United States

About this Country

Media Literacy in the United States
By Sherri Hope Culver, Renee Hobbs and Amy Jensen

The authors acknowledge the difficulty of capturing an adequate picture of the past, present and future state of media literacy education in the United States, a country of 300 million people, with more than 4,000 colleges and universities and over 75 million children in a highly decentralized system of elementary and secondary schools. The information below is provided as an overview, but is not meant to stand as a comprehensive review of media literacy in the US.

What is the Origin of Media Literacy in the United States?

There are many ways to look at the intellectual progenitors who have contributed the theory and practice of media literacy education. Media literacy education (MLE) is a highly contextualized activity that takes many forms in many different cultural and learning environments. Many American educators view media literacy as an extension of the practice of rhetoric. Its roots also come from the emergence of film as a tool for teaching and learning, particularly in the development of language, critical analysis and literacy skills. The threads of MLE history are reflected in some of the fragmentation and dissonance embedded in the issues and arguments that still circulate as “great debates” in our field (Hobbs 2008; 1998). This paper reviews briefly only a few threads of the historical fabric of media literacy education in the US.

Early influences
The 'critical questions' that are so valued by media literacy educators originate in the instructional practices developed in ancient Greece, where we learned that knowledge can be developed through questioning practices that deepen analysis and reflection. When American philosopher and education theorist John Dewey explained that learners’ lived experiences and concerns about their own day-to-day environment are at the root of the meaning-making process, he was writing at a time when children of the early 20th century were beginning to make their first regular visits to the nickelodeon theatres of the big cities.

Media literacy education has an intersecting history with technology in education. In an issue of Visual Education from 1922, a teacher from Indianapolis describes the use of motion pictures as a means to teach writing to Grade 8 students. Her detailed description of her learning outcomes includes: “to give practice in English composition, to develop standards by which to judge motion pictures” and to promote “appreciation for the technique of the motion picture as contrasted from the play and the story” (Orndorff 1921, 11).

Mass communication approaches
By the second half of the 20th century, the field of communication began to develop in American universities and influence the practice of media literacy education in the context of K-12 education. Many educators were influenced by cross-disciplinary work in the humanities and social sciences by scholars like Walter Ong, Louis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Roland Barthes, Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. In the U.S., McLuhan’s meteoric rise to popularity influenced the prevailing discourses of English education, in particular, leading to the development of high school textbooks exploring advertising, popular music and film, for example.

When the film literacy movement arrived in the United States, borrowing many ideas from work by educators and film scholars in Great Britain, it emphasized the development of abilities that enable children to have an understanding of the techniques and ‘language’ of film. Some saw this as a way to raise children’s standards of taste and quality while others saw this as a means “to protect children from the distracting influences of Hollywood by teaching them to understand how the cinema worked” (Alvarado, Gutch, Wollen 1987). Media literacy education was understood as a ‘cognitive defense’ against the most overt and disturbing forms of sensationalism and propaganda pouring out of the rapidly growing culture industries. In the 1950s and 60s, the ‘film grammar’ approach to MLE developed, where educators began to show commercial films to children, having them learn a new terminology consisting of words such as fade, dissolve, truck, pan, zoom, and cut. Films were connected to literature and history. To understand the constructed nature of film, students explored plot development, character, mood and tone.

During the 1970s and 1980s, attitudes about mass media and mass culture began to shift yet again, moving away from the long-held position that media and entertainment culture was “reshaping the human personality along the lines imposed by technological domination” (Aronowitz & Giroux 1991) and thereby needed to be hated, feared and rejected. Around the English-speaking world, educators began to realize the need to “guard against our prejudice of thinking of print as the only real medium that the English teacher has a stake in” (Hazard & Hazard 1961, 133). A whole generation of educators began to not only acknowledge film and television as new, legitimate forms of expression and communication, but also explored practical ways to promote serious inquiry and analysis --- in higher education, in the family, and in K-12 and afterschool contexts.

Media making
In the 1960s, educators began exploring how to use the new portable video recorders for creative, expressive and educational purposes (Moody 1999). There was a significant DIY (“do it yourself”) movement resulting from advances in video technology that seemed to offer everyone the promise of becoming a communicator. Making a film not only “can help a child learn how films are made or why they are art, but can help him to learn how to manipulate images in his head, how to think with them, and how to communicate through them” (Worth 1981, 122). More than just teaching filmmaking, what many hoped the field could achieve was some sustained exploration of the deeper relationship between symbol systems, culture and cognition (Salomon, 1979). After all, human cognitive and emotional processes cannot be conceptualized without a careful examination of the variety of symbolic modes through which individuals become members of their culture. This idea has led to scholars to conceptualize MLE as a transcurricular practice that “dissolves the borders between the disciplines in the school” and links the “school and life worlds of children and young people outside school” (Krucsay 2008, 198).

But this idea met with some resistance from those who worried that a focus only on ‘writing’ the media would diminish the power of developing ‘reading’ skills. Educators saw that student excitement about media production quickly waned when the vast effort required to create a film became apparent. And what was actually being learned from all that time spent making a film? Scholars like Len Masterman (1985) believed that students’ sense of ‘inferiority’ was reinforced because they inevitably compared their own little productions to those of commercial media. He urged educators to avoid the “technicist trap” (26), the reductive practice that turns media literacy education into a set of technical operations--- just learning how to use the tools. Instead, Masterman argued, media literacy educators need to unpack the complex economic relationships that underpin the structure of media and culture industries, because questions about authors and audiences, messages and meanings, and representations and realities are always constrained by economic issues that reproduce and maintain unequal power relationships.

Focus on inquiry
Developed initially in the 20th century from work by education scholars like Lev Vygotsky and Paolo Freire, literacy is conceptualized as a socio-cultural practice that embodies, reflects and refracts power relations. Postman and Weingartner (1969) conceptualize one form of inquiry learning through describing how it alters the nature of the authority relationship between teacher and student: (1) the teacher rarely tells students a personal opinion about a particular social or political issue; (2) does not accept a single statement as an answer to a question; (3) encourages student-student interaction as opposed to student-teacher interaction, and generally avoids acting as a mediator or judging the quality of ideas expressed; and (4) lessons develop from the responses of students and not from a previously determined "logical" structure. Such approaches depend on activating student motivation and engagement through the exploration of issues that are perceived to be relevant and meaningful to learners.

Citizenship training
During the 1970s, media literacy education began to be recognized as a critical practice of citizenship, part of the exercise of democratic rights and civil responsibilities. Offering considerable transparency on the workings of both media industries and government agencies, in the United States, a generation of educators and activists were inspired by people like former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson. His book, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set in 1970, denounced media’s underrepresentation and negative depiction of African-Americans and Hispanics and encouraged readers to demand changes from local and national news organizations. Educators, filmmakers and media professionals began calling for the kind of transparency in media institutions that enables people to “see how the sausage is made,” challenging the dominant representations presented in the media—including stereotyped representation of age, race, occupation, social class, gender, and sexual orientation.

But by the mid-1990s, however, concerns began to emerge about the conflation of media activism and media literacy education. At the 1997 Media and Democracy event, hundreds of participants loudly booed Walter Anderson, editor of Time Magazine, disabling an opportunity for dialogue and signaling the distrust and scorn many attendees held for the mass media. At the same event, when Neil Postman offered a sharp critique of the “radical correctness” of the group, a contentious debate erupted (Wehmeyer 2000, 96), reflecting one of the ‘great debates’ in media literacy: “Should media literacy have a more explicit political or ideological agenda?” (Hobbs 1998).

Ongoing tensions about the purpose and function of media literacy education
In 2000, members of the U.S. media literacy community split over their disagreements over a ‘great debate’ issue of whether MLE should seek the financial support of media industries. Two groups emerged: Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) and the Alliance for a Media Literate America (now the National Association for Media Literacy Education, NAMLE). Today, the field still experiences tensions between educators, activists, artists, civic, political, governmental, media and business leaders regarding the differing roles and functions of MLE in the context of ideological and economic issues related to media and communications technologies. Many of the following important perspectives still ignite controversy.

• There are the political and governmental leaders who see MLE as an “alternative to censorship,” an opportunity to move government out of the business of media regulation.
• There are media literacy educators who push their political agendas onto students, offering their critique of capitalism as gospel and orchestrating student ‘voice’ in a mandated form of ‘service learning,’ coercively enrolling students into a political action project, telling them what to think instead of encouraging them to think for themselves.
• There are those whose opposition to ‘big media’ propels their participation in media literacy education, who believe that the media literacy movement has stepped away from its critical focus and lost its edge, teaching aesthetic and text-analysis skills but not “creating an engaged student who has the capacity to undertake social action” (Quin & McMahon 2007, 229).
• There are others who worry that MLE increases alienation and promotes cynicism, robbing students “of their sense of focus and ambition as it relentlessly drives home the dour political-economic magnitude of the media machine” (Zanker, 2007, 53).
• And there are those who are troubled by their discovery that MLE can activate, among some students, an outpouring of transgressive moments as in student-created videos that feature parodic, horrific, grotesque and forbidden content, sometimes involving animal cruelty, violence, sexuality, gender and racial stereotypes, “which push us to question how comfortable we are when the curriculum becomes child-centered” (Grace & Tobin 1998, 45).
• These complex tensions are part of the media literacy “journey to empowerment.” Individuals, groups, business and civil society all play a role in this journey, managing the benefits, risks and harms of full participation in mass media, popular culture and digital media (Frau-Meigs 2008, 73). To be truly literate means being able to use the dominant symbol systems of the culture for personal, aesthetic, cultural, social and political goals—and as a result, respect for personal autonomy becomes paramount within a pluralistic understanding of media literacy education (Masterman, 1985).

How is media literacy defined?

The media literacy community has developed definitions of media literacy that continue to evolve. In December 1992, twenty-five representative leaders of the media literacy movement met for a National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy organized by the Aspen Institute. During this conference, a definition for media literacy emerged. Media literacy “is the ability of a citizen to access, analyze, and produce information for specific outcomes.” Over the years, this definition has evolved and shifted. While there is not one designated definition for media literacy in the US, it is commonly stated that media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages using the wide variety of communication tools now available. Media literacy empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound. It is the skillful application of literacy skills to media and technology messages.

Media literacy educators make a distinction between media literacy and media literacy education (sometimes called media education). Media literacy is a complex set of competencies, while media literacy education is the constellation of instructional practices and educational theories that support the development of media literacy in learners.

How is media literacy implemented?

Decentralized approach
Because of the decentralized nature of the education system in the US, media literacy education developed as the result of groups of advocates in school districts, states or regions who lobbied for its inclusion in the curriculum. There is no central authority making nationwide curriculum recommendations and each of the fifty states has numerous school districts, each of which operates with a great degree of independence from one another. Nearly all fifty states include media literacy in their state curriculum standards, frequently in the Language Arts curriculum, social sciences or health education curriculum. A breakdown of each state's standards and the incorporation of media literacy can be found at the online site, The Media Literacy Clearinghouse. Additionally, an increasing number of school districts have begun to develop school-wide programs, elective courses, and other after-school opportunities for media analysis and production.

But there is considerable variation at the practice level, since school districts develop and implement their own curriculum and instructional plans that may or may not match with state standards. More than half of the 50 states report that they define media literacy or information literacy and have curriculum standards for media literacy. Twenty-one states report that the media literacy standards are embedded within various content areas, whereas, nine states report that the standards stand alone. Thirteen states report that creating media literacy standards will be addressed in the future, while only six states report that they are not planning to create media literacy standards. For states planning to create media literacy standards, most states report that they are in the early stages of review and do not have specific timeframes for completing these standards. Seven states report that they assess media literacy standards: New Hampshire, South Dakota, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Hawaii.

Support from teachers
American teachers are generally supportive of media literacy education, even if they are sometimes unable to implement it due to lack of training and lack of institutional support. A survey of educators conducted in 2006 found that 60% of educators report that their schools place less emphasis on media literacy than they should. The vast majority of teachers say they learn about media literacy on their own, with no opportunity for professional development.

Organizational capacity
Several organizations have developed to serve the media literacy community over the years. The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) started in 1997 and serves as the primary professional membership organization for media literacy educators in the US. NAMLE supports efforts to bring media literacy to all education environments. (NAMLE was known initially as the Partnership for Media Education and later as the Alliance for a Media Literate America). However, because NAMLE is run almost entirely by an all-volunteer board the types and size of projects it may implement are limited.

The Center for Media Literacy was founded in 1989 by Elizabeth Thoman and has been a pioneering force in the development and practice of media literacy in the US. The Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) is a network of people involved in teaching media education and supporting media reform. Numerous other organizations support media literacy as a component of their work, including the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the National Forum on Information Literacy, the Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse University, Project Look Sharp at Ithaca College and the Media Education Lab at Temple University, among others.

Research
More than two dozen doctoral dissertations have been published on media literacy education in the past five years. There is a growing recognition of the body of theoretical and empirical research that is emerging from the fields of communication, education and public health. The Journal of Media Literacy Education, an open-access peer-reviewed scholarly journal supported by the National Association for Media Literacy Education represents a continuing effort to develop the theory and practice of media literacy education. A number of scholars are involved in formulating, creating, refining and testing curriculum theory and instructional methods, practices and pedagogy in ways that connect to students’ experience with mass media, popular culture and digital media, supporting the development of their critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication skills.

What other literacies share common interest with media literacy?

Media literacy has long been distinguishable from its older siblings, visual literacy and information literacy. Since 2000, there has been an explosion of new terms, including cyberliteracy, information literacy, new media literacy, and others. Many of media literacy’s core principles have been used with a slightly different or narrower focus. Several high visibility groups have developed approaches that share some of the key principles of media literacy but diverge distinctively in their lack of attention to the texts of mass media and popular culture:

• The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is an organization with a mission to serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders. The specific skill sets listed by the organization includes “information and communication skills” or variously “information and media literacy skills.”
• Changes in the newspaper industry have brought many former newspaper editors and reporters to educational institutions prompting a focus on news literacy. The News Literacy Project, started in 2008 by former LA Times reporter Alan C. Miller, puts journalists in K-12 schools to learn about the practices of good journalism and inspire confidence and respect for the service that journalists provide to society. Similarly, Howard Schneider, a former Newsday editor, has received $1.7 million from the John S. and James L Knight Foundation to develop a course in news literacy for undergraduates at Stonybrook University, attempting to reverse the traditional vocational preparation approach to teaching about the media at the college and university level.
• The National Forum on Information Literacy, started in 1989, is a group of librarians who meet to exchange information about “information literacy, the constellation of skills revolving around information research and use.”
• The New Media Literacies project (NML), a research initiative based within USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and started by Henry Jenkins, reflects a foundation in media literacy when it explores how to best “equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.”

The concept of technology literacy or digital literacy is still emerging. In the US, for example, the term ICT literacy is generally unknown. However, in June 2009, the House passed the Department of Education, Enhancing Education Through Technology program, known as H.R. 780 or the EETT program. The primary goal of the program, commonly known as the “Ed Tech” program, is to improve student academic achievement through the use of technology in schools. Because these funds may be used for Internet safety education, it is being referred to as the Student Internet Safety Act of 2009. It is designed to ensure that every student is technologically literate by the end of eighth grade—and encourage the integration of technology with teacher training.

What contextual factors shape media literacy education in the United States?

Since the need for media literacy is a direct reflection of the pervasive role of media and technology in our lives, market factors, social factors, and policy/regulatory factors affect the development of media literacy in the US. Their direct impact on media literacy is mainly through curriculum content; as market factors, regulatory factors and other factors change, so too does the media literacy curriculum aiming to educate on those very topics. This is true whether the media literacy education is taking place in a formal education setting, such as a classroom, or an informal setting, such as an afterschool enrichment program or online game. Media literacy educators stay informed about the ever-changing shifts and changes in the field and incorporate those changes into the key messages and critical thinking activities utilized. The paragraphs below provide an overview of some of the factors for each of these areas.

Market factors
The media industry in the US is dominated by six global media companies: News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, General Electric (GE) and CBS. Issues of media ownership and consolidation have been key to the media reform debate for many years. Recent news of the acquisition of NBC by Comcast will shift this power list and bring the media consolidation debate to the forefront once again. Media literacy education has traditionally included an exploration and understanding of media ownership and the ways in which business practices impact consumer choice, consumer cost, news content, entertainment content, broadband access, and other services.

Social factors
The United States is a highly pluralistic society, characterized by high levels of ethnic and racial diversity. Culturally, there is a high degree of respect for capitalism, wealth and the free market. Culturally, Americans are ambivalent about the appropriate role of federal, state and local governments in daily life. Americans treasure the pursuit of happiness and freedom of expression. Many efforts at media regulation are resisted because of cultural beliefs about the dangers of government control over message systems in society.

Media products are the second largest export product of the United States and Americans are generally proud of the quality of media products available in the marketplace. Americans watch about four hours of television per day. Celebrity culture, where athletes, actors and musicians receive stunningly high salaries for their purported talents, is a dominant cultural force in society and most Americans are familiar with the actions of numerous such public figures.

As a nation of immigrants, there is a cultural priority placed on hard work and ambition, with the goal of achieving “the American dream.” Minorities, classified as those of any race other than non-Hispanic, single-race whites, currently constitute about a third of the U.S. population, according to Census figures. But by 2042, they are projected to become the majority, making up more than half the population. By 2050, 54 percent of the population will be minorities. As a result of our nation’s perspectives on pluralism and respect for diversity, media literacy educators pay enormous attention to the concept of representation, looking carefully at how media representations (especially concerning gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation) are presented in news, advertising and entertainment media.

Regulatory Factors
Numerous regulations impact the US media industry and a discussion of these regulations is typically included in media literacy education when reflecting on media ownership, minority representation and the availability of news and information in a democracy. The primary federal regulators of US telecommunications policy are the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA). Secondary federal agencies include the Department of Education, the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, Copyright Office, Rural Utilities Service, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Federal Election Commission. These administrative agencies of the US Government can enforce rules, resolve disputes under its rules, grant authorizations, undertake studies and issue reports.

The central statute affecting media and telecommunications policy is the Communications Act of 1934. It is this statute that recommended establishing the FCC to regulate interstate and international communications by radio, TV, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC is responsible to Congress and balances the constitutional Freedom of the Press with regulatory necessities. As the primary federal telecommunications regulator, the FCC reviews spectrum policy, telecommunications policy, competition issues, access for disabled users, preservation and advancement of universal service, national broadband policy and other timely issues as needed. Five Commissioners, appointed by the President and serving five-year terms, direct the FCC. (FCC.gov)

The FCC sets mass media policy by drafting rules on media ownership, media consolidation, emergency alert systems, equal employment opportunities and content rules. Although the FCC is not specifically a content regulator, its activities often impact content when aiming to protect audiences (especially children) from inappropriate content. Those content rules include rules on; commercial advertising to children, contests and promotions, obscenity and indecency rules, political content, sponsorship identification, video-news-releases and an ever-evolving list of timely digital communication issues.

The Children’s Television Act of 1990 was the first FCC regulation specifically devoted to children’s media. The 1990 Act limited the number of minutes of commercial time during children’s programming and required a clear separation between commercial content and program content.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 updated the 1934 Act primarily by loosening regulations restricting ownership of multiple media outlets by a single owner. The 1996 Act also strengthened the Children Television Act by adding several accountability measures, such as a requirement for local television stations to broadcast three hours of educational/informational programming per week, identified by an “E/I” on screen.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was enacted in 1998 and requires certain websites to implement specific procedures (such as “verifiable parental consent”) before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under age thirteen.

The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was enacted in 2000 and addresses concerns about access to offensive content over the Internet on school and library computers. The Act imposes requirements on any school or library that receives funding support for Internet access or internal connections from the e-rate program.

Although lacking the punitive bite of a fine or other measure, the media industry itself has developed several self-regulations. These include the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) guidelines on advertising to children, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings for movies, television content descriptors for individual television programs, video game ratings from the Entertainment Software Rating Board, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) voluntary labeling (Parental Advisory Labeling System) on music.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) had a tremendous impact on media literacy education (and teaching in general) after its adoption in 1998 because it restricts a teachers’ ability to create a set of digital clips that feature just the parts of a movie they may want to use. The DMCA made it illegal to bypass the CSS encryption technology used in DVDs. The CSS technology makes it impossible to copy an excerpt. However, it is legal for teachers to create and use film clip compilations. According to U.S. Copyright law, the doctrine of fair use (Section 107) enables people to make legal, non-infringing use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes. This reality is what led Professor Renee Hobbs to testify before the U.S. Copyright Office on May 6, 2009, on behalf of K-12 teachers and students, asking them to unlock the power of film for education (Hobbs 2009). Along with film professors, representatives of the American Library Association and other university library groups, Hobbs has asked the Copyright Office to issue a special exemption that would enable both teachers and students to circumvent CSS technology to make clip compilations for media literacy education.

With the explosive growth of digital technologies and online access, most of the governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations listed above are developing policies, guidelines, recommendations and talking points on new issues, such as net neutrality, broadband access, spectrum for wireless communication, predatory online issues, and media ownership.

Every regulatory factor has an impact on media literacy education, but in October 2009 the FCC distributed a “notice of inquiry” that specifically requested comment submissions on the issue of media literacy education for children. It is believed that the FCC will issue a report setting forth guidelines for children’s media and media literacy sometime in 2010.

Other stakeholders
A number of organizations outside of government and the media business affect the media industry and media literacy. These include; industry trade associations (i.e. National Association of Broadcasters; National Cable Television Association), public interest groups (i.e. Free Press, Electronic Freedom Frontier, Consumer Federation of America), the trade press (i.e. Media Week) and general press (i.e. New York Times, Wall Street Journal) and the public itself.

Foundations, both public and private, also support media literacy by funding policy review reports, research and symposiums. One such report specifically impacting media literacy policy is the Knight Commission Report released in 2009 titled, The Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. This report specifically cites media literacy as a vital need stating a community is an informed community when, “Digital and media literacy are widely taught in schools, public libraries and other community centers.” (Knight Foundation, 2009) Similarly, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has developed an $80 million initiative in “digital literacy,” but it is focused on understanding young people’s use of digital media and does not directly address the practice of media literacy education in the context of K-12 schooling.

Technology factors
There is substantial current interest in understanding what the Internet and digital media can potentially offer in the way of creativity, learning and social connectedness. However, there is limited support for technology in education spending in President Obama's stimulus package, which provides $650 million to be distributed over the next two years. Technology-in-schools advocates say it would take vastly more -- $9.9 billion -- to fully wire all U.S. schools. Critics, including many media literacy educators, fear a repeat of the ineffective and cyclical process well-documented by Cuban (2001; 1986), where the passion for the latest technologies and tools outstrips school administrators’ interest in the development of curriculum content or teachers’ or students’ knowledge and skills.

There has been quite a bit of hype in popular culture telling adults that children and teens are actively creating content online by sharing their writing, video, music, and photography. But what is the reality? Neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults, since creative activity is related to similar factors as it was in previous times: a person’s socioeconomic status. In the United States, only about 27% of the adult population completes college or university (U.S. Census 2003). Students who have at least one parent with a graduate degree are significantly more likely to create content, either online or offline, than others. “While it may be that digital media are leveling the playing field when it comes to exposure to content, engaging in creative pursuits remains unequally distributed by social background” (Hargittai & Walejko 2009, 256).

The focus on teaching technology skills and the gap between parents, teachers and children and young people regarding perceptions of activity has substantial implications for media literacy educators. When students say they use the Internet, they are referring to a set of behaviors totally different than those that teachers activate when they use the Internet. Because of this disconnect, both scholars and educators sometimes overestimate young people’s creative production skills in ways that shortchange the learning process. Educators may launch their students into a media production project, believing students to be more familiar with the use of digital media for research and multimedia composition than they actually are. They may initiate an exploration of the content teens place on Facebook or MySpace in order to explore issues of identity and self-representation, only to find students resistant to the process of interrogating and examining these practices.

“The supposed existence of a digital generation has had an impact on education, as distance-learning corporations with bells-and-whistles technology get public attention while traditional classroom teaching is ignored,” as Vaidhyanathan explains it. He quotes a colleague who teaches in a college writing program, noting her point that we face a real danger if “what passes for 'media literacy' now is often nothing more than teaching kids to make prepackaged PowerPoint presentations” (Vaidhyanathan 2008, 7). While media literacy educators have a powerful set of conceptual tools to deepen and enrich public discourse about technology, contemporary culture and education, examples like this demonstrate that there is still work to be done to assure that critical thinking skills and core media literacy principles are included whenever “tool competence” is part of the curriculum. One positive example is a new emphasis on ‘digital citizenship,’ a concept deeply allied with media literacy education and one that is beginning to replace older conceptualization of Internet safety (with its simplistic focus on predators and bullying) with an emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of individuals and groups as communicators on the Internet and in real life.

One of the most ironic facts of life for media literacy educators in the US today is that while they have more access to mass media, popular culture and digital technology content than ever before, there is less ability to make educational use of it. Consider, for example, the high school English teacher who wanted to integrate media literacy into his classroom way back in 1994. At that time, he used his home VCR and a blank VHS tape to tape a movie, TV show, news program, documentary or a commercial off the air. It was an easy way to bring a wide range of relevant, high-interest video content into school for classroom use.

In 2009, this teacher may have a DVR machine at home, which allows him to record and store TV shows for future home viewing, but unless he has the most expensive of machines, he can’t make a DVD copy of programs to take into the classroom. The demise of VHS means many films are becoming unavailable to the public (Kaufman 2008). In affluent schools, teachers may have access to a subscription-based service where short clips of educational films are available. College and university teachers can and do make productive use of You Tube in teaching media literacy. But those who work in elementary and secondary education can rarely (if ever) make use of You Tube—it is one of many forms of video content that are nearly always blocked by the school’s mandatory Internet filtering software. As a result, media literacy education suffers. Educators often cannot access in their education settings the dynamic array of video content that their students can (and do) view at home.

Learning factors
Media literacy educators in the United States have a stronger sense of consensus about the core values and instructional practices of media literacy education than in the past. In 2006, the media literacy community came together, under leadership by Faith Rogow, Elana Rosen and the National Association for Media Literacy Education, to create the Core Principles of Media Literacy Education in the United States. The Core Principles “articulate a common ground around which media literacy educators and advocates can coalesce” and are “a first step in the development of clear, measurable outcomes and benchmarks for U.S. schools” (National Association for Media Literacy Education 2007, 1). The Core Principles document asserts that media literacy education (MLE) requires active inquiry and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create; that MLE is an expanded conceptualization of literacy; that it builds skills for learners of all ages and requires integrated, interactive and repeated practice; that the purpose of MLE is to develop informed, reflective and engaged participants essential to a democratic society; that media are part of culture and function as agents of socialization; and that people use their own skills, beliefs and experiences to construct meanings from media messages. These principles attempt to reconcile the differences that exist between the “protectionist” and “empowerment” wings of the American MLE community, situating MLE within both literacy education and constructivist learning theory and emphasizing its role in supporting active democratic citizenship, as opposed to simply creating informed consumers of mass media and popular culture.

In articulating these values to a wider audience, the Core Principles document uses a structural device to define media literacy education by explaining what it is not. Most of these examples attempt to counter various misunderstandings that are held among those who are unfamiliar with the field. For those who may believe that media literacy education offers a leftist ideological perspective on media systems in society, the document states that media literacy education is not a political movement, but an educational discipline: “MLE is not about media-bashing (i.e., simplistic, rhetorical or over generalized attacks on some types of media or media industries as a whole)” (2). It is not about replacing students’ perspectives with the perspectives of the authority, be that expert, scholar, critic or teacher: instead, MLE “is about teaching them how they can arrive at informed choices that are most consistent with their own values” (4).

As a counterpoint to arguments that media literacy education does not acknowledge or value the contribution of media effects or regulatory or policy issues, the Core Principles assert that MLE does not start from the premise that media are inconsequential nor that media are a problem” and “does not substitute for media meeting their responsibility to serve the public interest” (3). The document points out that “MLE does not excuse media makers from the responsibility as members of the community to make a positive contribution and avoid doing harm” (3). It states that MLE “is not focused on changing media, rather on changing educational practice and increasing students’ knowledge and skills.” (National Association for Media Literacy Education 2007, 4). The Core Principles offers educators a consensus document that helps articulate the unique contribution of media literacy education to the enterprise of teaching and learning in the 21st century.