Week 7

1. Ideology: How we as individuals understand the world in which we live. This understanding involves an interaction between our individual psychology and the social structures that surround us. Mediating between these are the individual processes of communication, as well as the technological processes of the mass media.

2. Industry: The agencies and institutions involved with the production of media texts. The term is also used in a more narrow sense to describe the commercial production of media texts for the purpose of making a profit.

3. Jolts: Moments in a media text that are generated by a broad comedy, a violent act, movement within a frame, a loud noise, rapid editing, a profanity or a sexually explicit representation—all of which are calculated to engage an audience's excitement.

4. Mass Media: any of the means of communication, as television or newspapers, that reach very large numbers of people.

5. Media Education: The process by which individuals learn the technical production skills associated with creating media texts. Traditionally, it has not included the intellectual processes of critical consumption or deconstruction; however, modern interpretations often include these processes.

6. Media Literacy: The process of understanding and using the mass media in an assertive and non-passive way. This includes an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the media, the techniques used by them and the impact of these techniques.

7. Medium: The singular form of "media." This term usually describes individual forms such as radio, television, film etc.

8. Media: The plural form of "medium." This term has come to mean all the industrial forms of mass communication combined.

9. Narrative: The telling of a plot or story. In a media text, narrative is the coherent sequencing of events across time and space.

10. Negotiate: The process by which members of the audience individually or collectively interpret, deconstruct and find meaning within a media text.

11. Oppositional: A critical position that is in opposition to the values and ideology intended by the creators of a media text.

1. Boles, Derek. "The Language of Media Literacy: A Glossary of Terms." Teacher Backgrounder. Media Awareness Network, 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. <http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/teaching_backgrounders/media_literacy/glossary_media_literacy.cfm>. Source: Reprinted, with permission, from Mediacy, the newsletter of Ontario's Association for Media Literacy, Volume 16, Number 3, Summer 1994.