2 Theories and Models of Media and Information Literacy

Vedabhyas Kundu

1 Exploring theoretical foundation for media literacy

In this section we will try to explore some theoretical dimensions and foundations of media and information literacy (MIL). Academic discourses on MIL suggest that a wide range of major communication theories have influenced media literacy. As MIL is seen as an inter-disciplinary subject, theories from other fields like education and literacy, learning, sociology, anthropology, film studies, linguistics etc have influenced theoretical orientation of media and information literacy.

It needs to be noted that with the explosion of digital technologies and the march towards information and knowledge societies, there is a greater consciousness on the importance of active citizenry and the heightened role of citizens in a mediated society. Also the new complexities of our society and the functioning of different institutions in the 21st century- be it political, cultural and educational necessitates new paradigm of theoretical framework of media and information literacy.

Asthana (2008) points out Dewey’s theory of education with its emphasis on interaction, reflection and experience and Freire’s insights on dialogical education and developing consciousness has shaped contemporary discussions on media education, learning and literacy. Hobbs and Jensen (2009) also talks about how perspectives of interpretive education scholars such as Lev Vygotsky and Paolo Freire influence media literacy education. They point out how these scholars conceptualized literacy as a socio-cultural practice that embodies, reflects, and refracts power relations.

Many scholars have tried to fit media literacy education within the broader framework of different communication theories. These include:

a)   The stimulus-response model: This stems out from the work of early communication theorists who underlined the power of the media message and a passive audience. These theorists delved on how the effects of media were direct or follow the hypodermic needle model. This approach was used in early media literacy education.

b)The uses and gratification model: As per this model, there is need to link the need for gratification and media choice with the audience; also the fact is there are choices before the audience besides media. The users of the media are in a position to identify their own interests and motivation to use the media. This model forms the basis of media literacy education initiatives which focuses on developing critical capacities to discern media messages.

c)The cultivation theory: Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, and Signorielli (1994) had proposed this theory pointing out that the repetitive lessons people learn from television (and other media) from infancy are likely to become the basis for their broader world view. Here media effects are not seen as direct. Meanwhile Gerbner (1999) had noted, “The stories the media tell – now virtually around the clock and through multiple channels of communication – ‘weave the seamless web of the cultural environment that cultivates most of what we think, what we do, and how we conduct our affairs.”

(http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Mass%20Media/Cultivation_Theory/)

Meanwhile Masterman (2001) argues on the importance of practical work as the foundation for media literacy education. He notes, “Simulations, practical audio and video work, sequencing exercises, prediction exercises, code-breaking games, and a whole battery of techniques for encouraging effective group learning became part of the armory of most media teachers. They were techniques which encouraged pupils to take on much more responsibility for their own learning.” With the foundation of practical work which was necessary for critical understanding of the media, he notes, “Technical competence in the media does not in itself constitute media education. While every encouragement should be given to students to express themselves through the media, practical work should be primarily a critical rather than a reproductive activity.”

Also according to Masterman (2001), “The central unifying concept of media education is that of representation. The media mediate. They do not reflect but represent the world. The media, that is, are symbolic sign systems that must be decoded. Without this principle, no media education is possible. From the assumption that the media represent, rather than reflect reality, all else flows.”

In Indian context, many of ideas of Freire, Dewey or Masterman which forms guiding post for media literacy education can be encapsulated through the vision of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore on educatioin. Mahatma Gandhi had said, “Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated. This can never be done by packing ill assorted and unwanted information into the heads of the pupils. It becomes a dead weight crushing all originality in them and turning them into mere automata. (Harijan, 1-12-1933) Gandhi had further said, “Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.” Meanwhile In Young India (29-1-1925), Mahatma Gandhi says, “Pupils must know to discriminate between what should be received and what should be rejected. We are thinking, knowing beings and we must in this period distinguish truth and untruth, sweet from bitter language, clean from unclean things and so on.” The essence of practical work, critical thinking and reflection in media literacy education can be explained from these perspectives.

Tagore believed that it was not enough to pass on information, what was important was the ability to put to use what one has learnt and to develop curiosity and alertness of mind. (Shiksha, 1990). Tagore was opposed to borrowed knowledge that distanced pupils from their own social and cultural fabric. He said that education which imparts knowledge but bears no relevance to life situations is of no avail. He laid stress on discussion as a mode of delivery of knowledge. The books should serve as mere supplements to knowledge acquired through life situations and on independent thinking. Essentially, Tagore focuses on connection of knowledge outside school curriculum. His stress on ‘learning to proceed from familiar situations to unfamiliar situations is what is expected out of media and communication education.

The Gandhian model of nonviolent communication can be an important part of the endeavor to encourage media literacy education to counter the effects of media violence. This will be dealt later in this chapter.

2.Three important trends of theoretical orientation of media literacy

There are predominantly three trends in media literacy education: a) the protectionist orientation; b) the promoting orientation and c) the participatory orientation. (Tornero & Varis, 2010).

The protectionist orientation emerged out of theories like that of Lasswell’s bullet theory which underlined a mechanistic idea that media were powerful tools which could cause bad effects. The goal of this orientation is to offer protection to vulnerable groups like children against the negative effects of the media. It actively talks about the need to have policies and regulations vis-à-vis the media. It also talks on the need to develop surveillance systems to act as media watchdog. This orientation gave rise to the inoculation approach to media education. Masterman (2001) talks about how media literacy education as part of the inoculation approach ‘encouraged pupils to develop, discrimination fine judgment, and taste by grasping the basic differences between the timeless values of authentic high culture and the de-based, anti-cultural values of largely commercial mass media. He describes how the inoculative approaches views media as agents of cultural decline.

The essence of the protectionist orientation is discussed and debated especially in the context of media violence, pornography, sexuality, racism, xenophobia and other aspects which are deemed to promote negative influence on the citizenry. In this context, Tornero and Varis points out that this orientation ‘is generally found in initiatives of educational and political institutions’.

However, with the changing media scenario, scholars talked about the paradigm shift from the simple protectionist orientation. Buckingham (2003) notes how the notion of using media literacy education purely for protectionist purposes has changed over time to focusing on preparing children for preparing purposes. Here he argues that there has been a move in both media literacy education and education in general towards democratization, which he describes as “a process whereby students’ out-of-school cultures are gradually recognized as valid and worthy of consideration in the school curriculum”. He further notes that over time, it has become more and more accepted to write in school about every-day experiences and about popular culture. No longer are values of a ‘high’ culture imposed on students, he adds.

The second orientation is the promoting approach. According to Tornero and Varis, this orientation aims at promotion and encouragement of different activities and initiatives which can ‘stimulate greater awareness of the media universe and citizen empowerment’. This approach focuses on the empowerment of the citizenry and how they can use the media in the contemporary society. It stresses on how citizens can constructively use the media and their relationship with it ‘either through intellectual creativity or communication relations’.

Linked to this empowerment or promoting orientation of media literacy is an expanded empowerment model as articulated by Hobbs, Cohn-Geltner and Landis (2011). Based on their own case studies of introducing media literacy education amongst students of different classes, they note, “The expanded empowerment model, because it moves through the phases of engagement, finding and using information, analyzing and evaluating it, then communicating ideas and taking social action, offers a systematic framework to help educators to develop children’s knowledge and understanding about current events, news and journalism.”

For children, young people and the citizenry as a whole to negotiate the complexities of the media environment, it is not enough to just delve on just the protectionist or promoting orientation. Capacities need to be developed for the citizen to be able to discern between reality and fiction in the media, develop better communicative skills, develop ability to use media texts, visuals and graphics and develop critical thinking and reflecting skills on media representation. As large number of media platforms is available to today’s citizens, they should have critical capacities to communicate their ideas and thoughts in these numerous platforms and formats. All these lead us to the third orientation, the participatory approach to media literacy.

Tornero and Varis notes, “The participatory orientation stresses on the spread of social production and communication for the development of knowledge, interactivity and dialogue. It regards the sphere of communication and its products as the legacy of all of humanity and therefore as open and free. This attitude is associated with a political philosophy that trusts in individuals’ autonomy, critical capacity and ability to properly guide their own personal development and thus contribute to the collective welfare.”

Masterman (2001) also stressing on the significance of the participatory orientation says, “Media education is an essential step in the long march towards a truly participatory democracy…widespread media literacy is essential if all citizens are to wield power, make rational decisions, become effective change agents, and have an effective involvement with the media.”

By analyzing the three orientations it can be stated within the broad parameters of the participatory orientation, the other two orientations- protectionist and promoting or empowerment can be effectively integrated. In fact, in this context, Tornero and Varis argue that the participatory orientation is definitely the future orientation of media literacy and that ‘it fits in with the most advanced theories related to the public sphere and the role that the media should play in it’. They point out that this orientation is characteristic of the new media literacy movement globally and can be linked to ‘the social and collective production of knowledge such as wikis, copyleft and blogs. The underlining principles of the participatory orientation according to them are critical and liberal, tolerant and respectful of diversity, democratizing and defending of equality.

3 Exploring different models of media and information literacy

I) Message Interpretation Process (MIP) Model: This model is based Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Goldman, Brown and Christiansen’s expectancy theory. This model is framework for studying the ways in which logic- and affect-based dimensions of decision making work together to produce decisions. Martens (2010) notes, “As media literacy is theorized to affect how individuals respond to media messages, it is appropriate to examine it using a model that treats decision-making as a process of evaluation and understanding.” He says the MIP model takes a receiver-oriented, information processing approach to media effects.

According to Martens, the MIP model, “The MIP model proposes that individuals, applying logic to their analysis of media messages, make logical comparisons between their personal experiences and what they see in the media. By encouraging a more systematic approach to decision making based on a thoughtful consideration of available information and evidence, a logical comparison process should provide balance to the affective route, which requires less mental effort. This may help children and adolescents to resist, for example, the image-based and affect-laden appeals used by many advertisers to gain customers.”

II)  Explore, Engage, Empower (EEE) Model: UNESCO (2013) has defined media and information literacy as a set of competencies that empowers citizens to access, retrieve, understand, evaluate and use, create as well as share information and media content in all formats using various tools, in a critical, ethical, and effective way, in order to participate and engage in personal, professional and societal activities.

Based on this definition, Alagaran II (2015) has proposed an explore, engage, empower model of media and information literacy. He argues that the model tries to provide a general process framework for understanding and practicing media and information literacy. According to him, competencies in media and information literacy can be grouped in three major practical applications: explore, engage and empower. He states:

a)To explore is to identify, access, and retrieve information and media content skilfully;

b) To engage is to analyze and evaluate media and information critically; and

c)  To empower is to create or produce, share or communicate, and use information and media content ethically, safely, and responsibly for decision making and taking action.

Alagaran II argues that the EEE model ‘encapsulates all the relevant competencies that students in the digital age must be able to acquire in a more concise and straightforward fashion.

III)   The Media Literacy Model: Potter (2004) proposed the media literacy model. This model talks about four main factors. According to Potter, “At the foundation is the factor of knowledge structures. The combination of knowledge structures feeds information into the second factor, which is the personal locus. This is where decisions about information processing are motivated. The third factor is a person’s set of competencies and skills, which are the information-processing tools. And the fourth factor is the flow of information-processing tasks. The four factors work together interactively in a system.”

Potter underlines that the foundation to develop media literacy skills are five knowledge structures. These include: media effects, media content, media industries, the real world, and the self. He argues that with knowledge in these five areas the citizenry becomes more aware while processing information and hence could make better decisions about getting information, use that information and discern its meaning before using it for their own purpose.

According to Potter, the skills most relevant to media literacy are analysis, evaluation, grouping, induction, deduction, synthesis, and abstraction. On the fourth factor, i.e., the information-processing task, he points out that there are three such tasks: filtering, meaning matching, and meaning construction. He says, “These tasks are ordered in a sequence of information processing. First, we encounter a message and are faced with the task of deciding whether to filter the message out (ignore it) or filter it in (process it). If we decide to filter it in, then we must make sense of it, that is, to recognize the symbols and match our learned definitions for the symbols. Next, we need to construct the meaning of the message.”

Arguing that media literacy was a broad concept, Potter talks about the attributes of a media literate person, “Media-literate people are able to see much more in a given message. They are more aware of the levels of meaning. This enhances understanding. They are more in charge of the process of meaning making and selection. This enhances control. They are much more likely to get what they want from the messages. This enhances appreciation. Thus, people operating at higher levels of media literacy fulfill the goals of higher understanding, control, and appreciation.”

IV) Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent communication as a model of media literacy to counter effects of media violence: In Module 1, we discussed how media and information literacy can be used as a tool for violence prevention. Young people not only are exposed to a variety of violence in different media forms, they are challenged every now and then in various conflict situations.

Feilitzen et.al. (2000) discussing on the influences of media violence says there could be imitation; getting tips and models about how violence can be used; aggression; surrounding; biased conceptions about violence in society and habituation to media violence. Feilitzen et.al. further points out that it is likely that for some individuals’ media violence has contributed to feelings of fear, misconceptions about real violence, and experiences of threatening surroundings that, in a situation of crisis, can turn into destructive aggression.

The Framework and Plan of Action for the Global Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy (developed during the Global Forum for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy which took place from 26 to 28 June 2013 in Abuja, Nigeria. The forum was held under the theme “Promoting Media and Information Literacy as a Means to Cultural Diversity”) underlines the importance of development of human capital for knowledge societies. It notes that promotion of media and information literacy globally can be driven around the objectives of further intercultural and interfaith dialogue, principles of inclusion, health and wellness. All these objectives are inherently connected to the foundation of peace in the society and a negation to all forms of violence.

Also the NCERT’s Position Paper on National Policy for Education for Peace (2006) while underlining the need to promote media awareness amongst children to reduce violence emphasizes on media literacy education not just for students and teachers but for even parents. It also says that teachers can help children to relate to the media in a real and wholesome fashion so that its benefits are derived and harmful effects minimized.

In this backdrop in order to develop capacities of young people to resolve conflicts through nonviolence and be able to challenge those models of media where conflicts are resolved through violence, we need to promote the powerful model of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent communication. By developing critical understanding and imbibing the strategy of nonviolent communication, we can encourage young people to resolve conflicts through peaceful means. Linking media and information literacy education to nonviolent communication can contribute to a culture of peace and nonviolence.

According to Borde (1995), Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent communication theory consists of four theoretical units: (1) nonviolent speech and action; (2) maintenance of relationships and enrichment of personhood; (3) openness; and (4) flexibility. According to him, the theory of nonviolent communication means flexibility and openness of achieving the end.

Further Gonsalves (2010) talking about the communication approach of Gandhi says, “From start to finish, the underlying principle of Gandhian engagement with an opponent in a conflict is to keep the channels of communication open, to avoid intimidation and to remove all obstacles to dialogue. Such openness calls for, first, a well-planned strategy of social interaction and, second, a rigorous personal attitudinal discipline.” It can be gauged from Gonsalves’s observations that the Gandhian method of communication was strategic and well-planned with a thrust on nonviolent conflict resolution.

Integrating the Gandhian model of nonviolent communication in media and information literacy programmes can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of conflicts represented by the media and also help develop capacities to respond to such situations through nonviolence.

v)  UNESCO’s Conceptual Model of MIL: This model recognizes the importance of all forms of media (including community media) and of all other information providers including libraries, archives, museums, publishers, and those on the Internet. (UNESCO, 2013) According to UNESCO, “The concept draws on the convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting and among many forms of media and information providers.” This model also includes different oral traditions.

As per this model of MIL, the centre circle ‘represents the information resources and the means by which information is communicated and the media as an institution.’ “The availability and access to information and media and other information providers, including those on the Internet are important aspects of the enabling environment of MIL to flourish.”

The second circle from the centre of this model looks at the reasons on why people use information and engage with media and other information providers like entertainment, association, identification, surveillance and enlightenment. The third circle from the centre of this model refers ‘to the basic knowledge that all citizens should have about the operations, functions, nature, established professionals and ethical standards of all forms of media and other information providers.’

The final circle talks about the process and practice. It tries to communicate different steps that ‘should be taken or competencies citizens should possess to effectively create and use information and media content ethically, as well as engaging with media and other information providers in their social, economic, political , cultural and personal lives’.

(http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002256/225606e.pdf)

vi)  The UNESCO Model of Information Literacy: As was described in Module 1, the 11 stages of information literacy as described by Horton (2007) is often termed as the UNESCO model of information literacy. Horton points out that this model of information literacy fits within the context of other literacies, “The family of 21st Century “survival literacies” includes six categories: (1) the Basic or Core functional literacy fluencies (competencies) of reading, writing, oralcy and numeracy; (2) Computer Literacy; (3) Media Literacy; (4)Distance Education and E-Learning; (5) Cultural Literacy; and (6) Information Literacy. The boundaries between the various members of this family overlap, but they should be seen as a closely-knit family.”

(http://image.slidesharecdn.com/nenetworkfeb2011-110218022847-phpapp02/95/the-seven-pillars-of-information-literacy-research-lens-6-728.jpg?cb=1297996235)

4 Summary

There is no single theory of media literacy and draws its theoretical foundations from an interdisciplinary approach. The participatory orientation is emerging as an important theoretical foundation of media literacy and its underpinning ideas are critical and liberal, tolerant and respectful of diversity, democratizing and defending of equality. Its foundation is also rooted on the idea that media literacy enables citizens to take part in the public sphere, make rational decisions and can contribute to social causes. While there are several models of media literacy, Mahatma Gandhi’s model of nonviolent communication is a significant approach to prepare students to resolve conflicts through nonviolent means and minimize the effects of media violence.

References

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