ABSTRACT
Information literacy has a broad following among librarians and media specialists; visual literacy is often associated with instructional designers, educational technologists, and artists; and media literacy has a following that is embraced by social activists, artists, and educators. In the United States, the term media literacy is often used interchangeably with information literacy and visual literacy, and many of their aims are inseparable. The Association of College and Research Libraries surveyed 830 institutes of higher education nationwide to investigate their information literacy efforts. By the 1970s, media education in Europe was beginning to investigate new approaches to the study of media. For example, in his position paper on information literacy, library science expert Stuart Sutton chooses one of the many Aspen Institute definitions for media literacy found in the Leadership Conference report. Masterman believes that ideological debates around cultural materialism and economic determinism did move the deconstruction of texts toward a more contextual approach and beyond arbitrary issues of taste.
