Responsible Media Literacy

The World is turning, the times they are a’ changing and “the news” is no longer as relevant as it was decades ago.

There is no longer TEH news — as if there were something that might qualify as newsworthy … the way it was in previous times:

I know it’s true — oh, so true — because I saw it on TV

John Fogarty, “I saw it on TV”

Today, everyone can decide for themselves what qualifies as worthy of attention (or not). Something is worthy of your attention — not only do you get to decide that, you must decide.

You cannot pay attention to everything, you can only pay attention to some things.

Today, media literacy is no longer about paying attention to the news. Today, media literacy is about choosing which information to pay attention to.

Almost every issue every individual faces today is either personal and subjective or a global phenomenon. [1] There is no longer much of a case to be made for nationalist agendas.

Individuals can no longer hide behind the group-think of regional mass movements. Today, individuals must practice responsible media literacy: to be a literate person today means taking full responsibility for the choices made in the selection of media sources. When someone asks why an individual chooses to pay attention to a particular media source, the individual who cannot justify the choices made should be considered irresponsible — and perhaps even illiterate. [2]

[1] Yet some global phenomena may be particular and distributed. I feel I need to revisit this in more detail — insofar as the regular interpretation of “global” as “present everywhere” needs to be tempered somewhat … perhaps something more like “globally present, albeit in a distributed fashion, at a quite diluted concentration“.

[2] For example: one justification which I would consider to be valid might be “because the media source is “rational media” (see e.g. “Introduction to Rational Media: Content vs. Container” )