By Ismail Elouafi
Fez - Throughout the history of communication and information acquisition, the process of being informed has been a complicated task that requires critical thinking skills on the part of the public– or consumers - to deal with multimedia messages.
From printed materials in China to the latest inventions of Web 2.0 and smart devices, the whole society is bombarded with millions of media messages that contain information and concepts which may or may not be true. According to Dale Peskin, Co-Director of The Media Center, “there are three ways to look at how society is informed. The first one, people - consumers- are so naïve and will read, watch, and listen to anything. Secondly, people are always in need of an intermediary tool to inform them. Last but not least, people are smart enough to distinguish between what is correct and what is not if the necessary means are given to them.” [We Media, By Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis]
When individuals look at the media messages, they fail to appreciate that these messages, which may represent the only source of information available to them, influence them in powerful ways. Consequently, they become passive consumers in the way they take for granted what they consume from media. For this reason, media creators and advertisers create their messages with subtle hints to seduce consumers to buy products, or believe a lifestyle or ideology.
Learning how media messages are created and the other crucial aspects of media institutions that dominate the multi-media culture will provide an effective monitoring of these messages for individuals to live freely. Moreover, being able to understand the core concepts of media messages will result in better ways of understanding and interpreting each piece of news and information that individuals receive.
In the last recent 40 years, media literacy has become an important means for people to help themselves cope with media messages or media products. More precisely, media literacy is a “fundamental competency for literate citizens” (National Communication association [NCA, 1998]) which empowers citizens to actively engage with media messages and fully participate in media culture (Jenkins, 2503). Moreover, it provides the competence in using various media and the ability to think critically about them.
Morocco has been effective in promoting media literacy among Moroccan teachers and university students. The University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdillah, the Sais-Fes faculty of arts and human sciences with the collaboration of a number of organizations such as the UNITWIN, the UN Alliance of Civilization and the Doha Center for Media Freedom organized a training session on media and information literacy for teachers on February 18-19, 2014, in Sais-Fes. The purpose was to promote media literacy skills among twenty-four teachers and ten university students from the Sais-Fes faculty. These latter have since participated in an exchange program about the same topic in the university of Barcelona.
Throughout the history of storytelling, people have enhanced various ways of conveying their messages via different channels. From historical cave paintings to TV and smart devices, people receive a huge amount of information every moment. Although the medium may have changed, the desire to convey a message remains the same. Media literacy ws developed in 1980 as an efficient tool to help individuals avoid all the transmitted values and beliefs of media creators. Furthermore, media literacy is highly recommended for individuals to participate freely in democratic societies, enhance their personal growth, and reproduce well informed media content.
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