Media Literacy Week: Day two, tactics

Image courtesy of msventura

So now that we know what media literacy is and why it’s important, what can we do to become more aware of what we’re taking in?  The next step is to take action.  In order to dissect and understand the messages our media are sending, we need a knowledge base and a method of operation for tackling what we’re consuming. Today, we’re going to talk about the two most common devices, as well as arm ourselves with seven easy questions to ask about any piece of media.

Roald Dahl’s notes for words in The BFG, courtesy of the BBC

Persuasive language is likely the single most-used method of getting across an author’s message.  Words are the currency that we deal in the most often; each one’s meaning can range from insignificant to world-changing, completely dependent on emphasis, placement, and context.  They easily trigger emotions with the faintest of effort and sway our opinions with careful diction.  All language has this ability, but there are special kinds of language and special ways of using it that produce astounding results.  Changing Minds has a fantastic list of ways that language can be tamed and formed around our intentions to send a particular message.  Any or all of these could be utilized in a single piece of writing, be it a newspaper article, scholarly research, song lyrics, or film dialogue, in order to sculpt our reactions and influence our thoughts.

• Final impact: Put the impact at the end of the sentence.
• Hidden commands: Burying commands in sentences.
• Intensifiers: increasing the emotional impact of a statement.
• Object focus: Focus on the object and let the subject slip by.
• Power words: Words that have special meaning.
• Pronoun language: I, you and so on add power.
• Sensory language: Language that evokes senses.
• Short sentences: Like this. That work. Of course.
• Temporal language: Changing time and hence meaning.
• Trivializing words: Deflating what others say.
• Using pauses: Adding power with very largely nothing.

Manipulating data in graphs is one of the most common ways we see facts and figures presented to fit a particular message.  The process is, at its core, simply the re-sorting and rearranging of research data without fundamentally changing it.  However, as any statistics student can tell you, it’s not always practical to start your axes at zero and create the chart from there; sometimes the numbers are too high or too low to show that way.  Many people use this gray area between exact representation of data and practicality to alter the way they present numbers.

For example, the graphs above show two very distinct ways of presenting the same numbers.  The chart on the left groups findings into categories, shows three fat bars, has wide ranges of MPG, and uses 5-digit increments on the y-axis, leading us to believe that there are lots of cars that get high gas mileage.  Yet, it starts its x-axis numbering at zero; this shows us no cars that have MPG ratings between zero and 19.  The chart on the right presents each MPG rating as an individual skinny bar marked along the x-axis (which starts at 25, rather than zero) and uses 2-digit increments on its y-axis.  This arrangement leads us to believe that there is a wide variety of MPG ratings, most falling on the “low” end of the scale, with only a scant few on the high end.

Both of these graphs present the exact same information, the difference being that details like using a range (versus individual bars) and the numbering of the x- and y-axes can greatly influence the way we perceive the data.  And, in addition to noting these discrepancies, we should also be looking for what is not there.  What size engine did these vehicles have?  In what year were they tested?  What condition were they in?  Under what environmental conditions were they tested?  All of these factors can sway the “meaning” of the raw data, so it’s vital that we know how to question what we’re seeing.

THE TAKE-HOME MESSAGE: Look out for persuasive language and data manipulation!

Questions to Ask:

• Who is the author and what is their affiliation (if any)?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the purpose of the message?
• What techniques are used to attract my attention?
• If there are tables, graphs, or charts, how is the data presented?
• How might other people understand this message differently?
• What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented/omitted?

Armed with this basic knowledge and these analytical questions, we can decipher any hidden information that may come our way.  While we generally trust that people say what they mean and that numbers never lie, both words and data are constantly undergoing a careful grooming process (whether intentionally or not) to help support the author’s ideas.  Again, this is not to say that any author of any work is out to get us or trying to “hurt” us.  We all send out messages in our writing, our photography, our videos; being media-literate is the key to mastering those messages and becoming aware of those trying to reach you.

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Recommended Reading

• Beyond the Screen – John Pugente helps us analyze the messages in popular films
• Don’t Buy It – PBS Kids points out advertiser’s tricks and gives tips on how to avoid them
• History of Media Literacy in the USA – Decade by Decade
• How Journalism’s Changes are Changing Our Ways of Knowing

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