CMAT 352 - Media Literacy
Course description and objectives
This course will introduce a variety of ways of understanding the interactions between media and culture. Having grown up in a media-saturated world, we have all come to incorporate media into our understanding of society and the events of the world in a variety of ways, some more consciously than others. We see some media as a vehicle for entertainment, some as a factual source for news about current events, some as advertising, some as education, and some we think we've learned to ignore. While we are all familiar with the methods of consuming media, however, it is essential for communications professionals to understand media - their history, the methods of production the creation of meaning and social factors that influence media. This requires that we understand how the notion of literacy can be broadened to encapsulate both the reception and the creation of messages, as well as the technologies at work.
We will survey three areas of media literacy: the development and significance of media technologies in history (the medium), the production and content of various media (the message), and the social, economic, and political factors that influence media and media messages (the environment). We were all taught to read books when we were young, but how did we learn to watch television? We all understand how to type a paper on a computer and get the computer to send it to a printer, but by what process do we make sense out of hyperlinked environment we've come to know as the Web? We all know how to find something on the Internet, but do we understand the relationship between what's happening in the industry and what appears in the movie theatre next summer? We all consider ourselves literate, but what, exactly does being literate mean? Where does our literacy stop and how can we extend our literacy to make ourselves knowledgeable consumers and producers of the media ocean in which we swim?
By the end of the course, the aware, media-sensitive parts of your brain should have expanded by at least 62.3%. Already surrounded by media, you should go away from this course with a more conscious and critical understanding of the message with which you are bombarded daily. Thoughts about the key questions of media literacy - who created the message, how, and why? - should reveal themselves to you with a new immediacy, as if you had just acquired an extra sense. And you should have enough historical and theoretical background to begin to answer them.
Pay attention.
Required Texts
Handouts: most are on the Langsdale Library site, password: Scrabble (http://webreserves.ubalt.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=462)
Seeing Is Believing - Arthur Asa BergerAssignments
There are two weekly writing assignments:
1. For every reading assignment there is a concurrent writing assignment. For every reading assignment you should spend at least fifteen minutes writing a response to what you have read. You may write about anything in the piece you liked, didn't like, didn't understand, understood, agreed with, disagreed with, or generally had questions or comments about. If you find the reading difficult to understand summarizing here may help. The purpose of this assignment is to get you started thinking about and interacting with what you have read. This will help you arrive in class prepared to discuss the readings. I will collect what you write, only to see that you are keeping up with the reading. Do not worry about misinterpretation of the text or any other writing problems; it is probable that you will not fully understand what you have read until you start wrestling with it. You may handwrite this assignment if you wish. You submit this assignment electronically as a Word attachment, it must arrive in my mailbox no later than 11 AM on the day it is due. Late reading responses will not be accepted and will not be counted.
2. Regular weekly media questions will ask you to monitor both your media habits and the media themselves. I will send these questions via email through the class listserv. You will then email your response to the question back to the class listserv. Do not send your response as an attachment, write it into the body of the email. You should read all the class responses and comment on at least one of them, sending your comment back to the list. Every step of this media assignment is a requirement, if you do only part of it you will get credit for none of it. You must email your reply to the weekly question by 10 AM on Monday and your response to a classmate by 3 PM on Wednesday. Late weekly assignments (or responses) are not acceptable and will not be counted. I am aware that this assignment generates a lot of email, please do not complain.Tentative schedule
Handouts (H) can be accessed on the Langsdale Library site. You will be informed of any changes in schedule. Additional assignments will be made in class.
Date Topic Read for/Due Today
1/29 What is media? What is literacy?
1/30 Definitions of Media literacy H: Meyrowitz, Lewis /Jhally
2/5 McLuhan: media & society H: McLuhan, pp. 233-269
2/7 more media & society
2/12 Understanding media H: McLuhan, pp. 149-188
2/14 Marshall McLuhan - who was he? movie - come on time!
2/19 McLuhan - Making the whole from the pieces
2/21 Who made these categories? H: Bowker & Star: Intro, ch. 1
2/26 And how do we use them? H: Gladwell
2/28 What do you attend to? Berger: Introduction
3/4 How is meaning made? Berger: Chapter 1
3/6 No class
3/11 Semiotics: what is it? Berger: Chapter 2
3/13 Look around you Berger: Chapter 3
3/18-20 Spring break (and equinox) - no class
3/25 Photographs, what's true? Berger: Chapter 5
3/27 are
4/1 Movies: does popcorn interfere with understanding? Berger: Chapter 6
4/3 you
4/8 Television: Are you watching enough? Berger: Chapter 7
4/10 paying
4/15 Computers: how do they work? Berger: Chapter 9
4/17 attention?
4/22 Presentations (today is Earth Day, remember your Mother)
4/24 Presentations
4/29 Presentations
5/1 Presentations
5/6 Presentations
5/8 Presentations
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