What is Media Literacy?

Throughout the ages, people have used various methods of communication and engagement with the masses. Never however, was there ever the opportunity to address the entire population as easily as it has become with the development of television, newspapers, radios and most notably the Internet. Media literacy has most notably provided everyone, no matter how famous or dull, with the ability to engage in the most controversial of topics and give the strangest of opinions freely. No problem can be considered strictly local anymore; whether it is a school shooting in the US or a set of revolutions in the Middle East, everyone is nowadays engaged in the changes happening in any corner of the world. Media literacy can even play a role in some not as straightforward fields like video gaming, music that doesn’t directly relate to political or social issues and controversies, perhaps even memes, gifs, stickers, vines… For example, there have been (and might still be) some attempts to use pop culture music, which is popular among teens nowadays, in education to appeal to young minds. The same is being done for video games, which by the way also suffers backlash due to correlations found between it and violence (specifically shootings). To sum it all up, Media Literacy works in essence to decode the various aspects of every day media and understand their underlying meanings and significances.