A media literate person can engage in a digital society. They understand, inquire, create, communicate and think critically. Furthermore, many professions require people to be able to effectively access, organize, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms.
We are bombarded with information and often times we accept it as truth. But when information, true and untrue, is always at our fingertips, we need to know how to discern it. The next time you see an ad, think about the following questions:
1. Who created this? What is their connection to the message?
2. What techniques were used to create this ad? Were special effects, photoshop, specific colors or props picked to attract certain people’s eyes?
3. How could other people understand the message counted differently than me? Would someone from a different ethnic or cultural background view this in a different light? Who is the message intended for?
4.Why is this message being sent? Has the message been influenced by money or power acquisition? Sometimes brands are strategically placed to grab people’s attention.
These four simple questions can help you to begin analyzing information. Questioning what we see and read is they key to having a critical mind.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."—Aristotle
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