INTRODUCTION To MEDIA AND

INFORMATION LITERACY
Media Literacy, Information
Literacy, Technology Literacy
are important for training active
citizens who exercise their roles
responsibly and effectively
participate in society. This
chapter will introduce what
these literacies are and how
they differ from each other.
• Media Literacy

Media refers to radio, television, computers,

films, and other information and communication
tools. Media Literacy is the ability to read, analyze,
evaluate and produce communication in a variety
of media forms.
Media and Information Literacy pertains to
the essential competencies and skills that allow
citizens to engage with media and other information
providers effectively and develop critical thinking
and life-long learning skills in order to socialize and
become active citizens.
Buyer: How much is a kilo of this rice?
Seller: 60 pesos per kilo.
Buyer: The radio said its only 45 pesos.
Seller: Then buy rice from the radio

Who are talking in the conversation above? What

information did the buyer get from the seller? Was the
information accurate? Why do you think the information from
the radio is different?

Media can affect the way we get information. Information heard

is different from information experienced.
Media and its Sources

1. Primary sources refer to original materials. These sources

are unfiltered and unevaluated. They are usually the first
results in physical, print or electronic formats.
2. Secondary sources are accounts written after the fact.
These usually contain the “benefit of hindsight”. These are
interpretations and evaluations of the primary sources.
Note that secondary sources are not evidence themselves
but discussions or comments about a given evidence
3. Tertiary source contain information which are already a
collection of primary and secondary sources. They can
already be filtered and/or evaluated
Multiple Roles of Media
1. Informative Role is when media is the source of
information. This enables everyone to be “informed
citizen”.
2. Educative Role is when media assists in the
understanding and comprehension of information. This
includes understanding of scientific terms or government
policies.
3. Platform Role is when media is used by different groups,
organizations or institutions as a kind of voice. Media is the
used as a “platform” where their side of the story is heard.
4. Entertainment Role is when media is used to entertain
people.
5. Other Roles: The Adversarial Role of media is when it
is used as a “watch dog” for an institutions such as
• INFORMATION LITERACY
The American Library Association defines
information literacy as a set of abilities requiring
individuals to "recognize when information is needed
and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use the
needed information".
Information Literacy is more fundamental than
all other literacies as proponents and practitioners of
teaching information literacy skills see it as research.

The Association of College and Research Libraries, a

division of American Library Association, describes an
information literate individual as a person who is able
1. Determine the extent of information needed;
2. Access the needed information effectively and
efficiently;
3. Evaluate information and its sources critically;
4. Incorporate selected information into one's
knowledge base;
5. Use information effectively to accomplish a
specific purpose; and,
6. Understand the economic, legal and social
issues surrounding the use of information, and
access and use information ethically and legally.
• Information Literacy is not media literacy or library skills, neither it
is computer literacy nor digital literacy. Joie Taylor differentiates
information literacy from media literacy, computer literacy and
media literacy.
*Media Literacy is the skill to critically analyze messages from media
and to see the influence on people as they are turned off or
persuaded could pass for the information literacy skills.
*Library Skills is knowing how to use information resources as
books, indexes, abstracts, and the like could be considered
information literacy skill.
*Digital Literacy Skill could be used to teach information literacy by
examining purpose, authority, accuracy, content, and currency in
online resources.
TECHNOLOGY LITERACY

According to Jeff Wilhelm (2000), technology has

"everything to do with literacy and being able to use the
latest electronic technologies has everything to do with
being literate". As technology advances, the meaning of
technology literacy changes.

Technology is hardware used to create and

communicate with media like computers, telephones and
etc. It refers to innovations and inventions that are intended
to provide us convenience, improvement, and productivity.
 Technology literacy may be known as tool literacy
which is the ability to use current information technology
tools of software, hardware, and multimedia technology
literacy may also be expanded to the ability “to adapt, to
understand, evaluate and use emerging technology
innovations in information technology.
Technology or Digital Literacy the ability to use digital
technology, communication tools or networks to locate,
evaluate, use and create information. Digital literacy
includes the ability to read and interpret media to
reproduce data and images through digital manipulation
and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from
digital environments.
Becoming technology literate involves knowing how we
A technology-literate person has the ability to engage in
online communities and social networks while adhering to
behavioral standard protocol, able to search, locate,
evaluate information with understanding of the social
issues raised by digital technology and has critical thinking
skills.
Developing digital technology literacy is less about
mastering tools and more about mastering the relationship
between oneself, information and environment.
Mark Prensky an American writer and speaker on
education. He coined and popularized the terms “digital
native” and “digital immigrant”.
• Digital native- one who was born into the digital age
arbitrarily, applied to children born after 1980, but simply
being a digital native doesn’t make one digitally or
 The term Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is
used to refer to a group if technologies that use electronics to
store, process and communicate information. These
technologies includes:
1. A computer is an electronic device that can accept data as
input, stores and processes the data and generate
information as output.
2. A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that
allows two or more people to conduct a conversation when
they are physically apart. It is used for voice communication
that requires sender and receiver talking at the same time,
and short written communication using SMS. Telephones are
increasingly being used to access information in the internet,
for taking and sending electronic pictures or to find and
communicate one's location.
3. Radio and Television broadcast to a large audience, but
require that all audience receive it at the same specific time.
4. Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying,
playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media.
5. A digital camera is a device that records and stores images
and videos in digital form.
6. The Internet is an electronic communication network that
allows people to access public information from many other
users around the world. It is also used for worldwide
communications and for any type of exchange of information
among users.
Application of Technology to Media and
Information
• This referred to as new media technologies.
New Media transmit content through connection
and conversation. Most technologies described
as “new media” and are digital often having
characteristics of being manipulated,
networkable, dense, compressible, and
interactive. Some of the common examples of
new media technologies include:
1. Web 2.0 sites allow people to interact and collaborate
with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of
user-generated content in a virtual community.
2. Electronic mail, most commonly called email or e-mail
since around 1993, is a method of exchanging digital
messages from an author to one or more recipients that
operates across the Internet or other computer
networks.
3. Online advertising or Internet advertising is a form
of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to
deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.
4. Streaming media is a video or audio content
transmitted in compressed form over the Internet and
played immediately, rather than being saved to the hard
drive. It can play as it arrives and users can pause,
5. Virtual reality is a computer-simulated reality,
replicates an environment that simulates physical
presence in places in the real-world, allowing the
users to interact there. Virtual reality creates sensory
experiences, which can sight, hearing, touch, smell.
6. Empathetic Media is a smart technology that
anticipates ones needs and delivers customized
experiences.
7. Visual Network is a visual social networking which
makes visual imagery play in social conversation and
communication. This allows connecting and
photographing life experiences while instantly
sharing them with their connected network.
8. Drone-vertising is the use of robotic technology in a
9. Cloud Computing is a kind of Internet-based computing
that provides different services such as servers, storage
and applications that are delivered to an organizations
computer and devices through the internet.
10.Mobile Computing is a technology that allows
transmission of data, voice and video via a computer or
any other wireless enabled device without having to be
connected to a fixed physical link.

Multi-literacy is a term coined by New London Group.

It refers to a new modern approach to literacy. Multi-literacy
has develop due to the new technologies people use to
communicate and how the usage itself affects how people
communicate. The major part of multi-literacy involves being
proficient in new technologies which requires decoding skills
A. Read the commentary TV Ads Crucial
TV Ads Crucial
The reason why TV ads are crucial in
presidential surveys is the fact that TV news now has
become the main source of information for 50 to 70
percent of respondents, according to surveys I have
seen.
Only 30 percent of respondents report that
their main source of information is “family and
friends”. Radio news accounts for 28 percent, while
newspapers (mostly tabloids, and only one of them) 10
percent. Other surveys even report that only 5 percent
of respondents say that they get their information on
national issues and politics from newspapers. Despite
Chapter Exercise 1

1. What can you suggest to change the way Filipino get

information?

2. How can we make media more responsible?

3. How can we make more media users responsible?

4. Which media outlet is a competent producer of

media and information? What do you think so?