MEDIA LITERACY
MEDIA LITERACY
Media literacy is concerned with helping
students develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the
mass media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques.
Media literacy also aims to provide students with the ability to create media
products.
MEDIA LITERACY CONCEPT
There IS concepts upon
which media literacy education is based. These are key messages that are
integral to understanding how media are constructed and how to understand their
explicit and implicit messages. A simplified, but highly effective.
v
Media literacy concept
§ Intermediate concepts :
Ø The human brain processes images differently than
words.
Images are processed in
the “reptilian” part of the brain, where strong emotions and instincts are also
located. Written and spoken language is processed in another part of the brain,
the neocortex, where reason lies. This is why TV commercials are often more
powerful than print ads. Because our minds is called “Foniks” , its mean
limitless communication. Our brain can imagining everything we wanted without
limit, the limit of our brain is our own mind / our own imagination. Action is
stronger than words.
Ø We all create media.
Maybe you don’t have the skills and resources
to make a blockbuster movie or publish a daily newspaper. But just about anyone
can snap a photo, write a letter or sing a song. And new technology has allowed
millions of people to make
media -email, websites, videos, newsletters, and
more -- easily and cheaply. Creating your own media messages is an important
part of media literacy.
Theres many social media (Youtube, Instagram, Path, etc) provides us to
make video, status, comment about everything, we can get famous (well-known) /
notorious through social media. We can make websites for ourselves, giving
information for other people about us or news, opinion, and our ways of thinks
about political issues, government, and our society.
·
Advanced
Concepts
Ø Media monopolies reduce opportunities to participate
in decision making.
When a few huge media corporations control access to information, they
have the power to make some information widely available and privilege those
perspectives that serve their interests, while marginalizing or even censoring
other information and perspectives. This affects our ability to make good
decisions about our own lives, and reduces opportunities to participate in
making decisions about our government and society.
In some places major multinational corporations own media stations and
outlets. Often, many media institutions survive on advertising fees, which can
lead to the media outlet being influenced by various corporate interests. Other
times, the ownership interests may affect what is and is not covered. Stories
can end up being biased or omitted so as not to offend advertisers or owners.
The ability for citizens to make informed decisions is crucial for a free and
functioning democracy but now becomes threatened by such concentration in
ownership.
Theres many large media company like Kompas, MetroTV news, Tempo ,etc
who dominating our media, its becoming difficult to give our statement,
comment, critics. Even there are media social (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc)
Or TV Show (Mata Najwa, Kick Andy, etc ) even we have many people make video
through youtube or other media social about our government and society. Only
few get noticed, and on facebook or Twitter our government / political person
account get secured by the social media itself and even we can comment about
our opinion, statement, critics about our society, again. Only few get noticed.
THE LANGUAGE OF PERSUASION
The Language of
Persuasion The goal of most media messages is to persuade the audience to
believe or do something. Hollywood movies use expensive special effects to make
us believe that what we’re seeing is real. News stories use several techniques
– such as direct quotation of identified sources – to make us believe that the
story is accurate.
The media messages most concerned with
persuading us are found in advertising, public relations and advocacy.
Commercial advertising tries to persuade us to buy a product or service. Public
relations (PR) "sells" us a positive image of a corporation,
government or organization try to persuade us to support them, using ads, speeches,
newsletters, websites, and other means use a variety of techniques to grab our
attention, to establish credibility and trust, to stimulate desire for the
product or policy, and to motivate us to act (buy, vote, give money, etc.)
Learning the language of persuasion is an
important media literacy skill. Once you know how media messages try to
persuade you to believe or do something, you’ll be better able to make your own
decisions.
·
Basic Persuasion
Techniques
Ø Intensity
The language of ads is full of intensifiers,
including superlatives (greatest, best, most, fastest, lowest prices),
comparatives (more, better than, improved, increased, fewer calories),
hyperbole (amazing, incredible, forever), exaggeration, and many other ways to
hype the product.
The impact of specific
program-induced emotions at varying levels of intensity on the memory for and
evaluation of embedded advertisements. A positive
emotion-inducing program facilitates ad evaluation while a negative emotion-inducing
program debilitates ad evaluation. Furthermore, we found that highly intense
positive emotions elicited by a television program do not further facilitate ad
evaluation when compared to programs eliciting lower intensity positive
emotions. Highly intense negative emotions, however, further debilitate ad
evaluation when compared to programs that elicit negative emotions at lower
levels of intensity. Ad memory was not significantly impacted by the television
program's emotional valence or intensity.
Ø Warm and Fuzzy
This technique uses sentimental images
(especially of families, kids and animals) to stimulate feelings of pleasure,
comfort, and delight. It may also include the use of soothing music, pleasant
voices, and evocative words like "cozy" or "cuddly.” The Warm
& fuzzy
We
can look this technique on baby, children commercial like Bebelac (Milk
commercial), MamyPoko (Diaper commercial). They use kind of cute and soft voice
to draw attention from the baby’s mommy.
As an example of advertising using sound molto soft good music or voice
broadcaster will be the attraction for consumers, because consumers are
basically interested in a soft voice as it will bring the mood becomes
peaceful, calm, happy
• Intermediate persuasion techniques
Ø Extrapolation
Extrapolation comes from the word extra,
meaning “outside,” and a shortened form of the word interpolation. An
interpolation is an insertion between two points. So an extrapolation is an
insertion outside any existing points. If you know something about Monday and
Tuesday, you might be able to make an extrapolation about Wednesday.
Persuaders sometimes draw huge conclusions on the basis of a few small
facts. Extrapolation works by ignoring complexity. It’s most persuasive when it
predicts something we hope can or will be true. Our opinion why the persuaders
draw hugh conclusions from a few small facts is because people can understand
it easily, if the conclusions is complicated will make us not interested, and
give people a hope, or we’re worrying can be true (will be happen).
Extrapolation can also mean extending the methods, with the assumption
that a similar method can be applied. Extrapolation can also be applied to the
human experience to project or expand the horizons of experience you have had
in the field of the unknown or has not been experienced before in order to find
(usually conjectural) of the unknown that. (Eg. Driver extrapolates road
conditions beyond the limits of vision).
• Advanced persuasion techniques
Ø Analogy
An analogy compares one situation with another. A good analogy, where
the situations are reasonably similar, can aid decision-making. A weak analogy
may not be persuasive, unless it uses emotionally-charged images that obscure
the illogical or unfair comparison.
Ø Cause vs. Correlation
While understanding true causes and true effects is important,
persuaders can fool us by intentionally confusing correlation with cause. For
example: Babies drink milk. Babies cry. Therefore, drinking milk makes babies
cry.
Causality is the area of statistics that is most commonly misused, and
misinterpreted, by non-specialists. Media sources, politicians and lobby groups
often leap upon a perceived correlation, and use it to 'prove' their own
beliefs. They fail to understand that, just because results show a correlation,
there is no proof of an underlying causality. In general, we should all be wary
of our own bias.
Examples : in this headache remedy ads there are two analogies to
compare first before taking medication headaches must have felt sick,
tormented, unable to work, being lazy and second analogy after taking
medication headache feel not feel a headache again, happy, the activities
become easier
