{"id":16146,"date":"2018-07-11T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=16146"},"modified":"2018-07-26T09:21:48","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T16:21:48","slug":"communication-error-understanding-media-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/07\/11\/communication-error-understanding-media-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Communication Error<\/em>: Understanding media literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Media literacy is perhaps one of the most important skills to have in today\u2019s culture, but few people are even aware of what media literacy is, much less how to use it. In short, to be media literate is to evaluate and think critically about the media we consume.<\/p>\n

First off, \u201cmedia\u201d encompasses more than you may think. We commonly refer to news, television, and advertisements as \u201cthe media,\u201d but, as well as those things, \u201cmedia\u201d can include everything from the labels on soda cans to the welcome screens on computers. Secondly, given that we are consuming so much media communication every day, it\u2019s important that we know how to carefully navigate it all.<\/p>\n

Think of a recent public relations campaign for a celebrity product endorsement\u2014for example, Beats by Dre\u2014or a provincial election; in every case, the purpose of the media is trying to persuade you of something\u2014to think, to buy, or to believe a certain view (except this column, of course). So, how do we make it through this storm of solicitations?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Communication Error<\/em> is a column in every issue of Nexus<\/em> looking at communication issues.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s important to realize that all media isn\u2019t bad; rather, the bad thing would be to think of all media as neutral. The Subway ads in the Camosun bathrooms, for example, aren\u2019t evil\u2014they\u2019re just carefully placed there in hopes that you\u2019ll think of Subway next time you\u2019re hungry (which as a student, I\u2019m sure you always are).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With this in mind, we can assess our media with a more critical lens. If we were to open up our definition of media to include things like food packaging, for example, then we can start to see things such as more and more snack foods highlighting phrases like \u201c100 percent natural,\u201d \u201cno artificial ingredients,\u201d and \u201cno preservatives.\u201d Taken for granted, you could say, in effect, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t want artificial ingredients, so that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d But, leaving it at that we\u2019d miss why they\u2019re choosing to state that.<\/p>\n

Now that we\u2019re all on the same page, let us get back to those Subway advertisements. On one hand, it\u2019s a few extra advertising dollars for the college, and Subway recognizes that college students are likely to eat their food, so the pairing seems to make sense.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, exercising our media literacy, we might say that a company as large as Subway has extensive marketing experience with a set advertising budget and certain return expectations for said budget.<\/p>\n

Literacy\u2014to read\u2014is us getting halfway there; media literacy\u2014to think critically about what we read, see, and hear in the media\u2014is the full picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Media literacy is perhaps one of the most important skills to have in today\u2019s culture, but few people are even aware of what media literacy is, much less how to use it. In short, to be media literate is to evaluate and think critically about the media we consume. First off, \u201cmedia\u201d encompasses more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-july-11-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16147,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16146\/revisions\/16147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}