What is the Media?
If you look at the question, it seems like a very simple one. And every one of us has a ready answer in their head – it’s TV/radio/internet/newspapers/etc. But is it really that simple? True, television, radio and newspapers are actually different types of media. But if you look at it from such a simple point of view, it doesn’t seem there’s a lot to it and it seems kind of pointless to have a whole range of media studies all over the world.
So, what is the media? I’m going to leave this question open for now, answering the three other, and by the end of it, it should be pretty obvious what media is and how it reflects upon us as social beings.
Why is it important to study it?
Why do whole media studies exist anyway? Why do we need to study media and its influence? From my point of view, first reason is not that it’s there (which is Long and Wall’s), but rather because it shapes us as individuals and as a society, it influences everything we do; we rely on it for information, education and entertainment.
Yes, media is everywhere and accompanies everything we do. As I have concluded from my media diary and the observation of my daily activities, media is the source for all my entertainment and it is my main source of information and communication, plus it has definitely influenced me as a human being and it has reflected upon my knowledge of the world and the way I look and interpret the world.
The media is an internal cog in the whole mechanism of society and the modern world. I can even go out on a limb to say that media controls and defines the way we communicate with each other, the way we learn about ourselves, others and the world and we would not be the same as social beings, as individuals and as a society if it had not been for media.
How do we study it?
Or in other words what is it that we call media literacy?
Media literacy is the ability to analyze the messages being transmitted by all means of communication and/or information. It means not only to accept passively, but to actively take part in the process of understanding how media works and how the process of production/transmission/reception is designed to achieve the best performance and get the message across to the largest audience. It is the ability to bring critical thinking skills to all types of media objects that we consume every day.
According to Tony Schirato and Jen Webb, there are two responses to media. The first is what they call tacit response – which is the primary emotional reaction to a certain object, rather descriptive and not really critical. The second and more important to media studies response is the visually literate analysis of what we see and receive, which is basically the ability to look beyond the obvious content and dig deep into the 6ws (a key subject in a journalistic study – who, what, when, where, why and how) – why was this produced, how was it produced, why it was produced in this way, who created it, when does it take place, where does it take place, what influence does it have, what is its target audience, what techniques are being used, etc.
It's about asking what's there and noticing what's not there. It’s essential to media studies to question what lies behind media productions— the motives, the money, the values and the ownership— and to be aware of how these factors influence content.
How do we talk about it?
We talk about the media on a daily basis. And unless this is intended for media studies research, we don’t really pay attention to how we talk about it. If we take the time to analyze that, on a daily basis we use descriptive language to pick what we enjoy from what we consume. But then again, when we consume media objects, we don’t necessarily look at them from a visually literate point of view – we mainly accept them on an emotional level and discuss them on that level as well.
But if we are to go behind that and talk about media and its influence, we need to go beyond the tacit response and analyze critically. We need to look at the media not from a specific point of view, for instance – not discuss a specific TV show or program and be descriptive of its content and how it influenced our emotional instincts. We need to go to the wider understanding of media and critically think of what we consume and how it affects what we do and know.
Conclusion
Overall, even if the media can be simply defined as “means of communication and/or information”, in a much broader sense, media is a force in society, much like politics or history. It is a social force that drives us on a daily basis and that influences us and basically controls most of what we do, know and understand.
Sources:
http://www.iwebtool.com/what_is_media.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/what-iisi-the-point-of-media-studies-413472.html
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3015&art_id=vn20091020105559717C247088
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071207062847AAsCNS3
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/media_literacy/what_is_media_literacy.cfm
http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article111.html
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/klh9803.html
Long, T./Wall, P., Media Studies: Text, Production and ContextLabels: tasks |
