Propaganda! Misinformation! Disinformation! Today we’re talking about the dark – or, shall we say, darkER – side of media. Understanding these media bogeymen is essential to being a more media literate citizen.

We’ve seen and discussed the ways in which the rapid pace of technological change has affected the media literacy landscape, and it’s clear that change isn’t slowing down. How will those changes affect the future of media literacy? How can we make the skills we’ve discussed over this course transferable to future media & technology?

In order to understand the history of media literacy we have to go all the way back to straight up literacy. In the first half of our look at the history of media literacy, Jay takes us all the way back to Ancient Greece and forward through the printing press, newspapers, and Yellow Journalism.

Introduction: Who thinks about Media Literacy?
The Phaedrus and Plato
The early history of literacy
The printing press
Literacy and religion (Martin Luther)
Media literacy and media technology
The newspaper
The penny press
Sensationalism (Pulitzer vs. Hearst)
Yellow Journalism
Thought Bubble: Yellow Journalism and the Maine explosion
Yellow Journalism Details
Credits

Jay continues our journey through the history of media literacy with the arrival of movies, television, and the other screens that now permeate our lives – along with some of the different approaches to media literacy that these inventions brought with them.

Introduction: Review and new technologies
Protectionism and types of defensiveness
Cultural defensiveness
Political defensiveness
Moral defensiveness
Modern media literacy and Marshall Mcluhan
Thought Bubble: Online message sharing
The purpose of modern media literacy
Digital literacy
News literacy
Social media
Review
Credits

We’ve mentioned already that there’s a lot of money in media and a huge chunk of that money is spent on trying to get you to do something – buy something, vote a certain way, change a behavior. How does advertising work? And what’s the difference between advertising, public relations, and propaganda? We’re going to talk about all that and more today.

First thing’s first: what is media literacy? In our first episode, Jay breaks this question down and explains how we’re going to use it to explore our media saturated world.

Introduction: How much media do you consume?
What Media is
Media Literacy
Media Messages vs. Media Effects
Encoding and Decoding
Thought Bubble: Encoding and Decoding broken down
Textual Determinism
What information is trustworthy?
Spread media literacy!
What's to come
Credits

Media isn’t just movies and newspapers and TV shows, it’s also a part of society that involves a lot of money. And all that money has implications for the media that gets created. Media is created by people -- a range of people, making a range of decisions, and earning a range of different paychecks to do it. Those decisions matter and understanding how money affects those decisions is an essential component of media literacy.

Introduction: Your Media on Money
Let's say you're a movie director
Media is made
Purpose, or why media is created
Focus, or what media is made about
Thought Bubble: Representation
Media and Stereotypes
Money and the perpetuation of stereotypes
Credits

We’ve talked about how broad a concept “the media” really is – and given that, it can be hard to keep track of all the different forces that constitute “the media.” It can be tough, but it’s not impossible. Today we’re talking about how all those big players fit together and why all those mergers and acquisitions matter to being a media literate citizen.

Copyright and other media regulations have always been a bit tricky, but the internet made all of that infinitely more complicated. But what does all of that mean for you, the consumer?

You are constantly surrounded by media, so the question is: how does your brain handle all of that? The unfortunate answer is that our brains have a lot of processes that not super helpful for media literacy, but hopefully with a little self-awareness, we can work around that.

Introduction: How do our minds react to media?
Cognitive Load and automation
Schema
Memory
The Law of Closure
False Memory
Thought Bubble: Conformation Bias
Social Media
Information Satisficing
Humans love stories
Credits

You're being watched. That sounded more sinister than I intended, but online, it's true. Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Netflix... the list goes on and on. They're watching what you do, what you shop for, what you watch... all of it. And have you actually read the Terms of Service? In this episode of Crash Course Media Literacy, Jay talks about how Online Advertising works and why companies want to know everything you're looking at.