Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers some background on media literacy. It covers topics as diverse as news, magazines, movies, television, advertising, and more. The book shows more media images and videos than would be possible to include in a print book. In the classroom, media literacy is about "close reading" what one hear and see – asking students to not only analyze media messages but to learn more deeply by creating messages themselves. Social studies educators are also familiar with addressing the impact of media in history and civics lessons. Through the decoding of content-rich media texts in the social studies classroom, students learn and practice the habits of asking key questions, applying historical analysis, identifying perspective, assessing credibility, providing text-based evidence, drawing conclusions, and reflecting on their own process of reasoning.