My ideas about my essay

I plan to research and write about media control and media literacy in Japan-How should we escape from media control and improve our media literacy?

We cannot make a correct decision without correct information, so it is important issue how we escape from the media control and improve our media literacy. For example, we Japanese have learned the fact that government of Japan and most Japanese media concealed inconvenient information about the nuclear power plants’ accident since the Great East Japan Earthquake took place in March 2011. Even though the Japanese Constitution recognizes the right-to-know, actually we cannot receive important information necessary to make critical decisions.  In this case, specifically we could not obtain information about meltdown in real time, so we could not judge how we should do to protect our life. Therefore the improvement of our media literacy is the significant ability to protect our right-to-know and our life.


This is the CNN news broadcast on June 6, 2011.

I found out through research during this summer vacation that there has been a lot of important information uninformed and I need to develop my media literacy as soon as possible.  The media control and media literacy are related to the things we learned through Barna, Fisher and Birk & Birk. At the end of June I started to research about media control because I began feeling fear of media control, driven by knowing the fact that the Japanese government and most media controlled information when the Great East Japan Earthquake took place. As I conducted a further investigation, a lot of uninformed information became apparent. For example, the bills which at least I disagree were submitted to diet. Most TV station and newspaper did not want to tell us the bills. In addition most TV station and the Japanese government have told us that nuclear power plants are “totally safe”  for more than 40 years though many accidents and troubles occurred in nuclear reactors located all over Japan.  As shown above, the more I investigated the more I became interested in the issue about media control and media literacy. Accordingly, I selected the issue as a topic of essay.

             

There are ten questions that I want to know about the issue.
1. The definition of media control and media literacy
2. The good points and bad points about media control
3. The good points and bad points about media literacy
4. How foreign countries like Europa, U.S. or Canada etc. treat media control
5. How the foreigners living in Europa, U.S. or Canada etc. improve their media literacy
6. What the percentage of people in Japan think they are controlled by media
7. Why Japanese does not have media literacy
8. How Japanese fosters media literacy
9. What kinds of approaches to improve media literacy in Japan exist
10. What kinds of approaches to improve media literacy have an effect

English sources
1. Leaning, Dr. Marcus. Issues in Information and Media Literacy: Education, Practice and Pedagogy. Informing Science Press, 2009.
2. Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. Third. Sage Publications, Inc, 2005.
3. Potter, W. James. Theory of Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach. Sage Publications, Inc, 2004.