Media Literacy (Video)

From Grandma's dose of nightly news to your secret obsession with that blog about Harry Styles' haircuts, mass media encompasses a lot—and we mean a lot—of different stuff. In fact, media is such a big part of our everyday lives that it can seem to just blend into the background.

How many times have you lost an hour of the afternoon watching food videos on YouTube, getting distracted by your Facebook ads, or getting caught up in Kanye's tweets?

Mass media involves almost everything, everywhere, all the time. Over the course of a quick ten-minute bus ride, you might check your email, pass some billboards, listen to the radio, send a text, "like" a picture of a puppy, and skim Rotten Tomatoes for your movie options this weekend.

And guess what? Those are all different forms of mass media. Mind: blown.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to learn how to pay close attention to your own personal mass media landscape. To help you on your way, we've developed a massive 17-part road map to help show you what's what. (Well, technically, it's a 17-part video series.) Over the course of these video lessons, you'll:

• get a grip on the many, many different kinds of mass media.
• dissect the way an advertisement reads your mind.
• learn to spot bias. Hint: It's everywhere.
• define "intellectual property" and explain why you can't sell it on eBay.
• discover tried-and-true techniques for sending internet trolls back under their bridges.

What do you say? Is the book always better than the movie? Did video really kill the radio star? Why did Freaks and Geeks get the axe after just one shortened season? We're not bitter. We're just asking questions.

Here's a sneak peek at a video from the course. BYOP (bring your own popcorn).

Unit Breakdown