The Max Headroom episode shown in class was so full of media references to media literacy that it is hard not to walk away from watching the episode without seeing some type of example of media literacy.
There are many facets to media literacy, but what the episode focused on was the facet of how the media presents news messages, and how this makes people feel like they are informed. The episode focuses on the issue of how informed viewers of media are because in the episode people sold a false story to a news station.
For the viewers in the episode, they get the feeling as if the story is informing them. However, they fall into a media literacy trap of having a false sense of being informed. Many of the viewers probably went back into a state of automaticity, which led them to accept the surface meanings of the fake terrorist story.
On the other hand, Edison Carter and the news crew of Network 23, represent, in some ways, the media literate viewer. They questioned and analyzed the real information behind the fake terrorist story. By doing this, they demonstrated why it is useful to be media literate.
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