventions, codes) mediate our knowledge of the world. This distinctive, prag-
matic kind of inquiry is intended to develop what Masterman (1985) called “criti-
cal autonomy.” It avoids forming students “who are likely to carry with them for
the rest of their lives either a quite unwarranted faith in the integrity of media
images and representations, or an equally dangerous, undifferentiated skepticism
which sees the media as sources of all evil” (p. 14).

47
Journal of Communication, Winter 1998

The significance of media education prompted the giant Bertlesmann Founda-

tion (1992, 1994) to underwrite long-term multimillion-dollar projects in Germany
and the United States. The twin sites have developed and are beginning to evalu-
ate media education integrated throughout curricula for grades K–12 during the
decade leading into the 21st century. While offering normative criteria by which
students can assess media, the Bertlesmann project strives to bring students to a
personal level of awareness, melding intellectual curiosity with discerning skills in
dealing with media content, form, practices, and meaning. This moves these stu-
dents beyond being enthralled by moving images and sound to developing per-
sonally further understanding by reflecting on and evaluating their media experi-
ences. This training integrates media components with most courses through all
their schooling. It moves beyond mere skills to an internalized process affecting
how they relate to and assess mass media.
This effort is supported conceptually by research in the 1980s and 1990s that
increasingly directed attention to the dynamic context of people’s personal media
experience, through naturalistic field study away from laboratory settings to the
study of viewers’ patterns of attention, activity, and interaction under actual living
conditions. This shift away from media content as determining effects to the piv-
otal role of the individual viewer in integrating their TV activity within their real-
life routines was supported by Alvarado et al. (1987), without lessening their
concern about institutional hegemony shaping and determining mass-media struc-
ture and content. Research trends in the last decade reflect increasing attention to
the viewers of television rather than to the creators of programming and broadcast
schedules (Bryant, 1990; Bryant & Zillmann, 1991; Clifford, Gunter, & McAleer,
1995; Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Zillmann, Bryant, & Huston, 1994).
People bring expectations to the medium and choose to use it accordingly.
This is the case not only with respect to time spent, but also to kinds of programs
tuned into, level of attentiveness, and susceptibility to content. Beyond that, view-
ers exercise selective perception, thereby shaping and interpreting meaning rather
than having meaning merely thrust upon them. The media message is individually
personalized and interpreted by each receiver. Each person’s own meaning is
subjectively drawn from the media’s content and form, as well as from life expe-
rience itself. It is complex and personalized.
Recommendation. A logical positivist approach that tries to delineate impact of
the medium by cataloging types and specific dialogue and actions (e.g., violence,
sex) is less revealing about TV’s actual effects than an interactionist approach.
More appropriate for identifying a medium’s impact is study of the interaction
between audience members and that medium, as well as their interaction with
peers and surrounding viewing context. This includes routines of daily living of
which television watching is a part.

Characteristics of Media Literacy Projects

Individualized Exploration and Discovery

Extending earlier analyses by Worth (1981), Fiske (1987), and others, Anderson

48
Media Literacy Perspectives

and Meyer (1988) developed their synthesis of an interactive model of sender-

and-receiver who, respectively, imply or infer signification in the content and
form of media texts. Individual receivers exercise the pivotal role of interpreting
and, thus, determining the text’s meaning for themselves. Because of the polysemic
text (i.e., possessing multiple levels of possible meaning for interpretation) indi-
vidual receivers form personalized meaning from media texts in the context of
their own experiences and associations. The researchers-theorists asserted that
“meaning is in the situated individual, not content” (p. 192).
Synthesizing themes developed by others (Carey, 1988; Fiske, 1987; Gross,
1973; Hall, 1980; Williams, 1973; Worth, 1981), Anderson and Meyer (1988, p. 49)
looked at how various receivers interpreted media material based not on the
“delivery of meaning” by textual content, but instead, by their own “performance”
of making sense out of it, that is, by accommodating the media texts into preexist-
ing routines of personal social involvement. They concluded that meaning is not
found in media content, but rather “it is the social action performances that pro-
vide for and explain media effects.” Thus, content is a limited predictor of poten-
tial effects of exposure to media. More significant is what audiences bring to their
media experience, the context in which they use media (accommodation), and
how and why they use the medium (uses and gratifications).
Almost all projects worldwide reviewed by Brown (1991) emphasized heuris-
tic, a posteriori approaches to studying television. In such projects, direct TV-
viewing experience is coupled with exploration, usually by responding to nondi-
rective questions. The basis for discussion is viewers’ own perceptions more than
abstract principles enunciated and applied to the medium as if for adults experi-
enced in reflective reasoning.
Recommendation. A key to effective educational process in media literacy pro-
grams is respect for the individuality of every person, including each one’s distinc-
tive upbringing. Media teachers avoid indoctrinating with their own opinions and
conclusions, but rather, train students in the process of selective discrimination,
analytical observation, and reasoned assessment based on factual data judged
according to meaningful criteria. This approach takes into account the context of
family, school, and peers, and views the students as unique persons who bring to
the exercise their own past media experience. Media literacy programs must go
beyond lecturing and mandating a priori guidelines, to promote exploration of
media experiences by the students, who can draw out principles inductively. To
the extent that instructors avoid imposing their own views or acceptable, or right,
conclusions, trainees can engage in truly critical thinking to develop media lit-
eracy skills they will exercise in the world beyond the classroom. Freedom and
autonomy of the individual in media studies should be coupled with informed
judgment. This implies the teacher’s role as mentor, assisting students to seek out
patterns and principles as they analyze media together.

Pluralism in Topics Covered

Even at upper grade levels, including secondary school, most media literacy projects
in the United States do not directly include sophisticated aspects of media in
society, such as the complex social and political considerations recommended by

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Journal of Communication, Winter 1998

Minkkinen (UNESCO, 1984), Masterman (1985; United Kingdom), or Freire (1972;

Brazil). The projects typically emphasize personal experience of the TV medium
and subjective evaluation based on values common to U.S. families and school-
rooms. These include basic aesthetic or artistic considerations, the role of persua-
sive commercials in young people’s lives, and inchoate value-formation reflecting
exposure to entertainment, information, and advertising in U.S. mass media. Al-
though they do advert briefly to the industry’s economic and legal structures—
networks, stations, agencies, government—they stress images presented in char-
acters, plots, dialogue, and through production techniques of television. This reflects
their effort to match the TV project with youths’ levels of cognitive development.
Most media study projects consider the medium as offering useful experiences
when used in moderation, with forethought, and with some reflective evaluation
afterwards. They see television as a potential ally in the home for shared experi-
ences by the family, especially when workshops, meetings, workbooks, and exer-
cises are attended to by both children and parents.
A dilemma arises about guiding, without channeling, young people to come to
understand the multiple cultural and social roles of mass media in society, and the
extent to which media set agendas and affect values. Although aesthetics of the
media may adapt nicely to traditional curricula, the larger social, economic, and
political aspects of the media also should be explored. Whether that leads to
consumer activism depends on the participants as much as on the teacher, if the
proper mix of open-ended discovery and unbiased evaluation takes place.
Thus, media consumers should not only enhance their critical appreciation of
media products. They should also become more aware of “mediation” in society,
which is a function of the traditions, ideals, myths, and established forces—busi-
ness, government, socioeconomic ideology—driving that society and its values.
This underscores the need for inductive media literacy programs, to allow inde-
pendent critical thinking.
Recommendation. Effective media studies stimulate individualized assessments
that are pluralistic. They foster personalized critical thinking. Media study should
include varied forms of media: information, persuasion, entertainment; quality
media material, as well as popular content; current structures of media and pos-
sible alternate systems. Students need to stretch their understanding beyond aes-
thetic perspectives to sociopolitical ones as well.

Reaction to Media: Role of Active Response

Some media projects in the United States focus on negative assessment of mass
media and their impact. At times somewhat alarmist, they caution about the corro-
sive influence of the omnipresent television. They emphasize therapeutic inocula-
tion or intervention to protect youngsters exposed to film and TV. They train
viewers to protect themselves against the value system portrayed in media en-
tertainment and advertising and to take action to influence media decision-makers.
This might be typified as a position of passive values and ethics.
British and Latin American projects often present, instead, an activist ethical
stance. They stress social, economic, and political aspects of the media, their

50
Media Literacy Perspectives

messages, and their impact on society. They train citizens to participate in local
media, and to influence media planners, programmers, and media structures. Some
non-U.S. projects strive to develop alternate media forms to counter established
media systems.
Recommendation. An informed media literacy curriculum relocates serious re-
sponsibility for media’s impact to individual media users, parents, and teachers of
young viewers. It sensitizes receivers to their options of exercising more active
roles in the communication process. This is achieved by media users’ internalized
reflection and judgment about their own use of media, by interchange with other
persons and groups, and even by positive, concrete interaction with media them-
selves. Media educators go beyond insulating from kitsch culture and beyond
training in aesthetic sensitivity, to teaching informed and competent role-taking in
the country’s media processes.

Shared Responsibility of Media and Consumers

Because the mass media process is bipolar, requiring both sender and receiver,
there is mutual responsibility for what happens when media are used by the
masses. This thesis was stressed by Altheide and Snow (1979), who underscored
the interactive process in media experience. Media are not to be judged by determin-
istic stimulus-response conditioning, nor by allegations of media conspiracy against
the masses. Because each mass medium reflects behavior in society, it helps es-
tablish common meanings. Media users develop a consciousness or “media logic”
affecting how they relate to and understand their environment. Media experience
becomes the framework by which people perceive their world and make inter-
pretations by which they attain a perspective for judgment. Through this symbolic
interaction, an individual freely creates meaning in concert with others. At the
same time, individuals and families reflect various cultural and religious heritages,
often with common ideals, but also with differing emphases and expressions of
values.
Recommendation. Ethical values are inherent in any serious study of media.
Values should be neither narrowly instructional nor exclusively moralistic in a
single tradition. Media training should not be valueless, however, because it re-
lates to the broad humanistic heritage and to the Judeo-Christian ethic. Educators
should not proselytize on behalf of a given value system. Values and assessments
should be identified by eliciting from individuals’ reflection and judgment, build-
ing on values already embraced.

Comprehensive Collaboration Needed in Educational Structures

Beyond these conceptual approaches to mounting media literacy training are prac-
tical matters of support and implementation. Countries with centralized gover-
nance of educational systems can mandate and monitor curricular programs. How-
ever, in other areas, with fragmented districts and regional divisions, efforts at
organizing coherent, comprehensive media literacy curricula meet tough obstacles
(the 50 states in the U.S. include over 15,000 school districts with separate admin-

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Journal of Communication, Winter 1998

istrations). Researchers, practitioners, and evaluators around the world, including

the United States, Britain, and Latin American countries, urge media literacy devel-
opers to follow the lead of others, such as Western Australia and Ontario (Canada),
which mandate highly organized media curricula at all stages of education
(Bazalgette, Bevort, & Savino, 1992; Dickson, 1994). If media literacy studies are
to survive and grow, administrators in school systems and at individual schools
must endorse and support them. They should not be left wholly dependent on the
initiative and energy of isolated teachers. Worldwide experience to date suggests
that separate media subjects can be introduced only with difficulty. However,
media literacy modules can be integrated efficiently within existing courses and
curricula. Although not ideal, this option meets less resistance to scheduling and
competent staffing.
To succeed, a curricular program of media literacy must be developed through
collaboration among teachers, administrators, specialists, and parents, who to-
gether must build it into the systematic educational process. Media study should
not be a mere appendage or a random elective course, nor should media technol-
ogy be used merely as a tool or aid to teach other subjects. That means develop-
ing studies geared to the participants’ successive levels of cognitive development,
based on educational and behavioral research findings. It also means continuing
and integrating studies into successive grade levels through the school years.
Projects around the world have underscored the need to train teachers for
media education. We cannot assume competence in effectively integrating media
studies and in applying specific media procedures and materials in classrooms.
Teachers must have administrative support to enroll in comprehensive workshops
to study media phenomena and the resources of literature and support materials.
They must have scheduled opportunities to learn with colleagues effective, so-
phisticated ways to teach critical media skills. They need reduced teaching loads,
with released time to become adept at integrating media literacy into traditional
curricular subjects and to prepare media-related materials.
A significant component of effective, long-lasting media education is involving
parents and families in the process. Many projects, especially in Latin American
countries, focus primarily on the home viewing environment and interaction among
family members as the “lived” context of how mass media are consumed. Many
projects direct their efforts primarily, or even exclusively, to parents, mounting
workshops by which media literacy can be relayed by parents to their children.
Printed materials for most projects can be used by parents, just as by teachers,
with their own children, always adapting those aids to match youngsters’ indi-
vidual stages of cognitive development.

Content of Media Literacy Education

Individual teachers and administrators must determine what content and format
best suit their local circumstances. Many media-studies courses embrace a wide
range of mass and nonmass media. Beyond determining major purposes, such as
inoculative, critical viewing, and community media, teachers and designers of
curricula must consider the proper balance of the theoretical (critical appreciation
and analysis) and the practical (creative program crafting). They must select from

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Media Literacy Perspectives

paradigmatic projects the extent to which they want to study mass media as “texts”
to be read, deconstructed, demystified, or demythologized; as semiotic phenom-
ena, with connotation, representation, and ideology; and as industries, including
issues of ownership and control. Further, they must determine if they can develop
independent media study courses or if they must fuse such study into areas of
social studies or humanities.

Role of Research and Evaluation

Valid research about the effectiveness of various projects is important for the
whole field of media literacy study and training. In order to measure outcomes,
and to evaluate effectiveness of media literacy projects, curriculum designers must
identify, at the outset, their goals and objectives regarding the behavioral skills,
cognitive abilities, and attitudes vis-à-vis the various media. Because it is difficult
to measure target outcomes in education, which consist of long-term goals in a
person’s growth and media use, Flagg (1990) cited the need for traditional meth-
ods of assessing ongoing and preliminary results by task analyses, learning hierar-
chies, behavioral/motor-skill taxonomies, and interim cognitive and affective out-
comes. Ideally, surveillance and testing, coupled with evaluation, should come at
stages during the course of a project, so that the project can be corrected in light
of findings while still in process.

Structure, Formats, and Teaching Aids

Projects intended for schools are usually integrated into already existing courses,
rather than as separate subjects, to facilitate the introduction of media literacy
study into established curricula. Projects typically offer systematic instruction by
preparing curriculum outlines and sequences of materials for classroom use and
at home (Lloyd-Kulkin & Tyner, 1991; Lusted, 1991). In most instances, support
materials are resources to be used selectively by teachers on-site.
Many U.S. projects, both institutional and private, prepared extensive and highly
organized printed materials supplemented in many instances by sophisticated audio-
visual materials. Non-U.S. materials tend to be more conceptual and less prolix,
offering principles and guidelines for application by teachers without heavily struc-
tured lesson plans and proliferation of sample hand-out materials. Projects in
those countries stress training teachers in workshops and with syllabus guidelines
that include conceptual analysis along with theoretical readings and practical ex-
ercises for their students.

Resources for Individuals, Parents, Teachers, and Organizations

Enterprising “boutique” operations and larger groups offer valuable source mate-
rials for those involved in media literacy education—whether for one’s children
and family, for social groups, or for schoolrooms. Brown (1991) offered listings of
sources for a wide range of audiovisual and printed resource materials. One of the
most current and widely disseminated is the Los Angeles-based Center for Media
Literacy’s ensembles of continually expanding resource materials (Thoman, 1997).
The Center makes information sheets, aids for teaching, articles by respected
analysts, and other apt materials readily available. Material is meant to be adapted

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Journal of Communication, Winter 1998

to local circumstances and needs. Other institutes and organizations, coupled with
several major conferences held annually in various parts of the world, assist in-
dividuals or organizations in their effort to mount media literacy education (e.g.,
Duncan, 1989; Kubey, 1997; McMahon & Quin, 1992; Smart, 1990).
Published works, such as those of Neuman (1995), Bianculli (1992), and Silverblatt
(1995), are readily available to parents and teachers and useful for individual
media users, and they include substantive analyses of media content and form.
Christ’s (1997) Media Education Assessment Handbook is helpful for appraising
media literacy efforts and outcomes.

Summary Guidelines for Comprehensive Programs in Media Literacy

Media-training programs should address key characteristics: development of cog-

nitive, affective, and behavioral skills and values—in a holistic experience—linked
with the social milieu of one’s own culture and nation and even with people of
other nations. Although emphasis can be on preparing the audience by develop-
ing cognitive skills and value perceptions appropriate to translate media content
toward prosocial behavior, attention should be given to “activist” involvement in,
response to, and even reform of specific media. A media literacy program is more
significant and effective if it (1) is organized and sustained (not a brief experiment,
but a program used over time and by a number of people and institutions, possi-
bly in more than one region); (2) is based on known research that is valid and
relevant; (3) is tested and evaluated for its results with subjects through time; (4)
is able to be replicated elsewhere because of its breadth and “open stance” to
values and pluralistic forms; and (5) provides detailed audiovisual and print mate-
rials supporting the conceptual development.
Teachers and administrators, as well as parents and their children, should un-
derstand and agree at the outset on the goals of media training, the principles
underlying them, methods chosen to reach those goals, and ways to evaluate the
results over time. Educating adults and young people to grow in media literacy
involves collaboration to nurture individuals’ media processing beyond the class-
room to the broader environment where they will deal with media throughout
their lives.
A commitment to effective media literacy training requires practical, sustained
administrative support, along with a shared vision of goals, conceptual principles,
and apt methods for developing the study program. Thus, the challenge is for
teachers, administrators, and, at times, parents, to look carefully at the different
kinds of emphasis other media study efforts have taken and to determine which
theoretical foundations, principles of media concepts, and goals and procedures
are best suited to their educational and cultural context and to their purposes.
Then, they must work together to make it happen.

References

Altheide, D. L., & Snow, R. P. (1979). Media logic. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

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Alvarado, M., Gutch, R., & Wollen, T. (1987). Learning the media: An introduction to media teaching.
London: Macmillan Education.
Anderson, J. A. (1981). Receivership skills: An educational response. In M. E. Ploghoft & J. A. Anderson
(Eds.), Education for the television age (pp. 19–27). Athens, OH: Cooperative Center for Social Sci-
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Anderson, J. A. (1983). Television literacy and the critical viewer. In J. Bryant & D. R. Anderson (Eds.),
Children’s understanding of television: Research on children’s attention and comprehension (pp.
297–330). New York: Academic Press.
Anderson, J. A., & Meyer, T. P. (1988). Mediated communication: A social action perspective. Newbury
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