What is Screen Literacy?

Screen literacy is a set of skills for understanding current electronic forms of discourse, including computerized communication, the Internet and World Wide Web, television, video and film, all of which, according to Welch, "are embedded in a merger of written, oral, aural, and visual structures of articulation" (7). Therefore, it involves concepts drawn from media and visual literacy curricula, as well as from rhetoric and critical media pedagogy.

Media literacy has been defined as "decoding for reality" (Callison & Tilley 25). According to McBrien (76-7), the basic tenets of media literacy education are:

• All media are carefully constructed for a particular purpose-entertainment, information, persuasion, propaganda.
• Because media constructions have a purpose, they also have a point of view, which the viewer/user must determine.
• Because of divergent experiences and values, different people will interpret media messages differently.
• The medium contributes to the meaning of the message.

According to McBrien, "By studying media messages, students come to recognize that all media presentations, even those intended to inform and present objective information, are creations designed for a particular effect" (77). Although in her article, McBrien proposes a pedagogy for teaching media literacy in elementary school, her statements can be applied and extended to include university students. For instance, university students can go one step beyond recognizing that that a media message is a creation to deconstructing that message and analyzing its various meanings. Screen literacy thus relies on the tools of critical analysis developed by media literacy education.

In contrast to the decoding emphasis of media literacy, visual literacy has been defined as "the ability to interpret and process a visual message, and to understand and appreciate the content of the visual" (Bazeli 55). Visual literacy also involves understanding the "encoding and decoding of visual messages or communication," and the "visually literate person can perceive, understand, and interpret visual messages, and can actively analyze and evaluate the visual communications they observe" (Robinson 223). While media literacy tends to focus mainly on printed messages that are read, visual literacy focuses on images. However, both involve critical analysis of media, which is also an important element of screen literacy.

What makes screen literacy different from media literacy and visual literacy? Screen literacy can be thought of as a subset of media literacy that combines skills of media literacy and visual literacy but that focuses more on the "screens" around us and encourages critical thinking about how those screens frame multimedia (images, text, sound, etc.) to create meaning. Screen literacy focuses on anything and everything that we read, see, or hear via a screen. It incorporates true multimedia presentations and should encourage students to analyze the ways in which multimedia work together to create meaning, rather than analyzing each element separately. An appropriate pedagogy for teaching screen literacy would be similar to the five-step process McBrien (78) proposes for media literacy education: background, tools, deconstruction, evaluation, and original construction, with a focus on deconstruction and evaluation.

Why "Screen" Literacy?

As McNabb recognizes, "literacy, in a computer-networked society, is not solely about reading the printed word. Rather it encompasses receiving and sending messages in a hypermedia format" (49). In addition, those messages are received on a screen. According to Welch, screens "have come to constitute, in part, our intersubjectivities, our language interactions with others and within ourselves, including identity formation" (4). The fact that we encounter so many messages on so many screens should encourage us to examine not only the messages but also the screens, because the screen frames the message.

Many communication scholars have researched frames and framing as a dimension of the agenda setting function of the mass media (see McCombs & Bell for review). Framing is a communication concept that crosses many disciplines in both the social sciences and humanities. However, according to Entman, "Whatever its specific use, the concept of framing consistently offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text" (51).

In the so-called information age, the media of communication-television, print, billboards, film, the Internet and World Wide Web-shape the way we as a society think about current issues. They do this through framing, focusing on some aspects of the issue and ignoring or downplaying others. They do this with not only the language they use to describe the issue, but also through their use of images and the amount of space or time devoted to discussion and examination of the issue.

No subject is exempt from framing. Take, for instance, the case of breast cancer testing and treatment. Researchers have studied different framing techniques to see which one is most effective in encouraging women to have mammograms.

Several studies have been completed examining the effects of different frames on readers. Three of these studies involve the framing of testing (self exam and mammography), either using a loss frame focusing on the negative consequences of not having regular exams or a gain frame focusing on the positive consequences of having regular exams (Meyerowitz & Chaiken; Banks, Salovey, Greener, Rothman, Moyer, Beauvais, & Epel; Collins, Davis, Rentz, & Vannoy). Two of the studies suggest that loss-framed messages may be more effective than gain-framed messages when motivating behavior is the goal.

Although these scholars have studied reactions to different frames they have constructed, other scholars have attempted to assess emotional responses to actual media messages. Henderson & Kitzinger, for instance, investigated media framing in terms of the types of news stories written: human interest/soft news or scientific/hard news. Heuser also studied human interest versus scientific framing, as well as positive versus negative framing of emotional reactions to breast cancer. These studies clearly show that not only do media messages employ certain frames for certain purposes, but viewers of the messages can be affected differently by the same information presented in a different frame.

The screens of television, film and computers employ this type of framing, as well as the physical framing of information on the screen. The physical framing of information on a screen is important to consider, because in any message what is not said or shown is as important as what is said and shown. The term "screen" literacy encourages us to think not only about the messages themselves, but also about the physical attributes of the screens displaying the messages we are analyzing and how those attributes might contribute to the construction of the message.

Why Teach Screen Literacy?

As Kathleen Welch observed, computer screens can be found in many offices and almost every public place: universities, airports, restaurants, etc. In addition, television screens attend us nearly everywhere we go, from health clubs to book stores, and sometimes in several rooms of our homes.

"In all these spaces, as well as many more, broadcast and cable reception appears to be regarded as a necessity. While intellectuals, business people, and other people who need long periods of relative quiet in order to work may find this proliferation of monitors to be irritating and distracting, many other people apparently tolerate it or even welcome it" (Welch 3).

Although many scholars may resist the theorizing of video, television and the Internet, and many parents may resist the teaching of critical video, television and Internet viewing in schools, both of these are necessary to help students make sense of the barrage of images and messages they encounter daily on these screens.

According to McBrien, there are two schools of thought in the United States on media literacy. The protectivist approach, traditionally taken by many parents, espouses the point of view "if we don't let our children see the violence of music videos and R-rated films, if we don't let them buy gangsta rap and recording of violent songs, if we refuse to let them play video games, then they will not be influenced by such media messages" (76). However, one need only walk into a Wal-Mart, where any customer can preview a CD or a video game or stand in the television aisle and watch any channel one pleases to know that the protectivist approach is impossible to enforce. Furthermore, when children leave home for college, this approach become irrelevant. Thus, the media literacy approach, in which students are taught to critically view and deconstruct all media messages, is important not only at the elementary level but also at the university level. According to McBrien, "Students are empowered to take control of their reactions and to recognize the effects that media messages have on their emotions, desires, and beliefs" (79). At the university level, students can also be taught to "read between the lines of television's portrayal of political issues, news events, and images of society" (Brookfield 151), which can engender awareness and perhaps increase political participation and responsible media use. "Democracy requires critical thinking," (Adams & Goldbard 68) and screen literacy education can encourage and develop critical thinking skills. Some authors even advocate critical viewing of electronic media as a means of enhancing moral development and ethical behavior (Adams & Hamm 195).

In addition to possible personal empowerment, we also must consider student exposure to media.

"Our students, living their lives in the hegemony of the television screen and speaker and the computer screen and speaker, are now literate in ways never imagined two generations ago. When we ... ignore or, worse, jeer at the acoustic/spoken/visual/written bases of their new literacy, their special knowledge/ability, their new routes to the achievement of arete (the classical Greek concept of a person's or thing's own unique excellence) we fail them as their teachers and exemplars of language. We also fail the larger national community that remains in dire need of what we have to offer and that pays our salaries" (Welch 4).

Ultimately, "the ability to participate in the global economy increasingly depends on having the tools and the training to exchange, analyze, and interpret information" (Warschauer 168). Screen literacy encourages and develops a person's ability to analyze and interpret information, so will be an important skill for students to acquire.

Furthermore, because distance- and flexible-learning are gaining importance in university education, it is also important for students to be aware of bias in messages and images on the Internet, as well as on television and from traditional news media. Enter screen literacy. Screen literacy education involves teaching the same type of skills as traditional media literacy but applies them to the "screens" so familiar to students: computers, television, the Internet, video and film.

Finally, Warschauer provides a rationale for computers in education appropriate for a discussion of screen literacy, which involves critical analysis and reflection about those computers:

[Students] need access to and mastery of a variety of media and understanding of the ways that rhetorical structure and media interact, and they need chances to read, write, and think about issues of cultural and social relevance for their lives, as they work together with others near and far to tackle authentic complex problems collaboratively. If we as educators join with our students to help create these opportunities, together we can strive for a digital era that is more free, more just, and more equal than the print era we may one day leave behind (178).