Importance of Media Literacy

Over the year’s media has a big impact to our society. We are surrounded by media. Each and every day people interacts
with media of many forms. Media plays very important role and has influence every aspect of our lives. It is considered
as the best source to know about the happenings in the world. Every day we spend 8 hours exposed to different forms
of medias, it entertains us, informs us and we get accumulated by it.

We as a society absorb media from a wide variety of forms such as television, radio, magazines, newspapers, billboards,
and internet. These are referred to as mass media because they communicate to a mass audience comprised of very
large number of people (Giddens.2009, p.724). Media literacy is the ability to know and understand how the mass media
works. This includes how they organized, how they produced their meanings and how they use them wisely. Media
literacy provides tools which help people analyze messages and offer them opportunities to broaden their experience of
media (European commission, 2007). Media literacy is the ability to use your mind in producing new ideas and
enhancing our critical thinking skills. It is important in our day to day lives to be able to process the information we are
presented with through various types of media and carry on in an intelligent way given the information we have.

Media literacy help us understand how things work. Media literacy also help us to understand. Media literacy is the
ability to know and understand how the mass media works. This includes how they are organized, how they produce
their meanings and how they use them wisely. A person who is media literate can clearly describe the role of media in
their lives. He or she understands the basics of various media and enjoys using them deliberately in a conscious way. He
or she has full recognition that protects them from being unnecessarily frightened and therefore has a full control of his
or her media experiences. Often, the media is lumped together as a single entity but in reality it is actually many forms
of communication like the newspapers, billboards, television, radio, magazines, video games, computer games and
videocassettes.

Media literacy helps people to be able to interpret and to make judgments. This results to skillful creators and producer
of information and media messages in one’s own way. The purpose of information literacy is to teach us on how to
engage in a digital society it teaches us how to inquire, use, think critically, understand, create and communicate.
Information literacy is important because it promote entry to information and knowledge and building knowledge
societies. Information literacy also produces careful and critical thinkers.

Therefore, information Literacy is very important in every individual’s life. Information itself is very important. It also
makes the person understand and recognize a certain information given. This information literacy is also a very big help
since this helps a person to know whether the information are facts or not. It also helps make easy to get news and
other important and reliable information disseminated by the media. It is such a big help especially to those students
and working persons. It also makes every individual updated in whatever is happening in the surroundings. It makes the
people more alert to what will happen. Moreover, it is important to use information effectively and efficiently.

In my personal views, media literacy is very important it empowers us to be critical thinkers and makers, effective
communicators and active citizens. And being media literate means being able to access, analyze, and evaluate
information, which we receive through media. Being media literate means being able to create media messages and to
use the technology tools available to us. It means being able to think critically and speak confidently.