Media Literacy: A Reader

by Donaldo Macedo, Shirley R. Steinberg

Media A Reader produces a critical understanding of media culture designed to help students develop the ability to interpret media as well as understand the ways they themselves consume and affectively (emotionally) invest in media. Such an appreciation encourages both critical thinking and self-analysis, as students begin to realize that everyday decisions are not necessarily made freely and rationally. While we strongly believe that humans exercise agency, we understand that there are social, cultural, and political forces that affect agency. In this context our conception of media literacy analyzes the ways our everyday decisions are encoded and inscribed by emotional and bodily commitments relating to the production of desire and mood, all of which leads, in Noam Chomsky’s famous phrase, to the «manufacture of consent.» These complex pedagogical and ideological issues demand rigorous skills including questioning, analyzing, interpreting, and meaning-making. Media A Reader is a comprehensive collection of essays that is sorely needed, as most of the academic work in the area is written not for an introductory audience, but for scholars in the field. It will shape the agenda in media literacy for years to come.

Genres: Nonfiction

710 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Shanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I particularily enjoyed:
Ch. 5 - Critical Media Literacy for the Twenty-First Century: Taking Our Entertainment Seriously
Ch. 35 - Just Like Lizzie: Consumerism, Essentialism, and the Domestication of Rebellion in Disney's Lizzie McGuire
Ch. 36 - Television's Mature Women: A Changing Media Archetype: From Bewitched to The Sopranos
Ch. 40 - We're Here, We're Queer...but Have You Dealt with It?
Ch. 50 - Punk Rock, Hip Hop, and the Politics of Human Resistance: Reconstituting the Social Studies Through Critical Media Literacy