Information and Media Literacy (IML) enables people to interpret and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right.
Prior to the 1990s, the primary focus of Information Literacy has been research skills. Media Literacy, a study that emerges around 1970s traditionally focuses on the analysis and the delivery of information through various forms of media. Nowadays, the study of Information Literacy has been extended to include the study of Media Literacy in many countries like UK, Australia and New Zealand. The term Information and Media Literacy is used by UNESCO to differentiate the combined study from the existing study of Information Literacy. It is also defined as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the United States. Educators, such as Gregory Ulmer, has also defined the field as electracy.
IML is a combination of information literacy and media literacy. The purpose of being information and media literate is to engage in a digital society; one needs to be able to use, understand, inquire, create, communicate and think critically. It is important to have capacity to effectively access, organize, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms. The transformative nature of IML includes creative works and creating new knowledge; to publish and collaborate responsibly requires ethical, cultural and social understanding.
Read more about Information And Media Literacy: 21st-century Students, Teaching and Learning in The 21st Century, Students' Struggle With Media and Information Literacy, Information and Media Literacy in The Curriculum, Barriers To Information and Media Literacy
Famous quotes containing the words information and, information and/or media:
“Many more children observe attitudes, values and ways different from or in conflict with those of their families, social networks, and institutions. Yet today’s young people are no more mature or capable of handling the increased conflicting and often stimulating information they receive than were young people of the past, who received the information and had more adult control of and advice about the information they did receive.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)