Wafa Alnaieem

Media Literacy
1/27/2016

Reflection of Chapters 3 and 4

In chaptre3, the author clarifies that media literacy includes five
knowledge structures, which are media effects, media content, media
industries, the real world, and self. And with these instructors, people
can make their decisions clearly about what the message they ignore
and what they interest to. Also, when people aware of the automatic
code on their brain, where to classify the messages, they can
understand and improve their literacy. So, people should identify their
goals and seeking out information in the media to those goals. They
must have skills and try to improve it when they browsing media in
order to access information. To find the code, the audiences have to
pass through three tasks that are the filter, meaning matching, and
construction meaning. First, the audience may ignore the messages
which called filter out the message or they may pay attention to the
messages which means if filter it in. Then they jump to the next step,
which is a category that depends on the vocabulary the audiences
have, and this process is called meaning matching. The next level is
meaning construction, and it relies on the peoples understanding of
the messages meaning. Moreover, it is a skill we can improve it.
Finally, the author explains the difference between attention and
exposure. He classifies the exposure to three types: physical exposure,
perceptual exposure, and the psychological exposure. And he provides
four attentions states, which are the automatic state, attention state,
transported state, and self-reflexive state.
After reading this chapter, I try to control the medias messages
that I am exposed to, and to ask myself during the watching TV or
reading books.

In chapter 4, there are a lot of interesting and shocking

information for me. The media company works hard to develop an
audience by repeating a lot of messages to attract people to their
products. And the audience (Niche) is divided into four kinds by the
business makers in the media, which are Geographic, Demographic,
Social class, and Geodemographic segmentation. Furthermore, they try
to appeal the audiences by interests and vehicle promotion. They

continue until they success of audience composition. So, we should

develop our skills and aware of our needs to use this mass messages
as recourses. Thus, if we do not focus on our needs, and we are not
self-aware, we will be victims of aggressive media. This chapter helps
me to understand why TV channels always repeat the same
advertisements?