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Media Literacy Part 1: Course Introduction 518 Views


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Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:05

Media Literacy

00:07

Introduction

00:09

a la Shmoop

00:12

Hi, Dave Siminoff here, founder of Shmoop.

00:14

And we're talking with Deb, Dr. Deb from Shmoop,

00:17

about media literacy.

00:19

So Deb, what is mass media?

00:22

Like, what is mass about it?

00:24

Is this like a Catholic church thing?

00:25

Or it this about weight? What is mass media?

00:28

Well, it's definitely not a Catholic church thing.

00:30

Mass media is any type of media that

00:34

just reaches large, as in thousands,

00:37

hundreds of thousands, millions of people.

00:39

Or maybe even billions.

00:40

So we're talking everything from

00:42

TV and movies to books to newspaper articles,

00:47

anything that reaches a large amount of people.

00:50

[ eww ]

00:52

Got it. And who owns mass media?

00:54

Like who controls it? Who manages it?

00:57

Is there some evil Darth Vader-like group that's...

01:00

Yes, there is. Basically what we have to remember

01:05

when we're studying mass media is that

01:06

everything that goes into mass media is intentional

01:10

and someone is controlling it.

01:12

It's not always the same person

01:14

or the same group of people.

01:15

If it's a TV show, then we have the producers

01:18

as the man behind the curtain.

01:20

If it's newspapers, then it's the editors and the writers.

01:26

Someone is always controlling it and there's always some sort of intention behind mass media.

01:31

And I remember when I was a kid

01:33

the evening news was unbiased,

01:37

or at least they tried desperately hard

01:39

to be that way.

01:41

And the way the news came to us

01:43

was a different class of news.

01:46

Today, journalists are --

01:48

have no shame about simply being the voice for a political party.

01:53

And so you can't trust any of the news.

01:56

And it creates this awful world where you have to spend so much time

02:00

figuring out what their angle is, what they're trying to sell me

02:03

or get me to do or whatever,

02:05

that it kind of ruins it.

02:07

That's why we have courses like Media Literacy.

02:09

That's exactly what this course is about.

02:11

It's a course to teach you how to see past those biases.

02:15

So they're there and they're not going away any time soon.

02:19

And all we can do is be aware of it, like you are,

02:22

and say, "Okay, this is biased in one direction or another.

02:25

Am I okay with that? And how do I proceed knowing that?"

02:29

[ whoop ]

02:30

What is mass media?

02:33

Who controls mass media?

02:37

[ evil laugh ]

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