Understanding Media Literacy

TV and radio commercials, Web sites and banner ads, magazine ads, pop songs, photos, and even news articles and textbooks: all of them are sending messages to influence the reader/viewer/listener. How do they grab the attention? What are they selling—a product or service? a lifestyle? an ideology?—and why? Would a different media consumer interpret the message differently? This program raises more questions than it answers, which is the whole point: to prompt students to question, question, question the messages they are bombarded with daily. Savvy media consumers aren't born; they're made, and this program is an excellent tool for shaping the classroom dialogue. (35 minutes