CSE 619

     This week are reading was for The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler. The chapter of this book that really grabbed my attention was chapter 8 Cultural Freedom: A Culture both Plastic and Critical because made comparisons from media literacy to real life situations. Media literacy has many layers. The different layers can be referred to as different cultures. Each resource provides a new view point on what the person is looking for.

     Chapter eight starts off by comparing the movie Gone with the Wind and Strange Fruit a song by Billie Holiday and lyrics by Abel Meeropol. It compares how the two different Medias are similar in their content but they were held at different levels by the public. Gone with the Wind was very popular and got great reviews however; the song did not do as good.

     Media literacy is so diverse that it has no problem with being compared to our society. When people are thinking about making a commercial for their product they have to make sure they know who their audience is and the best way to show that audience what they are selling. When people are trying to choose when their commercial needs to be aired the producers will look at their target audience and put it on channels that best fit its purpose.

     I found the perfect video that is a good visual to what I am trying to say, the video is called JCPR/JCIP Right Message Wrong Audience: Commercial Real Estate. When looking through the resources that are out there, teachers need to make sure that what they are finding and planning to use in the classroom makes sense with what is being taught.

     Teachers also have to look at the resources they find to see if the media literacy’s they find are the in the points of view that the teacher wants their students to look at. With Gone with the Wind and Strange Fruit it comes from different points of view. Both resources can be looked at in similar ways however; the song is more intense and descriptive than what is given with the video.

     Teachers should not just look at the views of the resources but of their own classroom as well. They need to make sure that students will feel comfortable enough when watching a video or listening to an audio clip that they will be able to take something away from it. If the resource is to disturbing, as an example, then students will be using their time to try and not hear/see what is going on and will be able to not take away the message that the lesson is trying to get across.

Teachers also have to make sure that the video clip or other media literacy is on the same level as the audience. If the resource is too hard too easy for the level that is watching it students will spend too much time either getting to bored to pay attention because the information is to easy or falling behind because the information is to hard.

Works Cited

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

JCPR, J. a. (Director). (2013). JCPR/JCIP Right Message Wrong Audience: Commercial Real Estate [Motion Picture].