Why is media literacy important for me as FCM student to have it?

Media literacy is all about learning. First of all, as an FCM student that considers media literacy is important, I could feel the importance through my assessment of most assignment. It makes me understand which media to be used for which assignment to convey such messages or ideas of mine. Other than that, it makes people thinks and ask question in order to understand. For instance, when you were looking at one of the famous artwork by one of the famous artist, at the first sight, you might not know what it was all about. Thus, you start thinking, and then you start asking question based on the artwork. As a n artist, you might not choose to use the direct way to present your ideas or messages through art. There are various ways. In my words, I think that if an artist’s artwork makes people think or even ask question, I think the artwork shall be a succeed. It is about creativity too as a creative person would think out of the box which do things that are unusual. To be creative is to be different from other people. 

About media literacy...

-the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms.

-uses an inquiry-based instructional model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, see, and read. 

-provides tools to help people critically analyze messages to detect propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public affairs programming 

-to understand how structural features (such as media ownership, or its funding model) affect the information presented. 

-enable people to be skillful creators and producers of media messages, both to facilitate an understanding as to the strengths and limitations of each medium, as well as to create independent media. 

-an expanded conceptualization of literacy. 

-By transforming the process of media consumption into an active and critical process, people gain greater awareness of the potential for misrepresentation and manipulation (especially through commercials and public relations techniques), and understand the role of mass media and participatory media in constructing views of reality.

source from: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and had been edited.

In my own words, it is about learning and gaining knowledge. It is important definitely. It is not only about listening or seeing, it's also about thinking and analysing.

Personal Reflection on this week lecture

For the lecture this week, I would it was quite interesting that the lecturer kept asking “yes or no” question and the reply from student is either no or silence. It was quite clear about the topic of “representation and stereotype”. Though it was still the same as usual with those boring looking slides, the lecturer really did quite a good job which she tried so hard to get into the group of “teenagers”. By the way, she kept asking whether she is “in” enough to be the lecturer or not. Ok… she isn’t that “out” I would say. She’s always willing to upgrade herself with the techs and fashion I think. Though I wasn’t concentrating for the most of the time, I still get what the lecturer was trying to bring out. And the video (as a desert after the boring main meal…) was interesting and damn cool. Hope to get more cool stuff week by week.

Personal Reflection on Media Culture Class

After the past few weeks of media culture class, I've found that there's nothing interesting (and I'm not saying that it's boring...) about the class overall. Compare with the classes in semester 1, the class is a little bit dull with just presentation slides for lecture session. I expect for some movie. Perhaps the syllabus for this semester isn't much about watching movies, but it will be much more interesting to have some in class.  

Example of media stereotype

Other than what have been said in the article given, on TV we can find some commercial that playing the role as stereotype in people life. For instance, when you ask a child of what to eat for lunch, I’m sure that the answer will be “KFC”, “Mc-Donald” or “Pizza Hut”. A lot of commercials are to sell their products. Hence, the products are advertised in an interesting and attractive way. So that people have the willing to buy. Commercials nowadays play role as parts of life as what is being shown on TV probably the first choice for those beginner users. The commercials are influencing people’s mind and keep telling the audience the same thing. The brand might just pop up when we are fed up in choosing which brand to consume. Or in another way, when people mention “Tupperware”, it directly relate us to the plastic container though it is just a name of container brand. “Pendrive” reminds us of the USB storage device though it is also one of the famous brands which came out with the initial design of USB storage device. It is not about how well you know the brand, it is about how well the brand sell their product and even name every similar product same as theirs.

What is media stereotype?

Media stereotypes are needed in life especially in the advertising, entertainment and news industries. It’s needed for an audience as wide as possible to quickly understand the information indicated. It is like something that reminds you of another thing. Such as cowboy is a stereotype of American heroes. It is a kind of representation or reflection of something to another thing. There is one thing I’ve seen in the article that we are told to read. “Repetition teaches the donkey”. This is a proverb telling that when you keep seeing something or hearing it, you will end up learning it and believing it. Your brain will be crowded with the information, either fake or true, that have seen through the media stereotype.

Do you often take what is on the Internet as truth without thinking much about it?

Can’t be denied that I often take what is on the internet as truth or just as references. When one is facing a question, he would post is on internet to find out the answer though it isn’t always the correct one. The “relationship” between man and internet is getting closer and closer nowadays which a man couldn’t live without it. Don’t you think it’s silly? (though, the same thing happen to me either.) We know that same information on the internet might be fake, we still rely on it. What’s the point? People are getting lazy and lazy. Lazy to think, lazy to look for information other than what’s on the net and even lazy to compare which is the truth. When we look back the time in older days, how human being look for information and how human being gather the information. They are always using the manual way to do so. As the recent generation, we couldn’t choose the manual way as we are fighting against the time. People need to be fast, to be effective in working and to be the pioneer of all. We are competing day by day. Day by day, technology is getting improved than before. Thus, we rely on the internet which we thought is reliable. Is that so? Are we actually lose our mind and become lazy to think? In older days, human invented computer. Nowadays, computer (technology) created our minds. It is silly to say that but it is true. Perhaps someday in future, computer will control our minds and even our living. Even myself is one the “victims”.