ABSTRACT
Media Literacy Project (MLP) believes that media should build bridges between communities, spark transformational dialogue, and reect the world both as it is, and how we want it to become. We understand the power of media to connect and inspire individuals to grow, challenge, and shape their communities. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we have been providing media literacy education since 1993. We have created curricula, provided trainings, and presented workshops for schools and organizations across the United States and internationally in Mexico, Tunisia, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. During these past twenty-one years we have watched the media landscape shift dramatically due to both the rise of the Internet (and online video hosting sites such as YouTube, Vine, and Vimeo in particular) and the increased access by many communities to media making tools such as video cameras, smart phones, and video editing software. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter also serve to increase distribution avenues and create wide fan bases for some individual digital media makers. These shifts have substantially amplied public access to media creation and distribution resulting in cultural expectations and assumptions that everyone has access to this digital technology, knows how to use it, and should use it. However, many of the same issues of lack of diversity, unequal access, and (mis)representation that we experienced in radio, television, and cable before this digital technology appeared, are disappointingly reproduced in digital media despite the promise of equality these tools once made.
