“Information about the world around us comes to us not only by words on a piece of paper but more and more through the powerful images and sounds of our multi-media culture,” states the article “Media Literacy: A National Priority for a Changing World. This is true because in today’s society, we always know what’s happening across the globe as a result of being able to see the world through our televisions, phones, or laptop screens. We are given endless knowledge about the policies, tragedies, and almost every other aspect that relates to the numerous cultures across the world while we sit and watch behind a screen. It is even stated in “Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape.” that as a result of globalization, the expanded communication will bring about greater understanding. This is powerful because we have access to connecting with anyone from around the world to come together and possibly create change in a mutual struggle. We are able to talk to people from other countries and relate our problems with theirs to better understand why their country or culture is the way that it is. This spreads open communication, but can also cause ignorance because some people only see and hear what they want. Also, we should not rely solely on media to control our viewpoints on specific cultures because obviously the media isn’t going to paint all cultures in a positive light. For example, in recent times, Muslims as a whole are being labeled as terrorists because of the numerous tragedies involving terrorism across the world. The media and especially Donald Trump are painting Muslims out to be dangerous people who shouldn’t be trusted to even travel on planes without people fearing that they are terrorists and will possibly blow up something or participate in a mass shooting. Using media to learn about the rest of the world is vita;, but we should never allow it to take over our minds and determine for us what we ultimately think about a culture or a country as a whole, we should make those judgements on our own terms. However this is difficult to achieve because as the article “Media Literacy: A National Priority for a Changing World” states, media no longer just shape our culture…they ARE our culture. Media creates the culture because we are constantly flooded by messages from different sources that not only broadcasts products, but moods and attitudes, and what they view as being important versus what is not important. Most of the time we find ourselves saying something along the lines of “Oh, I believe this is correct because I saw it on the news or social media” or using a specific example and returning to the discussion of Muslims, “All Muslims have to be terrorists because whenever I watch the news, they are the main ones blowing up places and killing people.” Those are just simple examples of the ridiculous things we say and believe in because the media brainwashes us to do so.
Mar 19