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Theory of Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach
Theory of Media A Cognitive Approach comprehensively explains how we absorb the flood of information in our media-saturated society and examines how we often construct faulty meanings from those messages. In this book, author W. James Potter enlightens readers on the tasks of information processing. By building on a foundation of principles about how humans think, Theory of Media Literacy examines decisions about filtering messages, standard schema to match meaning, and higher level skills to construct meaning.
320 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 2004
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February 5, 2023
This robust theoretical framework supports the classroom innovations that I have deployed this year, namely the use of a formative assessment tool (SIP-- Short integrative paper). Potter's 7 skills are crucial in our era of shameless disinformation and crass opportunism. Many state and curricular discipline-specific standards presume that students have already honed more fundamental media literacy skills such as analyzing, evaluating, grouping, inducing, deducing, synthesizing, and abstracting but do not explicitly test for mastery in these areas. Here are my notes:
p.19 Information fatigue leads us to automaticity, where our minds do not control either our exposures or the way that messages get into our minds. This unconscious exposure increases the probability that the information that we receive is inaccurate. By inaccurate, I do not mean that the media are presenting biased or nonfactual information to us, although there is some of this. The condition of inaccurate is traceable much more to the fact that our information base is filled with partial understandings, facts without context, facts that are out of date, and unsorted impressions where conflicting information resides unresolved in our memories
p.36 Before we can expect people to expend considerable effort to develop skills , to build elaborate knowledge structures, and to pay attention during media exposures, we must demonstrate that the rewards for such effort are worth it.
p.47 The task of meaning construction is more difficult than the task of meaning matching. The primary reason for this difference is that the task of meaning construction is always a partially specified problem; that is, the challenge always includes one or more of the following characteristics. First, we are not sure what the meaning should be. Second, the beginning point is unclear. Third, there is an incomplete process that links a clear beginning point with a clear goal as a solution to the problem; that is, steps are missing that we need to arrive at one solution.
p.49 The most fundamental of all barriers that hinder people from becoming more media literate is treating meaning-construction problems as if they were simple meaning-matching problems. When this happens, people think that there are correct convergent meanings that they need to learn. Because they have not learned them, they go to the media to find them. They look for news and accept the constructions offered by "experts" as the one and only meaning. They look for political pundits and accept those positions as facts.
p.51 The state of automaticity is the opposite of the state of mindfulness; in the automatic state, we are operating on automatic pilot and are unaware of the details of what we are doing.
p.59 Both skills and information are important. If we have a great deal of information but weak skills, we will not be able to make much sense of the information. The information will likely be stored in schema, and it may be difficult to access a given bit of information. Skills are needed to sort through information and organize it.
p.60 The information in the knowledge structures is not limited to cognitive elements but should also contain emotional, aesthetic, and moral elements. The four types of elements work together such that the combination of any three types helps provide context for the other type.
p.87 When we expose ourselves to the media, we bring into play our own motives, expectations, and emotions. Each of these can contributte to or take away from the effect.
p.88 Media effects are almost always probabilistic, not deterministic. There are many factors about the audiences, the messages, and the environment that increase the probability that an effect will manifest itself.
p.98 In theory, both control and consciousness are conceived of as drives. The more a person is energized to control, the more the person is moving up the vertical axis. The more a person is energized to be aware, the more the person is moving to the right on the horizontal axis. Most often these drives are states that are triggered by a particular need to respond to a certain type of message.
p.104 Some cognitive psychologist have argued that there are primarily three approaches to information. These were consistency seekers, naive scientists, and cognitive misers. One group of scholars regarded people as consistency seekers, because they are motivated to minimize inconsistencies by revising an element of a belief system such as an attitude to permit cognitive consistency and thus eliminate dissonance. Another group of scholars regarded people as naive scientists who try to solve problems rationally by deducing answers from careful analysis. The third group of scholars regarded people as cognitive misers who are motivated to economize in the processing of information.
p.106 During media exposures, people with a low tolerance tend to encounter messages on the surface. If the surface meaning fits their preconceptions, it is filed away and becomes a confirmation (or reinforcement) of those preconceptions. If the surface meaning does not meet a person's preconceptions, the message is ignored. In short, there is no analysis
p.109 Knowledge structures provide a much better context for tasks requiring the skills of grouping, induction, synthesis, and abstraction. With a better context, people can use their skills more successfully and with more confidence. The skills will grow stronger. This will also result in the construction of better knowledge structures, which in turn will provide better contexts for further meaning construction.
p.125 Three kinds of analysis are useful for media literacy: focal plane analysis, component analysis, and outline analysis. Focal plane analysis is the searching for one fact in a mass of information. A simple example of this is when we search the dictionary for the meaning of a particular word. Component analysis is breaking the message down into its component parts. Outline analysis is breaking the entire message down ino its components and subcomponents
p.127 People who operate at higher levels of media literacy will often be more creful, reasonable, diligent, and logical when making evaluative judgments. People at lower levels of media literacy will most often feel the effort is not worth it and quickly makea judgment based only on superficial intuition.
p.129 Grouping is an important skill for incorporating new information into our existing knowledgge structures...Elements that match are compared; elements that differ re contrasted. If some elements are different, then we can add something new to our knowledge structure. If all the elements match, then the message adds nothing new to our existing knowledge structures, but that does not mean that our knowledge structure is not changed. The information can reinforce our existing knowledge structures and add weight to them, thus making them more resistant to change later on.
p.131 The skill of induction is used to infer a pattern across some elements... One of the media's more insidious effects is to provide people with several superficial examples and lead people to infer certain patterns about whole classes of people or events.... One of the media's more insidious effects is to provide people with several superficial examples and lead people to infer certain patterns about whole classes of people or events...
p.132 How can we avoid the trap of making false inductions? There are two strategies. One is to use trustworthy reference materials to find out what the general patters really are... We can look up the actual rates of divorce, governmental expenditures, health risks, and so on. This requires that we become active and do some focal plane analyses to find the facts we need, rather than make faulty inferences from the skewed exemplars that show up in messages that constitute our automatic exposures.
A second strategy that can help us avoid faulty inductions is to be more tentative in our pattern inferences. We can take the perspective that we need to constantly check our inferences with more observations.
p.133 Deduction is the use of general principles to draw conclusions about a particular case. In a sense, deduction (which moves from general principles to particulars) is rather the opposite of induction (which moves from particulars to general principles)
p.135 The skill of abstracting is used when people want to relay the essence of some message to another person or to record the essence of that message in some medium so that they can refer back to it later. When the message to be abstracted is complex or when the message is new and we do not have a formula to follow, the challenge of abstracting is greater....
Abstracting requires a person to break down the show into parts, evaluate the importance of different elements as to their centrality to the action, and then report those most important parts in a narrative that flows without raising any unanswered questions.
p.141 Filtering requires a decision. Filtering-in means deciding to pay attention to the message. Filtering-out means deciding notto pay attention to the message. The filtering can be made in either a conscious or unconscious manner. Sometimes, the decision is made in a conscious manner... But many times, the decision is governed by an automatic routine
p.142 Active searching is a process of information acquisition that begins when a person is aware of a particular question. This question then motivates a search of messages until the useful message is found to answer the question
p.144 The process of scanning is relatively automatic; that is, it relies on well-learned routines that require little mental effort. There is no conscious strategy , so there is no continual evaluation of how well the strategy is working. The strategy is a routine that runs automatically.
p.145 Screening is a message-monitoring state that requires the least amount of effort, hence attention. It begins with the default of automatically ignoring messages, that is, screening them out. There is no conscious goal or strategy.
p.148 Automaticity allows for efficiency, but it does not guarantee competence; that is, a person may be able to perform a task over and over again with little effort, but the task usually gets done poorly.
p.163 The stronger knowledge structures people have, the more literate they are. To be media literate, we need to have an in-depth understanding of the media across a broad range of topics, such as production techniques, narrative structures, character patterns, and thematic indicators; knowledge about industry practices, motivations, and perceptions of audiences; knowledge about the full range of media effects ; and a self-monitoring awareness about the variety of ways the human mind can process information from the media.
p.199 ...motivated tacticians are regarded as fully engaged thinkers who have multiple cognitive strategies available and choose among them based on goals, motives, and needs. Sometimes, people are motivated by accuracy and sometimes by efficiency.
p.217 The ecological fallacy is the inferring of a causal relationship between two things merely because they occur together.
p.217 When we see an exception to a pattern, this creates dissonance. To reduce the dissonance, people need to rework the pattern and come up with a new one to account for the elements that did not fit the old one. [People] will simply ignore the discrepancies to the simple pattern and focus only on the continuities, that is, the elements that do fit the pattern.
This projection bias is related to something called pluralistic ignorance. If people don't have an opinion about something, they often guess what the majority of people would think. Often, these guesses are wrong.
p.19 Information fatigue leads us to automaticity, where our minds do not control either our exposures or the way that messages get into our minds. This unconscious exposure increases the probability that the information that we receive is inaccurate. By inaccurate, I do not mean that the media are presenting biased or nonfactual information to us, although there is some of this. The condition of inaccurate is traceable much more to the fact that our information base is filled with partial understandings, facts without context, facts that are out of date, and unsorted impressions where conflicting information resides unresolved in our memories
p.36 Before we can expect people to expend considerable effort to develop skills , to build elaborate knowledge structures, and to pay attention during media exposures, we must demonstrate that the rewards for such effort are worth it.
p.47 The task of meaning construction is more difficult than the task of meaning matching. The primary reason for this difference is that the task of meaning construction is always a partially specified problem; that is, the challenge always includes one or more of the following characteristics. First, we are not sure what the meaning should be. Second, the beginning point is unclear. Third, there is an incomplete process that links a clear beginning point with a clear goal as a solution to the problem; that is, steps are missing that we need to arrive at one solution.
p.49 The most fundamental of all barriers that hinder people from becoming more media literate is treating meaning-construction problems as if they were simple meaning-matching problems. When this happens, people think that there are correct convergent meanings that they need to learn. Because they have not learned them, they go to the media to find them. They look for news and accept the constructions offered by "experts" as the one and only meaning. They look for political pundits and accept those positions as facts.
p.51 The state of automaticity is the opposite of the state of mindfulness; in the automatic state, we are operating on automatic pilot and are unaware of the details of what we are doing.
p.59 Both skills and information are important. If we have a great deal of information but weak skills, we will not be able to make much sense of the information. The information will likely be stored in schema, and it may be difficult to access a given bit of information. Skills are needed to sort through information and organize it.
p.60 The information in the knowledge structures is not limited to cognitive elements but should also contain emotional, aesthetic, and moral elements. The four types of elements work together such that the combination of any three types helps provide context for the other type.
p.87 When we expose ourselves to the media, we bring into play our own motives, expectations, and emotions. Each of these can contributte to or take away from the effect.
p.88 Media effects are almost always probabilistic, not deterministic. There are many factors about the audiences, the messages, and the environment that increase the probability that an effect will manifest itself.
p.98 In theory, both control and consciousness are conceived of as drives. The more a person is energized to control, the more the person is moving up the vertical axis. The more a person is energized to be aware, the more the person is moving to the right on the horizontal axis. Most often these drives are states that are triggered by a particular need to respond to a certain type of message.
p.104 Some cognitive psychologist have argued that there are primarily three approaches to information. These were consistency seekers, naive scientists, and cognitive misers. One group of scholars regarded people as consistency seekers, because they are motivated to minimize inconsistencies by revising an element of a belief system such as an attitude to permit cognitive consistency and thus eliminate dissonance. Another group of scholars regarded people as naive scientists who try to solve problems rationally by deducing answers from careful analysis. The third group of scholars regarded people as cognitive misers who are motivated to economize in the processing of information.
p.106 During media exposures, people with a low tolerance tend to encounter messages on the surface. If the surface meaning fits their preconceptions, it is filed away and becomes a confirmation (or reinforcement) of those preconceptions. If the surface meaning does not meet a person's preconceptions, the message is ignored. In short, there is no analysis
p.109 Knowledge structures provide a much better context for tasks requiring the skills of grouping, induction, synthesis, and abstraction. With a better context, people can use their skills more successfully and with more confidence. The skills will grow stronger. This will also result in the construction of better knowledge structures, which in turn will provide better contexts for further meaning construction.
p.125 Three kinds of analysis are useful for media literacy: focal plane analysis, component analysis, and outline analysis. Focal plane analysis is the searching for one fact in a mass of information. A simple example of this is when we search the dictionary for the meaning of a particular word. Component analysis is breaking the message down into its component parts. Outline analysis is breaking the entire message down ino its components and subcomponents
p.127 People who operate at higher levels of media literacy will often be more creful, reasonable, diligent, and logical when making evaluative judgments. People at lower levels of media literacy will most often feel the effort is not worth it and quickly makea judgment based only on superficial intuition.
p.129 Grouping is an important skill for incorporating new information into our existing knowledgge structures...Elements that match are compared; elements that differ re contrasted. If some elements are different, then we can add something new to our knowledge structure. If all the elements match, then the message adds nothing new to our existing knowledge structures, but that does not mean that our knowledge structure is not changed. The information can reinforce our existing knowledge structures and add weight to them, thus making them more resistant to change later on.
p.131 The skill of induction is used to infer a pattern across some elements... One of the media's more insidious effects is to provide people with several superficial examples and lead people to infer certain patterns about whole classes of people or events.... One of the media's more insidious effects is to provide people with several superficial examples and lead people to infer certain patterns about whole classes of people or events...
p.132 How can we avoid the trap of making false inductions? There are two strategies. One is to use trustworthy reference materials to find out what the general patters really are... We can look up the actual rates of divorce, governmental expenditures, health risks, and so on. This requires that we become active and do some focal plane analyses to find the facts we need, rather than make faulty inferences from the skewed exemplars that show up in messages that constitute our automatic exposures.
A second strategy that can help us avoid faulty inductions is to be more tentative in our pattern inferences. We can take the perspective that we need to constantly check our inferences with more observations.
p.133 Deduction is the use of general principles to draw conclusions about a particular case. In a sense, deduction (which moves from general principles to particulars) is rather the opposite of induction (which moves from particulars to general principles)
p.135 The skill of abstracting is used when people want to relay the essence of some message to another person or to record the essence of that message in some medium so that they can refer back to it later. When the message to be abstracted is complex or when the message is new and we do not have a formula to follow, the challenge of abstracting is greater....
Abstracting requires a person to break down the show into parts, evaluate the importance of different elements as to their centrality to the action, and then report those most important parts in a narrative that flows without raising any unanswered questions.
p.141 Filtering requires a decision. Filtering-in means deciding to pay attention to the message. Filtering-out means deciding notto pay attention to the message. The filtering can be made in either a conscious or unconscious manner. Sometimes, the decision is made in a conscious manner... But many times, the decision is governed by an automatic routine
p.142 Active searching is a process of information acquisition that begins when a person is aware of a particular question. This question then motivates a search of messages until the useful message is found to answer the question
p.144 The process of scanning is relatively automatic; that is, it relies on well-learned routines that require little mental effort. There is no conscious strategy , so there is no continual evaluation of how well the strategy is working. The strategy is a routine that runs automatically.
p.145 Screening is a message-monitoring state that requires the least amount of effort, hence attention. It begins with the default of automatically ignoring messages, that is, screening them out. There is no conscious goal or strategy.
p.148 Automaticity allows for efficiency, but it does not guarantee competence; that is, a person may be able to perform a task over and over again with little effort, but the task usually gets done poorly.
p.163 The stronger knowledge structures people have, the more literate they are. To be media literate, we need to have an in-depth understanding of the media across a broad range of topics, such as production techniques, narrative structures, character patterns, and thematic indicators; knowledge about industry practices, motivations, and perceptions of audiences; knowledge about the full range of media effects ; and a self-monitoring awareness about the variety of ways the human mind can process information from the media.
p.199 ...motivated tacticians are regarded as fully engaged thinkers who have multiple cognitive strategies available and choose among them based on goals, motives, and needs. Sometimes, people are motivated by accuracy and sometimes by efficiency.
p.217 The ecological fallacy is the inferring of a causal relationship between two things merely because they occur together.
p.217 When we see an exception to a pattern, this creates dissonance. To reduce the dissonance, people need to rework the pattern and come up with a new one to account for the elements that did not fit the old one. [People] will simply ignore the discrepancies to the simple pattern and focus only on the continuities, that is, the elements that do fit the pattern.
This projection bias is related to something called pluralistic ignorance. If people don't have an opinion about something, they often guess what the majority of people would think. Often, these guesses are wrong.
February 5, 2019
Potter and I don't agree on how to approach the subject of media literacy. While I find his book accessible and organized, I think his media literacy project is completely neoliberal and repulsive. There is no mention of media literacy as a social good (he only highlights the implications of media literacy for individuals). If you're into post-positivist, effects-based approaches to communication, you might like this. If you think the world is more complex than that, reading this will aid in your understanding of how the "other side" thinks, but it won't be convincing enough to change your mind.
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February 11, 2020This is perfect!
January 30, 2021
Thoughts are well developed but seem to focus on the good of the individual instead of a corporate good.
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