Media Education

Advertising: Exposure & Industry Statistics (Media Education Foundation, 2005) states that "Internet advertising produced almost $2 billion in revenues in 1998" and that "[i]n 2000, children 12 years and under, directly and indirectly, influenced the household spending of over $600 billion."  Wow!  The text also states, "Sweden, since 1991, has banned all advertising during children's prime time due to findings that children under 10 are incapable of telling the difference between a commercial and a program, and cannot understand the purpose of a commercial until the age of 12" (Media Education Foundation, 2005).

Referring to Henry Jenkins' Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2006) he states, "Other studies find that children remain unaware of the motives behind the creation of websites, have difficulty separating commercial from noncommercial sites, and lack the background to identify the sources of authority behind claims made by website authors" (p. 45).

The new media literacies that Jenkins advocates, "almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking.  These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom" (Jenkins, 2006, p. 4).

"The new skills include:  Play, Performance, Simulation, Appropriation, Multitasking, Distributed Cognition, Collective Intelligence, Judgement, Transmedia Navigation, Networking and Negotiation" (Jenkins, 2006, p. 4).  Referring to Green (DECS, 1996), the skill of Judgement can fall into Operational, Cultural and Critical literacy practices, but most strongly relates to Critical or Critiquing literacy practices. 

"Judgement, the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources" (Jenkins, 2006, p. 4) would seem to be in step with Sweden's ban on advertising during children's prime time.  As children surf the web at young ages, it is of importance for parents to have discussions with their children about what they encounter on the Internet and how to evaluate content and purpose.  Likewise, as schools seek to teach Technology courses in elementary grades, teaching the new media literacy skill of Judgement must be ongoing and revisited often because of its significance towards teaching critical thinking skills.