By Yiting Wang, Ph.D. | Feb 02, 2025
Media Literacy is about how much people are conscious about the medium they consume, and whether people are aware of the impact of media they consume. Media scholars John Pavlik and Shawn McIntosh pointed out a fact that has sense but often ignored: If media is pervasive, it should be studied and educated just as other mandatory subjects in education—such as history, mathematics, gymnastics, or literature. The call for media literacy is loud, but the attitudes are convoluted: media literacy is necessary; however, unmanageable.
Teaching media to the public can be difficult. As acknowledged by communication researcher Cuihua Shen, even visual researchers have problems. During the inaugural Visual Media Symposium in 2024, she stated that even though educating the public about media literacy leads to constant cluelessness; it is still, however, the only facet—that is, the social cognitive facet—that we can impact the most directly, given that the other two facets are either on the content generation side (e.g., government, media organizations, platforms), or the information propagation side (e.g., influencers, perpetrators).
One of the known media that is surging now is short contents, among which short videos is broadly adopted by regular social media users, e-vendors, and politicians. Videos are dynamic, they are constantly changing in different frames or storylines, they travel on the internet and can become ephemeral yet forever undeletable. Many consume such contents as news resources, as many of my former students stated to me as early as 2020. I do short video research and studies the use of platforms of such. I point out common video expressions, styles, or recipes, to show people what they are getting out of when seeking visual information. Sometimes a visual cue, being as minor as a smiley emoji, can become major, meanings can be changed, and the contexts can be skewed.
When scrolling, it is useful to remind yourself to continuously check the uploader’s profile. When browsing, one should be mindful to check the account information: Are they e-venders selling classes, and their content is derogatory of people not being able to handle technology? Knowing this, one will understand the content is a persuasive message to you to purchase a course. Checking the account will offer you greater ideas about context and reduce the likelihood of such message making an unaccountable impression.
The other aspect to education is regarding how we make short video a better place for good and accurate information-sharing. Short video does not afford enough time to introduce the source of information, moreover, to establish context. For instance, on TikTok, a viral topic is on how people dwell on the things they said wrong either today, or ten years ago. Short video creators teach people that to stop such self-loathing, an approach is to flip yourself with a hairband the moment self-loathing occurs. For information like this, do we need to think about where people get this sort of idea, and how did this suggestion occur? Was it based on behavioral science, or neuroscience? Should people follow this suggestion? This example may seem trivial, but it is a known fact that users are using short videos for medical diagnosis: the cases are depression or ADHD. Nevertheless, again, short video did bring these sorts of medical symptoms in front of people, which may remind people to get actual check-ups, which still can be an advantage. On the other hand, people refer t— watching streaming content such as short videos—as their “digital pickles.” This speaks to the fact that people need to have some sort of media to accompany them when they have meals: be it television or scrolling on phones. These digital pickles are savory and can be nice accompanies.
Studying short videos requires a dialectical mindset. Short videos exist and we should explore. A medium exists, then we shall investigate it. The crux is, how to handle it logically and reasonably? My current proposition is to examine media consumption on a day-to-day basis. If a person’s daily media consumption is highly monotonous, or unidirectional, then it is time to enrich the types of medium. You can broaden your medium choice and if you find your life only built around one medium, then it might be time for a change. We have print media: books, newspapers, magazines; we have audio media: audiobooks, podcast, radio; we have social media: visual-centric, and textual-centric. Try mixing up your media consumption daily or weekly. Different media build different relationships (hence affordances). If you ask, I can’t stop scrolling, what to do, then it is time to seriously evaluate your media consumption.
