HONR 1340 Smarts Syllabus

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HONORS 1340(1)—Social Systems & Issues • Syllabus

MEDIA SMARTS—Making Sense of the Information Age (H)

Professor Ted Pease (ted.pease@usu.edu)
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Fall 2008

TR 3-4:15 p.m.
Ray B West 114
Office: 308B Animal Science (797-3293)
Office Hours: MW 10-12; TR 130-3 & by appt.

Teaching Assistant: Jylisa Doney (jylisa.doney@aggiemail.usu.edu)

Preamble: Some Wisdom

“I don’t fret about TV because it’s decadent or shortens your attention span or leads to murder. It worries me because it alters perception. TV, and the culture it anchors, masks and drowns out the subtle and vital information contact with the real world once provided.”

—Bill McKibben, author, The Age of Missing Information, 1993

“Question Authority!” –1970s slogan

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard, playwright, 1967

“I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure.” —E.B. White, author, 1938

• • • • •

What we’ll do:

Welcome to HONR 1340—Social Systems & Issues. The “social systems” in this case are the mass media—journalism, movies, advertising, books, TV, the Internet, radio. The “issues” include these: 1) We’re being lied to, boys and girls. 2) The way we are told to see the world is not necessarily the way it really is. 3) Trying to operate in a free and participatory democracy without accurate knowledge and information is like piloting a boat through the fog without chart, radar or GPS.

That is the last time I’ll refer to this class as “Social Systems and Issues.” The real name of this course is Media Smarts—Making Sense of the Information Age (the Honors Edition), a label I think you’re find more descriptive.

The central question driving Smarts is this:

How do we know what we (think we) know about ____________? (fill in the blank).

In this information age (what author Bill McKibben said should more correctly be termed an age of misinformation), nearly every waking moment is somehow affected by the mass media, which subtly teach us to see the world in particular ways. We are taught to value certain lifestyles and norms and to reject others; we are taught to desire certain products—food, cars, gadgets, political candidates; we are taught how to perceive different groups of people, based on their gender, racial background, skin color, height, weight, religion. This constant diet of mass media images and values skews how we as individuals and we as a society see the world. The goal of this course is to help you see past the mass media’s version of the world, and to give you the analytical and critical thinking skills you’ll need to make sense of the world for yourself.

During the semester, we will critically explore whether, when, how, and to what extent the mass media—both news and entertainment—have influenced people’s worldview and events in the United States (and beyond), focusing on how mass media messages can cultivate perceptions, perspectives and attitudes, particularly in areas of gender, racial diversity, violence, children, and as regards how Americans “know” their own history. We’ll start with general principles of media literacy, and then focus specifically on how movies represent reality, historical and otherwise, by comparing how films frame what happened with the actual historical record.

Course Goals:

To expand students’ recognition of the role of mass media versions of “truth,” and their critical thinking and analytical skills to make them more savvy consumers of mass media. In particular, the course will ask students to analyze and evaluate various mass media versions of historical events, cultural norms, and individuals in society.

This Honors edition of Media Smarts will examine the unique and essential social interaction between the individual and the mass media, focusing especially on

a) how Hollywood frames the press, culture and participatory democracy;
b) how stories of cultural norms (race, gender, society, politics) are told in film and on television; and
c) how individuals learn to frame important segments of the world through such lessons. The underlying question: How do we know what we think we know about the world, and how sure are we of our assumptions?

Children, of course, are the most susceptible victims of media images and messages. Humor columnist Erma Bombeck once said, “In general, my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.” Most Americans under the age of 50 were raised on such a diet; the world has been created for us, and isn’t real unless we’ve seen it on the tube. In predicting more than 40 years ago how the information age would change the world, Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan used the analogy of a fish. He said he didn’t know who discovered water, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t a fish. Like fish, he suggested, most residents of the information age, immersed from birth in media messages, are equally unsuspecting and uncritical about the mass media environment in which they live.

This represents an enormous responsibility both for the producers of mass media messages and for individuals who consume them. As Allen Ginsberg said, “Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.” The fundamental assumption of Media Smarts is that most of us are so accustomed to the mass mediated world of the 21st century that—like McLuhan's fish—we don’t even notice the environment in which we live, the mass media diet that we consume and digest, and which becomes part of what and who we are, and how we think about and perceive the world.

“Television tends to be the main centerpiece in our culture,” says Professor Gary Edgerton. “TV in a sense creates instant history . . . that shapes how we think about an event.” Even beyond the sit-com or reality show fads, Edgerton asserts, most Americans know what they think they “know” about historical events and people from how they are depicted and framed in TV or movies. For example, students can “understand” the events of Pearl Harbor only with Ben Affleck in the middle of them. Many Americans “know” what they know about the death of President John F. Kennedy from Oliver Stone’s movie. The story of D-Day is told by Tom Hanks going ashore at Normandy to find a soldier named Ryan.

This is how many college students “know” the world. I believe that today’s students—you guys—are so steeped in mass media that you need remedial skills to help you recognize how entertainment media are affecting your (and society's) perceptions of both current and historical “reality.”

Filmmakers—and all communicators—purposively and subconsciously select what to include and exclude when they make movies, what to highlight or downplay. They make such choices to achieve goals that transcend merely aesthetic or historical considerations—or, for that matter, mere truth. Historical “truth” is often diluted, distorted and fabricated in the Hollywood version to privilege social class, gender, race and otherwise to reshape social reality and historical memory.

In the process, in a mass media marketplace that has become more “real” for most Americans than reality itself, the stories we tell and the stories we learn through films, TV and more broadly in popular culture, pre-empt truth, and reshape reality for most American media consumers.

In this edition of Media Smarts, students will first develop a set of media literacy skills and insights. Then you will analyze how popular, mainstream Hollywood films have distorted or reshaped historical reality about real-life individuals, about gender norms, race and ethnicity, social institutions and socioeconomic and cultural realities, by comparing the Hollywood film versions to historical accounts.

Students also will examine the various contemporaneous economic, political, and cultural constraints that influence the ways in which the representations of historical realities have been depicted and limited by Hollywood. By the end of the semester, students will have practiced critical and analytical skills in several areas that will help them become more critical consumers of all media products. This edition of Smarts will ask students to apply their media literacy skills in the specific context of a series of important (and flawed) Hollywood accounts of historical/social/cultural truth.

Pedagogy (how we’ll do it):

The course will focus on a series of films, documentaries and TV productions, Hollywood’s interpretations of real, historical events. The course will require students to evaluate these accounts in the larger (factual) context in which they appeared. For example, students may watch movies such as All the President’s Men, Shattered Glass, Iron-Jawed Angels, Control Room, etc.—all based on real events—and evaluate them for truth, balance and for how they translate into the collective social memory. Aside from developing basic media literacy skills—becoming more discerning consumers of mass media versions of “truth”—the course will help students learn to evaluate and interpret critically mass media accounts of history and social movements, and how our understanding of events and times are shaped by popular mass media.

Students will view films and other mass media, and then work individually and in teams to evaluate them and to analyze them critically in social, historical and cultural context. Teams will lead class discussions, and provide framework for analysis; students will write analytical essays individually.

In addition to the historical film assignment, the class will gather some five evenings during the semester (dates tba) to view and discuss other kinds of films about the role of journalism in society.

Texts and course materials:

Because this course exists within a context of journalism and the role and performance of the press, our readings will generally be assigned as online articles or other materials placed on the class website. The only text is:

Howard Good, ed. Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, click on this link immediately to order your copy from Amazon.com ($24.95; $14.95 used).

Additional readings are listed in this syllabus, and can be found online, or posted online (temporarily at AskDrTed!)

Assignments and Grading: (Subject to change)

This is a critical thinking course. It’s also a talking and writing course. Students will present to the class in teams and individually; write reaction essays, critique mass media content, and write longer papers comparing film versions of “truth” to recorded history of the events, people, etc. Students will work in teams to facilitate discussions and debates on set subjects and issues identified in the films and readings.

1. Quizzes on readings/news 10 pts
2. Critical essays/reaction papers (2 pp.) 10 pts/10 pts
3. Weekly chatroom participation 10 pts
4. Midterm 10 pts
5. Team Film Project
In-class team presentation 10 pts
Individual 10-pp. paper 20 pts
6. In-class & team participation 10 pts
7. Final Exam 10 pts
100 pts

• Critical Essays: Two short essays on assigned topics.

• Chatroom: We will discuss readings and class-related issues on the class blog. Students must engage substantively at least once a week (details to follow).

• Team Project: Teams will view an assigned historically based film, research the historical record, and make a 15- to 20-minute in-class presentation.

• Movie Night: About five times during the semester we will schedule times to watch films about journalism, followed by discussions. These are required. Details and schedule to follow.

• Participation: In addition to my evaluation of your enthusiastic in-class participation, students will evaluate teammates on their contributions to the team project. Participation points are earned (or lost) through attendance, class participation and your teammates’ assessments of your contributions to the final project.

• Final Exam: A comprehensive essay and short-answer exam. The final is optional: If you are satisfied with your grade before the final exam, you may opt out and apply the exam’s 10 points toward your quiz score (e.g., quizzes would then count 20 instead of 10 points).

• Other grading issues: The instructor takes no prisoners when it comes to writing, grammar, spelling, mechanics, etc. Fair warning. Obviously, DEADLINES ARE ABSOLUTE. That’s why they’re called deadlines. In the real world, missing deadlines means you don't get in the paper; in this class, missing deadline means zero for the assignment.

Housekeeping Details: Attendance, Honesty & Other Stuff

Some cautions, instructions and threats. Ask anyone; Professor Pease is an irascible old poop and can be testy at times.

Attendance: Regard this class as a professional commitment; I do. Be here for every meeting and be here on time; tardiness is insulting. No makeups. In the real world, you can't make up a missed assignment, so don't even ask if you can here.

If you do have to miss class, let me know AHEAD OF TIME. If I think you have a reasonable excuse, I'll let it go. After the second unexcused absence (the equivalent of one week of the total coursework), each missed class will lower your final grade by half a letter grade. In cases of excused absences, quizzes may be made up within one week.

Academic Honesty: The University expects students and faculty alike to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty (for a complete definition, see University Catalogue or the Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University, Article V, Section 3). The policy states: “[C]heating, falsification or plagiarism can result in warning, grade reduction, probation, suspension, expulsion, payment of damages, withholding of transcripts, withholding of degrees, removal a class, performance of community service, referral to appropriate counseling” or other penalties as the university judiciary may deem appropriate.

Because public trust and personal credibility are essential to journalists and other professional communicators, I adhere to the JCOM department’s zero-tolerance policy regarding academic dishonesty: As per the USU Student Code, any documented form of academic dishonesty—including plagiarism—will result in an automatic F in the course and a report to the Honors director, the dean of the college and the USU vice president for student services. If you have questions about what’s acceptable work under strict codes of academic honesty, see the USU Code of Policies and Procedures for Students, or consult your professor. Any suspicious work may be submitted to a web database. For guidance on plagiarism and how to avoid it, see this site.

Decorum: We’re all in this together. That means that we will need each other to succeed. And that means that everyone is expected to treat everyone else with fairness, civility, courtesy and honesty. Central to this subject matter is the willingness to examine our own beliefs and how we arrived at them, and to acknowledge that others may see the world differently. So I hope we all will be able to express and consider opinions collegially, in the spirit of open inquiry. Let us agree to disagree, if necessary, and to accommodate contrarian viewpoints and differing perspectives. Disruptive or abusive behavior will not be tolerated.

Disability accommodations: If a student has a disability that will require some accommodation by the instructor, the student must contact the instructor and document the disability through the Disability Resource Center (7-2444), preferably during the first week of the course. Any requests for special considerations relating to attendance, pedagogy, taking of exams, etc., must be discussed with and approved by the instructor. In cooperation with the Disability Resource Center, course materials can be provided in alternative formats, large print, audio, diskette, or Braille.

Disclaimer: The instructor has no desire to offend anyone’s personal or cultural beliefs, and he apologizes in advance if he does so inadvertently. But students should be aware that journalism (and advanced education) often deals with issues and content that some may find disagreeable—from profanity and offensive attitudes and perspectives that may make you uncomfortable. But that’s the business or examining society and becoming media-savvy and making sense of the world. It’s a critically important job for every citizen of a free society. Please do tell me if you have problems with any of the material, and we will try to accommodate if possible.

Finally, any rumors that you may have heard that Professor Pease is a heartless,
obdurate, irritable, demanding, tough, pugnacious, unpleasant SOB probably falls short
(and wide) of the truth. The fact is that I will press you hard this semester to develop
an advanced level of critical thinking and analysis required for success
in the information age. But if you’re having a problem—with this class or
anything else—please feel free to find me in my office or at home for a talk, a coke,
career advice, a crying towel or whatever.

• • • • •

SCHEDULE
HONR 1340 (1)—Media Smarts Schedule F08 (subject to change)

NOTE: There may be a news quiz on any given day. Fair warning….

WEEK 1 Aug. 26/28 OPENING DAY—Intros, instructions, syllabus. What Is Media Smarts? READING: Intro chapter: “Media Smarts—Making Sense of the Information Age,” by Ted Pease & Brenda Cooper (online)

WEEK 2 Sept. 2/4 How Do We Know What We (Think) We Know?
READING: “What is media literacy?”; “Key Concepts”; “Some principles of media literacy”
Mass Communication Theories

WEEK 3 Sept. 9/11 Journalism Ethics—NOT an Oxymoron!
READING: Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics
READ Howard Good, Intro, Chs. 1-2
WATCH: History in photos.
READ: New file from Professor Pease about NYU junior Alana Taylor’s criticism of “Old Media.”

WEEK 4 Sept. 16/18
Monday, Sept. 15: SPEAKER: Antonin Scalia, associate supreme court justice, speaks at TSC Ballroom, noon-1 p.m. EXTRA CREDIT
Tuesday, Sept. 16: READ Howard Good Ch. 4, on “Absence of Malice.”
MOVIE NIGHT: Tuesday (9/16), 7-9 p.m. “Absence of Malice,” AnSci 303.

WEEK 5 Sept. 23/25
Thursday, Sept. 25: Library Primer—Research librarian Britt Fagerheim leads session on how to use the Cazier Library to research team historical film project. Meet at Library.

WEEK 6 Sept. 30/Oct. 2
• Tuesday, Sept. 30: “Lost Boy of Darfur” John Bul Dau speaks in TSC Ballroom, 1 p.m., and appears in Smarts 3-3:45 p.m. Preparation is needed. See websites.

WEEK 7 Oct. 7/9
• Tuesday, Oct. 7: Matt Wald, New York Times environmental reporter, speaks at 3 p.m. in TSC Ballroom. Details to follow.

WEEK 8 Oct. 14/16

WEEK 9 Oct. 21/23

WEEK 10 Oct. 28/30

WEEK 11 Nov. 4/6

WEEK 12 Nov. 11/13

WEEK 13 Nov. 18/20

WEEK 14 Nov. 25/27
• Team Presentations

WEEK 15 Dec. 2/4
• Team Presentations

~details to come~

NOTE: The syllabus is a constant work-in-progress, updated frequently. Check it often for changes.

Future attractions (mark your calendars; more to follow)
• Movie Nights: Dates, times and place to be discussed/set

Mass Communication Theories

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Key Mass Communication Theories

How do the mass media work? That is, how do people communication with large populations? What kinds of information gets into the “pipeline,” and how do we know who pays attention to it? In any science, a theory serves as a description of how things might work. Theories don’t do anything, but they help explain various phenomena.

These brief synopses of seven different theories help describe and explain how communication works in the information age, from how different individuals may see the world in different ways, to how the mass media work to include and omit information from the mass communication pipeline.

1. Selective Perception—This perspective on how humans “see” the world is based on individual differences of upbringing, race, gender, socioeconomic status, life experiences. The result of these differences is that people perceive and interpret the world differently. Recognizing shared perceptions of the world is essential to understanding how individuals form communities.
• Selective Exposure: Individuals are exposed to different experiences and influences—some profound (like nationality or gender) and some subtle (like bigtown/smalltown)—that help shape how they see and make sense of the world, people, issues, culture, society.
• Selective Perception: As a result of these difference background and formative influences, individuals see and make sense of the world differently; we all create our own meanings of events around us, filtering information that reaches us through our own prejudices and prior knowledge, framing information so that it makes sense in our own context.
• Selective Retention: Based on how we see the world, individuals tend to pay attention to different kinds of information that is more or less relevant and familiar to their own experience. Some information flies right past us; some sticks.

2. Gatekeeping Theory—There are gatekeepers in any communication system—interpersonal, written, mass communication. These are elements that make constant decisions about what information is or isn’t important enough to pass along—what information gets through the “gate” from the sender of a message to a receiver of that message. Not only does gatekeeping occur in deciding the end message (e.g., what stories get into the newspaper), but also as a reporter decides what stories to cover, what sources to interview, what questions to ask, and what parts of her reporter’s notebook are important enough to make it into the story. So there is both “front-end” gatekeeping as a media message is created, and a “back-end” gatekeeping as an editor decides what stories to put in the paper, on what page, with what headline, and what part of the reporter’s story gets edited out. Clearly, individual perceptions of the world and what things are important in it (selective perception) are in play in this process. The ultimate gatekeeper in the mass communication process is the news reader/viewer—what do they think is important/relevant enough to permit through the “gates” of their conscious minds? In this context (and under agenda-setting, below), the media do not reflect “reality”; they filter, shape and construct a “reality.” (Remember the principles of media literacy.)

3. Agenda-Setting—This theory holds that although the mass media can’t tell us what to think, the media are stunningly successful at telling us what to think about. That is, through their selection or deselection of what is “news” (gatekeeping), the mass media serve to create an agenda for social discourse. When there were only three major national TV networks, and some 70%-80% of Americans watched them nightly, a very clear national agenda of what’s most important was created. Even in such a monopolistic and dominated mass media system, the networks couldn’t make people think in certain ways (because of individual selective perception), but they were and are able to focus attention of some issues while ignoring others. (See Project Censored for examples of stories that fall in the “woods” without a sound, and did not reach the public agenda/consciousness.) Examples of how agenda-setting works in society include: The OJ Simpson murder trial; the Clinton impeachment hearings following Zippergate; WMDs and the Iraq War/War on Terrorism. Consider the implications of agenda-setting for public policy debate and creation of laws. Another question: Who sets the agenda for the media agenda-setters?

4. Framing—This theory concerns how news and information are “framed” or presented once they pass through the news “gate” and reach the public agenda. A media “frame” is the central organizing idea for a news story that supplies a context and emphasizes certain aspects of a story while minimizing or ignoring others. This is more complex than it may seem, because framing is a complex and nuanced process. As media literacy theory tells us, media messages are constructions or representations of “reality.” It is impossible for a media message to be anything more than a summary or representation of the world. Thus, the question for message consumers is always: “What aspects of this story are not being told?” “What information lies outside the ‘frame’ of this message?” and, perhaps most importantly, “What might be the intent (ideological, intentional or inadvertent) of the senders (gatekeepers) of this message?” So framing suggests that the bottom line in evaluating media content is not just what to think about (agenda-setting), but how to think about it, based on how the story is presented. Framing is not a conspiracy to skew the news (although it can work that way); individuals, based on their selective perceptions, not only select different things as important, but inevitably frame them in different ways to conform to how they see the world. But what is the effect of that framing on the receiver of those messages, and on the larger society?

5. Coorientation—This theory examines the relationship (or lack thereof) between how gatekeepers (e.g., reporters/editors) and consumers of messages “see” the world. Shared values and perceptions can increase communication efficiency; lack of shared perceptions/attitudes can lead to a disconnect between message creators and receivers. How well does an editor (gatekeeper) understand and connect with a newspaper reader? Shared understandings (or the lack thereof) are important in communication.

6. Cultivation—The images and impressions and topics (and how they are framed) that appear in the mass media serve to “cultivate” in all of us certain impressions of the world. These messages and the way they are framed—if they are a stable set of images consistent over time—may serve to change our own individual perceptual frame of the world around us. The mass media build and maintain a stable set of images—stories about our culture, our society, who we are—that govern our lives and how we see the world, and influence the decisions we make. Ultimately, mass media messages in sufficient accumulation may influence our behavior, attitudes, decisions and life choices. This has wide implications for both individuals and for societies. One example is George Gerbner’s “mean world syndrome,” in which research found that heavy viewers of news tended to perceive the world as a more dangerous and scarier place than light TV viewers. Based on the amount and kind of stuff we include in our mass media diets, we may over time start to “cultivate” new perceptions of people, ideas, issues, etc., with which we have little direct involvement. In short, the cultivate media “reality” may become more real to us over time than real reality. This has important implications for mass media producers and consumers, and for the society in which we live—advertising, consumerism, society anxiety, racism, sexism, etc.

7. Third Person Effect (TPE)—Rather than examining media effects in terms of how media may effect the way individuals think about issues and people, TPE theory examines our beliefs about how media affects us and others. In other words—rather than taking the approach that media affect our perceptions of the world, TPE considers how our perceptions shape our ideas about media effects.

Research shows that most of us have the perception that the mass media don’t really affect us, but the media really influence other people. In other words, TPE holds that individuals think the mass media will influence other people, but they have little influence over me personally. One result, according to research, is that people who have this perception tend to overestimate media’s potential impact on others and underestimate potential impact on themselves.

Another result of individuals’ perception that media will significantly influence others is that these individuals are more likely to believe that mass media need to be restricted and censored in order to protect other people from harmful effects.

Media Smarts—Making Sense of the Information Age

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Media Smarts: Making Sense of the Information Age

Edward C. Pease & Brenda Cooper
©2008

CHAPTER 1: SURVEYING THE “INFORMATION AGE”

Forty years after Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan postulated an “information age” and the “global village” that he predicted would result, mediated information as a prime commodity in the daily lives of people has truly come into its own in a new millennium (McLuhan, 1964).

For generations, scholars and commentators have reflected (often with some alarm) on the impact of the brave new electronic world on the way we live our lives. In the Agrarian Age, commodities were potatoes, fruits, grains and lands on which to grow them. Then came the Industrial Age, when capital and the factories and workers to produce products held sway. Now comes the Information Age, when the most valuable commodities on the market and in the lives of individuals is data—information to trade, sell, barter, produce, consume—which former Citicorp CEO Walter Wriston calls “the preeminent form of capital” (Wriston, 1994).

With the start of the Industrial Age, family and small-community life (termed gemeinschaft by sociologists) was replaced by a larger but more impersonal and socially mediated structure that focused on the larger social or community unit—called gesselschaft. It may have been more efficient, but the society of the Industrial Age included many dark corners, including a lessening of the role of the individual in favor of the collective. Implicit in modern society always has been a mass information apparatus capable of communication with everyone, tools for informing independent-thinking participants of a democratic republic. Thomas Jefferson, for example, said he would prefer a society of newspapers to one of government. But George Orwell’s dark vision of 1984 revolved around mediated information from a “big brother” who directed people’s day-to-day existence. After World War II, communications scholar Wilbur Schramm saw mass communication as a means to help impoverished nations’ and peoples’ “terrible ascent to modernity.” Back in 1938, preeminent American essayist E.B. White predicted that television would be either a “saving radiance” or “a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace. . . . We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure” (White, 1938). These views of the beginning of the Information Age contained both promise and threat to societies and cultures.

Whether the brave new electronic age is “terrible” or “saving,” enlightening or enslaving its people, few can disagree that McLuhan’s vision of a “global village” has truly come to be at the start of the 21st century—through real-time communications and instantaneous new technologies, the world is a much smaller and interconnected place. But as goods in the Information Age marketplace have become more diverse and more preeminent as capital in the modern information realm—as media products from news and entertainment to talk shows, databases and passive couch-potato fare have spread—the sophistication of media consumers has lagged. Perhaps the flood of information has just worn us down; some call it the “dumbing” of America.

As users, our ability to access the goods in this glittering new marketplace has evolved—even our kids can call up databases, programs and interactive information services undreamed-of a just years ago—but how well are our brains keeping up with what they are subjected to every day in media messages? Our critical understanding of how those products come to us, who owns and creates them, how they are formed and conceived, what’s really in them—this knowledge has steadily declined as dependence on constant mass media messages has increased, and as content and delivery systems have grown more complex.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the proliferation of delivery systems for mass communication—from magazines and newspapers to radio and television to cable and satellite to Internet and other computer-based sources—has resulted in both an information overload among users, and a tendency to tune out. This is not a new phenomenon: E.B. White, reflecting on the advent of television in the 1930s, wondered about how TV images and radio sounds (and other stimuli he couldn’t have dreamed of then) “may become more familiar to us than their originals.” Eventually, he wondered, will we “forget the near and primary in favor of the secondary and remote?” (White, 1938). Occurrences in the street outside your house may be less important to your day-to-day life than events—real or fictional—far away. The news from Iraq or New York or Washington is no more or less real than this week’s “reality TV.” The president’s deliberations “the war on terrorism” are somehow no more compelling than the doings of “Days of Our Lives.” When one considers that 5-year-olds spend 14 times as much “quality time” with television (35 hours/week) as with their mothers (2-1/2 hours), and 70 times as much as with their dads (1/2 hour/week), it is easy to understand why Barney the purple dinosaur and toy commercials may be more influential opinion leaders among preschool kids than any other factor in their lives, and may be more “real” to tiny couch potatoes than are the other kids in daycare or the family next door.

The dilemma of the Information Age is that media consumers don’t understand enough about how their media diet is produced to know when to apply the grain of salt. “Media malaise” or “information overload” are not threats just to media industries and information providers, but to the larger society and culture of which they are a part. If participatory democracy is to survive, citizens cannot just tune out as they tune in to the media. And in an era when the media messengers have become as important to our overall culture and society as other primary social institutions—government, religion, finance, education and the rest—individuals require at least rudimentary understanding of how the media system works, what’s in it and who creates its content, who owns it and where it goes, if they are to be critical consumers and responsible participants in a democratic discourse that is now almost entirely mediated. Such instruction, which we might refer to as a kind of “media civics” class, is generally lacking. Neither those aiming for careers in media industries as professional communicators, nor those in other fields for whom media will be a product for daily consumption have adequate understanding of how the system works. They all are ill-equipped to live in the mediated world of the Information Age.

This is more than a question of theories and processes of communication. It is a larger issue of arming those who do as well as those who consume mass media with enough knowledge to be literate in the age of information. “Literacy” in this case means more than simply knowing how they “read” media—although understanding new technologies and how they might affect individual lives and the larger society certainly is part of being media literate. “Literacy” in this complex new world means understanding the whole of the information “elephant,” not just those parts we touch most often, but how the parts work and how they interact. It means more than media criticism in the ways that term is most often used—either as dry and theoretical social science, or referring to pop culture reviewers as “media critics.”

Rather, “media literacy” means both, and more. It means a critical and skeptical approach to media processes and content. It means making sense of the information age. Being “media literate” in the 2000s and beyond requires a grasp of theory—how scholars think it all works—plus an understanding of how media messages are produced and by whom, as well as development of the kind of sharp critical eye consumers need when shopping in a mediated marketplace and living in a mediated society.

It may be a coming-of-age that journalism and mass communication education and scholarship are at last addressing questions of how corporations and individuals creating the media messages that pervade society, connect and interact with each other, with other social institutions and processes, and with the media-consuming public. A generation ago, journalists were still the iconoclasts, sporting buttons or bumper stickers (or at least, however quietly, the philosophy) reminding themselves to “Question Authority.” But today, the media are the authority. So how do we question them?

This is not the old, stale socialist critique. What we are suggesting is that the entirety of mass media has become so complex, so enmeshed and linked with other societal institutional interests, so technologically sophisticated and so affluent, that few of us who use the mass media have much of an idea of how they really work, where their money comes from, how they make content and advertising decisions, and—especially—how to evaluate intelligently and critically their content, what we see, read and hear in the media. Talk shows have replaced the backyard fence as a means of opinion formation, and talk show hosts have replaced neighbors and preachers, barbers and bartenders as opinion leaders. Advertising, as much as home and church, creates norms for social behavior and ambitions. Sitcoms are our models for family and personal interaction. Nintendo and other video games replace checkers and “capture the flag” as recreation for kids in their new “electronic childhoods.”

That’s part of what we think students—not just mass communication students, but all students—need to know about life in the age of mass information. The work of media and social critical studies scholars certainly is part of this effort to educate both future media professionals and future media consumers. But the larger vision of this work goes beyond the social and media critics to include the application of theory to life in a mediated society, and an understanding of how the real-life process of life in the age of information can be explained by theory. Though operating from a base of theory and scholarship, what we envision from this course and this book can be stated more simply: There are philosophical, entrepreneurial, practical, economic, structural, political, social, cultural and (many) other factors that influence media content in advertising, news and entertainment, on radio and television, in books, newspapers, movies and magazines, on the Internet. Most of those who create that content don’t learn about those influences in school, but on the job (if at all). And few of those who consume that content ever have an inkling of what influences help form it.

There is much to be said about the question of citizens’ ability to process critically the content of the media messages that surround them, and we feel deeply about it as a social need and a pedagogical imperative, not only for journalism and mass communication students, but for anyone who will live in the mediated future. Obviously, it is an issue that generates some heat, and should. In an age of proliferation of media outlets—whether cable channels or video games or movies-on-demand or online services—citizens need the tools to examine information skeptically, to filter and understand media content, to make the media more important in their lives than just insect noise or, a radio (for example) is sometimes described, “electronic wallpaper.”

When you see an anti-government “demonstration” on the evening news, when “outraged residents” are interviewed, when “parents turn out” for the school board meeting—how do you know what you’re seeing, and whether it conforms to truth? On ABC, a GM pickup truck explodes into flames in a test crash (but a producer had placed incendiaries next to the gas tank). In the Mideast, thousands demonstrate against the evil America (but the crowds, which gather at a chosen time, stop shouting and disperse when the cameras are turned off).
Who gets covered, how and why? Too often, news that is aired is incorrect, biased, or just plain wrong—why? Because it fits the comfortable perception. Or because it’s dramatic. Or because it’s easy.

What kinds of information are available, and from what perspectives? Journalist and media critic Caryl Rivers of Boston University suggests that alien beings, observing Earth, might assume from monitoring the planet’s communications that it is a society of “sensible beings called ‘men’” and a subgroup called “women.” Says Rivers, “In our culture, the male is still the norm, women the ‘other.’ The real story of humanity is the story of men, with women as the helpmates, the onlookers” (Rivers, 1993). In a nation that is 54 percent female, why is it that a fraction of TV commentators and pundits are women (and that has actually gone down since 1983), that women write fewer than 30 percent of stories that run on the front pages of U.S. newspapers, that women are paid 25 percent to 33 percent less than their male counterparts to work in the industry and to do the same jobs?

And what about children? Anyone who has a kid, or who knows one, or who has been one, knows the powerful attraction the mass media hold over them. But how are they served by the media system? How are they covered? Are their lives consumed solely by the latest versions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Barney and Barbie, or is there more to their media existence? Are kids just couch potato-buds, or is there more to the way they use—and are used—by the mass media? Susan Herr, head of a Chicago-based group called Youth Communication, says most of what we see, hear, read about kids in the media is “paternal journalism”—“the notion that media can provide detailed knowledge about people’s lives without including their voices” (Herr, 1994).

That critique can be extended to media portrayals of any non-male, non-white, non-adult group. How do people who are neither white nor children fare in the Information Age? If you watch television, African-Americans (for example) are either violent or silly. If you read newspapers, people who are not Caucasian show up about 5 percent of the time—at best—even though they make up more than one-quarter of this country’s population (and, in many major urban areas and some states such as California, racial “minorities” are the majority of the population). And most of the news about blacks and Latinos involve crime or sports and entertainment, as if people of color don’t have lives beyond those areas. Why is that? Even as rigidly segregationist nations like South Africa tear down social barriers that have separated racial and ethnic groups for centuries, why does apartheid still rule American mass communications?

Where the dazzling new technologies could serve to connect society, the media sometimes serve to disconnect. “The ‘information highway’ won’t be a highway, nor will it be dedicated to information,” predicted media critic Leo Bogart in 1994, and anyone who watches television or gets online knows he was right. So what does travel on the information superhighway? If it’s not a highway, but something much less linear, how best to understand what the information age looks like? Who directs traffic on the information highway (whatever it looks like)—government, business interests, Hollywood, purveyors of junkfood? Who will build the trucks that drive on it and how will all that affect the existing media and the rest of us? Will we be better informed? Don’t worry about it, says bank president Wriston—communication technologies have freed us up, and regulation can’t (and shouldn’t) keep pace (Wriston, 1994).

But others worry that the so-called information superhighway of 500 channels, interactive everything, instant home-shopping, movies on-demand, home banking and the rest will isolate—not liberate—humanity. Sociology Herbert Gans worries about this impact on social interaction, how individuals interact with and learn about one another. Is the information age turning us into what Gans calls “electronic shut-ins,” trapped on our couches in front of the tube? (Gans, 1994).

Back in what is now fondly called the “old days,” TV news consisted of three channels, and most Americans had access to the same information; we sat by the same “electronic hearth” in front of the evening news to soak up what we needed to take part in the participatory American Odyssey.

But in an age of interactive media and segmented channels for every possible interest group, where can the nation find its electronic community, its common “hearth,” around which to congregate and debate issues of the day that affect everyone? Les Brown, a noted journalist and media critic, worries about the information superhighway running over participatory democracy. “When the outlets in the system were few, they served an important function as a national forum for the kind of robust, wide-open debate on issues of public concern that are so crucial to the survival of a free and participatory democracy,” he says (Brown, 1992). But when the number of possible channels expands, the number of people watching/reading/attending to each of them is diluted, and declines. There may be more channels for more perspectives in the brave new electronic world, but fewer of us have the time or interest to hear all those views. This is a paradox of democracy, says TV critic Brown: While we each may be able to program our own entertainment and information choices—a highly democratic and egalitarian development—we will be separated from one another because of our individual media choices.

“Democratization of media made possible by advances in technology may result in a greater openness of expression, while at the same time separating individuals and segregating thought,” Brown suggests. “Where in such a diverse media system will we all be able to get together and talk?” (Brown, 1992)

Is the Information Age, now that it’s arrived, just a “passageway to the great biosphere of the 21st century that will protect the human race from the dangerous real world outside?” asked Lawrence K. Grossman, former president of NBC News (Grossman, 1994). And what might be some of its unanticipated and unintended side-effects, asks Columbia University sociologist Herbert J. Gans. “It could turn the travelers on an information highway into virtual electronic shut-ins,” he says (Gans, 1994). Have you ever seen someone text-message or email someone in the next room, or two seats away, instead of just talking to them? Absorbed, nurtured, serviced, and consumed by our at-home communication video units (AHCVUs), we might never speak directly to one another again!

Making connections between what is real in the mass media and what the media actually do and how they work is a first step on the road to media literacy, an approach to understanding the economic, political, social, workplace, structural, psychological and real-world ingredients that contribute to how the brave new electronic world operates, and how the media influence our lives. Part theory, part scholarship, part real-world practice, part critical analysis and part synthesis—this class won’t make you smarter, but it will give you tools to help you navigate a world where the media not only have the message, but are the message.

It’s a first step in getting media-smart.

REFERENCES
Bogart, Leo. “Highway to the Stars or Road to Nowhere?” Media Studies Journal 8:1, 1-16 (Winter 1994).
Brown, Les. “Paradox of Democracy—More Channels, Less Discourse.” Media Studies Journal 6:4, 113-123 (Fall 1992).
Dates, Jannette L., and Edward C. Pease. “Warping the World—Media’s Mangled Image of Race.” Media Studies Journal 8…3, 89-96 (Summer 1994).
Gans, Herbert J. “The Electronic Shut-ins—Some Social Flaws Along the Information Superhighway.” Media Studies Journal 8…1, 123-127 (Winter 1994).
Grossman, Lawrence K. “Reflections on Life Along the Electronic Superhighway.” Media Studies Journal 8…1, 17-39 (Winter 1994).
Herr, Susan, and Dennis Sykes, “News Advisory—Listen to the Kids.” Media Studies Journal 8:4, 175-179 (Fall 1994).
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964.
Rivers, Caryl. “Bandwagons, Women and Cultural Mythology.” Media Studies Journal 7:1-2, 1-18 (Winter-Spring 1993).
Wriston, Walter B. “The Inevitable Global Conversation.” Media Studies Journal 8.1, 17-25 (Winter 1994).
White, E.B. “Removal.” One Man’s Meat. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. p. 2.