The Art of Media Creation
Why is media creation a critical component of media literacy?
As we learned from NAMLE, Media literacy is “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of media.” When looking at media we want to use an analytical lens to investigate the information and media we are digesting. However, the same principle must be applied when we ourselves are creating media. If we analyze media and don’t evaluate our own media creation, then we are not being media literate.
Media creation is a critical component of media literacy because we interpret the created media by being media literate. They need each other to survive.
Ask Questions
Asking questions of what we read online in addition to asking questions of our own work can improve the cycle of news.
On the contrary, media creation will not allow us to follow the rules of media literacy. In our society, many news companies and journalists aid in the addition of misinformation and disinformation in our news cycle. News that is hard to decipher the author or recognize source aids in our ability to become more media literate. Therefore, we must ask questions of all the media we consume.
Use your Brain
Analyzing media gives us something to practice on which works our brain muscles. We need to think critically and actively strive to “recognize biases in the media and how they may affect their perception of an event or issue.” If all news was true news, we wouldn’t need to be very good at being media literate.
Creation is Key
In the definition of media literacy, creation is one of the key components. They are directly related to one another. We must create to analyze and analyze what we create.
One way that aids in media literacy, is creating your own website which corporations do not control.
As Professor Dan suggests in his article, having a place which you own, creates many avenues that you can branch off of to create other media. Allowing you to take control of how the world sees you and your thoughts, without big corporation censoring your content on their own platforms.
