Media Literacy: the desperate gap to fill for the 21st century

Media Literacy is “the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they’re sending.” Just like how we take language classes so that we can understand the content, I think it’s high-time there was a more concerted effort to teach people to recognize, digest, and design for their appropriate medium.

If you’ve ever found yourself cringing at something you were an audience to, but can’t put your finger as to why, you might find some answers in examining the medium it was being presented in.

Marshall McLuhan (1977) penned the idea, “The medium is the message”. In brief, it was him who popularized the idea that “the effect of the programme is incidental.” It doesn’t matter what was being communicated; what mattered was the form in which the communication was taking place.

The medium is the environment in which the message is contained; as the environment, it affects how we digest and interpret what is being communicated. You could have two identical messages, being broadcasted in two different media, and the result is that you will receive two different ideas. But interestingly enough, the corollary to this is that you could have completely different messages that, when broadcasted in different media, could end up communicating the same idea.

I want to extend on McLuhan’s central idea with my own thoughts about how media has evolved. When Marshall McLuhan penned his thesis, it was in response to the rise of television and electronic media overtaking print. However, I think it’s safe to say that, were he alive today, he would find the current situation no less earth-shattering. His idea couldn’t be more apt for what we’re currently experiencing: a transition from an Age of Information to an Age of Form.

I used to think that the major challenge we face in the modern era is information overload. After all, the average human today is bombarded with a wealth of information that is vastly greater than what an educated man would even dream of a mere 50 years ago. But now I wonder if we should also be worrying about the glut of media we are expected to maneuver within.

The Information Age (which was between 1970 to 2010) was an age when content was king. Value was found in what you knew what, and what you were able to present. This was during an age when information was per-dominantly print and oral instruction. Sure, television was becoming ubiquitous, but it was conceivable for someone to go about their lives having never looked at a screen.

The same cannot be said from 2010 onward. With the advent of screens came the television, online video, serialized programmes, which adds to the plethora of physical mediums that we must digest today*. Curiously, the same content is often repeated in different media, to wildly different results. Hence, we have entered the Age of Form.

*Just off the top of my head, we have oral tradition, architecture, print, theatre, radio, television, online video, interactive media, social media, embedded media, corporate advertising…

And that says nothing about the internal medium itself: within each physical medium, you also have sub-divisions of media, called genres. Though there are some core similarities, a literary comedy operates very differently from television comedy. This is wrapped up with the additional layer of cultural nuances and issues.

I wonder how that kind of life impacts people, having to learn not only to understand each medium and genre, but also learn when and how to switch their interpretations to suit the media involved. If drowning in information was already an issue, imagine now also needing to be well-versed in different dialects of communication to digest each issue.

By the way, I’m nowhere near as clever to make some meta-commentary on how the fact I’m writing about this in “online print”.

Some examples below:

1. They say that satire translates very poorly to the visual space: Satires that are widely celebrated and accept in print and oral tradition tend to work very poorly on-screen, in visual format. So expect a lot of anger to be directed towards you if you decide to design a satire piece for video.

2. On the flip side, apologies rarely well in text: it feels insincere and lacks the emotional impact that the visual mediums can afford.

So why does this matter?

The average person in a first-world country is likely a celebrity in their own circle; they act in stories, create stories, appear in promotional images, and even do corporate persona management. Things that were once available only to the rich and famous, are now an every-day occurrence for your typical 13-year-old.

Welcome to the rise of the pro-sumer. Today, the line between creator and audience is very blurred as almost anyone can broadcast their messages via tools that are readily available to them. High-quality videography can now be obtained with a mid-range budget smartphone; microphones are cheap and plentiful; and there are countless online platforms that allows them to upload and publicize their images, for free.

Now, it’d be ironic for me to bemoan “young people these days”, since I myself am using these platforms to publish my own works. I like this reality where it is far easier for people to share their stories and their messages. There is value in hearing the perspectives of other people, especially when they can be consolidated into places where a consensus and discourse can be observed.

However, I think more and more, people need to learn that just saying “Context matters” is meaningless; the reason why context matters is because there are hidden rules and heuristics that we have all subconsciously accepted, and to elicit context is to highlight what those rules and heuristics are. And the biggest context wee should learn to be aware of is the environment in which your content is crafted.

After all, “the effects of the programme is incidental”; The medium is the message.