What is media literacy

What is media literacy? Why is it important to be media literate?Media offers vary greatly in their quality. Not everyone follows the journalistic ideal, not everything we read is objective and true. So we have to learn to separate what is true and what is false or fake.Media literacy is the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they're sending. There are text messages, memes, viral videos, social media, video games, advertising, etc. that already exist. But it is important to keep in mind that all media shares one thing: it is created by someone for a reason. Understanding that reason is the basis of media literacy. The aim of a balanced media competence is to know the different media systems and their most important offers and to be able to deal with them critically. For example, it is important to be able to recognize whether a media product is neutral or wants to express a certain opinion (as we did it on workshop during the article regarding elections).As we mention during our discussion the media have commercial part. They are part of an industry of entertainment, advertising, and marketing, also media content has social and political implications. So for this we need a media that are strong, competent and show the reality.In a larger context, media literacy also fosters the skills that help people work together in collaboration because it encourages respectful discourse and builds citizenship skills. Furthermore, media literacy helps young people to learn to think critically, become smart consumers of products and information, recognize point of view, create media responsibly and identify the role of media in our culture.2. Why is it important to be aware of media hate speech and discrimination? The media hate speech is a type of speech that takes place with the purpose of attacking someone in order to harm them mentally or emotionally. Media discrimination takes place in a similar way as media hate speeches. Media discrimination consist of an prejudicial treatment of people based on one or more categories. Whether in hate speech or media discrimination, people are usually attacked based on their religion, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation or gender. Since we are surrounded constantly by media messages, it is important to be aware of the information we read. We should actively recognise negative messages or hate messages so they don't affect us and don't go unpunished. Young people are also very influenced by what they read in the media. So when speaking about discrimination and hate speech they can gain a false sense of things and be discriminated or led to be discriminate others because they think such a behavior is normal and alright. Often we cannot really distinguish hate speech from critical true information because of media manipulation and paid campaigns to promote certain ideas. Even in politics we have witnessed the usage of hate speech to move large masses to pursue a certain political agenda. This kind of problems could be avoided if people would be more aware of false information, hate speech and media discrimination. In conclusion, to avoid the negative things mentioned before, we have to distinguish and report (for example by making or friends and family aware of it) hate speech and media discrimination and not let them become normal in our lives. It should not be tolerated!