News Literacy
Course
What Does This Image Say? [6:09]
- Learn ways to use paintings to teach students to examine sources.
- Learn how to use photographs to teach students to question sources.
- Learn ways to incorporate the importance of digital citizenship.
Jackie: Those are excellent paintings for that.
Michelle: Right? Tell me a little bit more about some of the paintings you've used.
Jackie: I like to use paintings to initiate a unit with students. For example, there's this awesome painting by an artist whose name is Joseph Wright. The painting is called Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. I use it as a way to have students begin to develop empathy with these people who lived in different places and different times and asking students to really closely examine who these people are, what they're wearing, who else in the painting are they looking at? What's their facial expression? What's their body language and ask them to remember that everything in a painting is the conscious choice of the artist. Every brush stroke, every color, every gesture, like I said, facial expression, etc., every object is a symbol of something. If the artist didn't want it there, it would have been painted out. Happy accidents? They are left in the painting because they work to convey the artist's message. As the viewer of a painting, we have to ask why these things are here and why these choices were made. They tell us so much about the artist, about the artist's subject, and about the artist's place and time.
Michelle: That's interesting. I love the part where you just said, "Everything unwanted is painted out." Now how is that different for photographs?
Jackie: Photographs are both an art and a science. The history of manipulating photographs long predates the era of Photoshop. Yet, photographs, we tend to see as more candid snapshots capturing an actual moment in time and it's incumbent upon us as viewers of photographs to question them. Is this candid? Is this posed? What's the relationship between the photographer and the subject? Would they, in fact, have interacted in any way? Is the person aware that their photograph is being made at this moment? I like to point students to the photograph of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Brown, which people will remember as the iconic image of Elizabeth Eckford who was one of the Little Rock Nine as she was walking into Central High School to start her first day of school with Hazel following her with an expression of such anger as she was yelling at Elizabeth from behind, and start to unpack who are all the different people in this scene? How are they responding to this moment? How do we understand people like Eckford who's maintaining such composure when we can't unpack a facial expression? Take it one step further to the lesson of digital citizenship, that Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Brown will forever be that photograph—for the rest of their lives. If we think about neither of them took that photograph, or chose to share that photograph, and yet it has been published and distributed and redistributed for decades and they are forever those people. It's quite a lesson for students in their own choice of what they share and what this photograph says about who they are.
Michelle: It's funny, as we talk about these images, your memory calls them right into full view and full display. The Tank Man is an important one, and you did a lesson around that and why the government might censor that image.
Jackie: Absolutely. I think that for many students, it's a bit of a revelation to think that so much of the media that we consume, that we receive so freely and so easily, in other parts of the world, people may not be able to access that very same information, whether it's print or visual. For students to entertain the idea that an image that we see as so iconic of standing up to authority, of the power of the individual, of risk-taking, and the risks that people take in the name of their own democratic freedoms, to think that the very place where that image was made, that person's contemporaries don't get to see that picture. That really has to prompt students to question, to ask, what is the power of an image? Why would a government or someone in power want to prevent people from seeing images?
Michelle: Right. Then, of course, I asked that question about photos. You don't have the ability to paint out what you don't want in your photo, except we do. We have Photoshop.
Jackie: Yeah. If you can go back to the days of Lenin and Trotsky and see pictures, photographs where, as their relationship deteriorated, Lenin directed the printers of the photograph to remove Trotsky from the photograph. Long before there was Photoshop, there was editing of the stories that are being told by photographs.
Michelle: It's really interesting.
Jackie: I think that leads us to a call to action, don't you?
Michelle: It does. What we would recommend is try playing truth or fake with your students. Provide an image and then ask what their gut tells them about that image. Then have them use their fact-checking skills to verify or debunk the image.
Jackie: That's a great suggestion.
Whether it is a painting or a photograph every detail is intentional in those images. How do these details change your understanding of the image? How do you relate to these captured moments in time and interpret them? Review the SLC articles and lessons plans below and complete the Review & Practice activity below.
Analyze your current media literacy lessons and reflect on how the information in the SLC articles and lesson plans could change your methods. What tools can you incorporate into your lessons? Where are there opportunities to connect the importance of digital citizenship in these lessons? Choose a few of the apps or platforms discussed in the article/lesson plans and brainstorm some lesson ideas that will help build your media literacy lessons.
MLA Citation
"News Literacy: Every Detail Matters." School Library Connection, January 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2256629?learningModuleId=2256568&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2260762
In this lesson, the importance of photos as a part of our digital literacy was examined. How can we use paintings and photos to enhance students digital literacy and researching skills? In the age of images shared on multiple mediums, authenticity often comes into play. Do your students understand how to analyze an image and determine its authenticity? Do they know to listen to their gut?
After completing your digital literacy lesson on the power of images, provide students with the worksheet found in Resources and make sure they are using--and understanding the tools you have provided. Reflect on their results and see how your lessons may need to be adjusted to fill a knowledge void or reinforce skills.
MLA Citation
"News Literacy: Truth or Fake?" School Library Connection, January 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2256629?learningModuleId=2256568&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2260849
Additional Resources
About the Authors
MLA Citation
Luhtala, Michelle, and Jacquelyn Whiting. "News Literacy. What Does This Image Say? [6:09]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, January 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2256629?learningModuleId=2256568&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2256629?learningModuleId=2256568&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2256629