What is the meaning of media literacy? Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media in all its forms. Go more in depth with this article.

Imagine a world where you receive thousands of messages each day. These messages are not only from your friends and family, but from strangers who want to sell you something. Maybe the strangers want to sell you one of their products or services, or maybe they want to sell you ideas they believe in. Imagine if these messages were hidden in plain sight, but you weren’t aware of them.

This world isn’t one that needs to be imagined, but is in fact the world in which we live in. The strangers we just imagined aren’t strangers at all, but instead familiar faces, phrases, and logos we know and love. The strangers come in the form of advertisements, television programs, newspaper articles, and even musical lyrics.

These messages from strangers we’re imagining come to us in a form called media. Media messages are all around us and impossible to avoid. Each day, we’re bombarded by thousands of these messages, whether we realize it or not. They might be as obvious as a television commercial or television program, or as subtle as a bottle cap or an internet article. In fact, even this site is considered a media message.

With so many media messages hitting us from every angle, it’s important to realize that there is an intended purpose for each of them. The people responsible for the message you’re viewing use creative techniques to get your attention. They make you become interested in their message, although you may not have originally paid attention to it.

This is why it’s so important for us to not accept these media messages at face value, but instead to be critical of each and every one before accepting it. This is because although many media messages may seem harmless, some messages may pose a threat to you individually, or to society as a whole.

Media literacy gives us the skills to analyze media, and decide whether we will accept the messages being offered, or reject them.