Media Literacy: Keys to Interpreting Media Messages

• Published in: Canadian journal of communication 1996, Vol.21 (4), p.509
• Main Author: Silverblatt, Art
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communication; Communications; Cultural identity; Documents; Literacy; Mass media; Media; Media literacy; New technology; Ownership; Postman, Neil
• ISSN: 0705-3657; 1499-6642
• DOI: 10.22230/cjc.1996v21n4a970

Mass Communications: A Comparative Introduction is a timely volume in that it joins a short current list of important publications that focus on the impact of rapidly developing and ever - expanding media technologies on societies. As do other recent publications, [Rowland Lorimer]'s volume builds on the legacies of Canadian communications gurus Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis. While McLuhan and Innis laid the foundation for thinking about the manner "in which communicational forms play a structuring role in society," Lorimer indicates that, given the increasing multiplicity of media forms, "a more detailed description of the mass media is needed to understand how communication forces differentially affect societies and groups within societies" (p. 268). The book is carefully laid out. The first two chapters offer readers an overview of what McLuhan and Innis considered to be the basic characteristics of oral, literate, and electronic societies (Lorimer emphasizing the addition of electronic networks), as well as an examination of how media infrastructures are inherently part of their societies. The following five chapters examine what Lorimer identifies as "the major structuring features of modern mass media" (p. 37): mass communications laws and policies; the kinds and structures of media - telecommunications ownerships; an overview of those who produce media content, particularly journalists; the developed and developing information - bearing technologies; and audiences - media interactions. National institutions are weakened through what is clearly an economic integration, Lorimer argues. Thus the rapidly changing ownership environment (amalgamations and takeovers are the order of the day to ensure survival, some have attested) has altered the focus for nationally owned and domestically mandated media industries. As these organizations become focused on pan - national strategies (economically and in terms of content), the "local, national, and international landscapes and thus cultural identities" are changed (p. 284). In a sense, this may be a restatement of McLuhan's contention for a "global village," but it is an extension of McLuhan as Lorimer discusses the impact of the developing new technologies that only currently are becoming popularized.