New Information about Media Literacy

While I browsed through the new blog I was following, entitled Center for Media Literacy, I discovered what the term actually meant. Originally, media literacy had a more brief definition as composed at the 1992 Aspen Media Literacy Leadership Institute: "Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms" (Center for Media Literacy).

However, over time, the definition needed to be enhanced. Now media literacy is: "a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy 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" (Center for Media Literacy). This definition is very broad and deals with almost any type of media format. It's almost as if the definition must become more general because our world is getting more complex. In order to keep up with the increasing complexity of the world, we need to continue to make access to media, aka literacy, up to date. This site sounds like a good start for such a sizable objective. All of this information was new to me. I was intrigued when I first learned about information literacy and it seems like this is the next step in learning more.

References

Media Literacy: A Definition and More. Retrieved from http://www.medialit.org/media-literacy-definition-and-more