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Glossary

Glossary: Media Literacy

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Photo: Classic pose with a magnifying glass - model Gwyneth Ellis (cropped) by Stephencdickson (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Openverse

Media literacy broadly describes the wider ability to access, analyse, evaluate and create media thoughtfully, of which verification is just one important part alongside genuinely understanding how media is produced, funded and specifically designed to hold and capture a reader's or viewer's attention for as long as it possibly can.

A genuinely media literate person understands not just whether a specific claim happens to be accurate, but why certain formats, headlines, images, framing choices, are used in the first place, and how those particular choices shape interpretation entirely independent of the underlying facts actually and genuinely involved in the story itself.

Building media literacy is a slow, gradual, ongoing process rather than a fixed skill mastered just the once, since formats, platforms and techniques all continue changing steadily, requiring the underlying habits of questioning and checking to be applied freshly and consistently to whatever new format comes along next in turn.

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