What are the components of Media Literacy?

 Narrowest meaning:  Reading ability – verbal texts  Fluent, critical reading ability  To be educated, cultured – ‘well read  Wider meaning - visual + media literacy:  Components of ability to ‘read’ visual images?  Relationship to diverse fields –e.g. art, design, film studies, photography?

 Encoding, transmission, reception, decoding + interpretation of visual messages  Our focus: analysis of visual phenomena - both content + function – mass communication process  Vision abilities:  Biological – optical + neurological capacities  Mental, emotional – responses to visual encounters  Interpretive – meaning we make of decoded information

 Visual Literacy: term first used – John Debes  Media Literacy: our cognitive skills deployed in the production, reception, interpretation, use and critique of visual imagery in the mass media

 Verbal Language:  Components – phonemes, morphemes, words,  Phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, genres  Systematically organised – ‘rules’ evolved over centuries  Is there a comparable visual language?  Visual Literacy (concept): underlying assumptions – Images comprise components that are analagous to the components of verbal language Shared norms + practices for construction of visual images

 Lines, colours, shapes, textures, tone  Lighting types  Focus  Perspective, depth  Composition  Long shots, medium shots, close ups  Camera/image angles

 Visual images – one set of signs  Semiotics – the study of signs  Key Terminology:  Signifier - the form/structure of a sign that communicates its idea  Signified – what the signifier refers to  Signification - the link between the expression and the idea

 Sign = Signifier → m – a – n word ‘man ’ Signified → idea of a man Signification: the link between the visual symbols of the written letters, combined to make a meaningful whole AND the concept of ‘man’ (which is part of a network, a system - e.g opposite of woman, male adult - not a child, human)

 Sign = Signifier → a rose man giving Signified → attraction/love a woman a rose

 Verbal Signs - most are arbitrary  No necessary link between signifier + referent  E.g. D-o-g h-o-n-d i-n-j-a  Visual Signs – many non-arbitrary  i.e. often some type of visual similarity between signifier + referent  but RELATIVE non-arbitrariness

 Many signs – more literal, more realistic than verbal signs  Can result in them seeming ‘obvious’, ‘natural’, easily accessible  Many people lack awareness of constructed nature + effects of such images  Visual Literacy: implies need for knowledge of this constructedness + understanding that ALL visual images are CODED

 Iconic - looks like its referent  Indexical - points to something, leaves a trace of the referent  Symbolic – abstract -learned association

 Denotative  Literal, ‘dictionary’ meaning  E.g. Rose - shrub with thorny stems and many blooms, colours ranging from white to blood red  Connotative  Associated meanings, product of life experience  Culturally shared + individually unique  E.g. Red Rose – symbol of passion, love  Individuals? Romance? Cliché?

 Sign combinations = codes  Metonymic  Grouping of signs  Prods reader – decode – associations/assumptions  Meaning from cumulative effect, clustering of signs ‘King Arthur’ by J. M. Cameron, c. 1874

 Synechdoche  Part Stands For Whole: Heads stand for whole body  Specific people stand for ‘Madonna + Child’ ‘The Holy Family’ by J.M. Cameron 1867

 Analogic  Something stands equally for something else  Code stimulates viewer to activate comparisons