Media and Information Literacy

In Media and Information Literacy: An Integrated Approach for the 21st Century, the author argues that media and information literacy professionals have much to learn from one another and that the two fields need to integrate to more fully prepare students for life in the 21st century. This book first considers the separate and quiet different histories of media and information literacy education and then moves on to considering the contemporary environment. It notes how computing power is far more pervasive and interacts more and more with our work, home and personal spaces. Users of digital media are increasingly active and participative in their consumption and this occurs across a range of media platforms allowing for differing patterns of engagement. Moreover, the information produced in our engagements with such differing platforms becomes an asset that is traded between media companies and other organizations. Furthermore, the degree and manner of engagement is differentiated across external social and economic divides and which in some instances are exacerbated by the use of digital media. As such digital media afford new opportunities but present serious challenges to users. This book raises specific concerns over the nature of contemporary and future digital media and suggests that such issues can best be engaged with through integrating media and information literacy and developing a more critically informed position towards media and information literacy. -- from back cover.