Constructing meaning: the media

All of us have a "construct," the picture we have built up in our heads since birth, of what the world is and how it works. It is a model based on the meaning we have made from of all our observations and experiences. In the multi-channel, convergent technology universe, many of our experiences are media experiences. Much of our knowledge of the world outside our own heads comes to us already constructed by the makers of media texts.

-- Ontario Media Literacy Resource Guide, 1989 p. 8

Virtual reality: the media space

When people enter a darkened movie theatre [or watch television, or read a magazine], they step into a world that is very different from their own lives. When they become lost in the movie and when they laugh or cry, although they know that the people are only actors and the scenery is only cardboard, they have accepted the reality that the filmmaker has created.

-- Ontario Media Literacy Resource Guide, 1989 p. 75

Constructing meaning: the audience

When we look at any media text, each of us finds meaning through a wide variety of factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background. All of these have a bearing on how we process information. For example, the way in which two students respond to a television situation comedy (sitcom) depends on what each one brings to the text. In short, each of us finds meaning or "negotiates" meaning in different ways.

-- Ontario Media Literacy Resource Guide, 1989 p. 8