Blog #1 – Isabel Fong Wu

In the preface and chapter one of “Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture” by Karen Sternheimer she makes two key points that really stood out for me. The first key point is “in order to understand social problems, we need to look beyond media as a prime causal factor” (preface) and the second key point is her statement of “media culture may not be the root cause of American social problems, but it is more than simply benign entertainment” (16). These two direct quotes contain a significant relationship: solely blaming media for the cause of problems is not the answer towards finding what the real issue is at stake. Prior to reading this chapter, I was under the impression that media was in fact the reason for the many problems that are seen in American society. However, after reading chapter one, my view on media has changed and now I see what Karen Sternheimer meant when she stated there are “structural factors” (15) that need to be understood in order to see beyond the big problem media causes. With that being said, what do you all think of Karen Sternheimer take on looking at “causal factors” in order to understand media better?

In the reading “The Core Concepts: Fundamentals to Media Literacy Yesterday,  Today, and Tomorrow” a quote that really stood out for me was “that is, we were not actually studying sports or music or news or documentaries, we were studying representations of these things”. This quote resonated with me because it further explained what media literacy means and what media literacy does which is to not only study but also understand what messages various mediums are showing represent and how it impacts the society that we live in.