In Media Literacy by James Potter the first chapter discusses the question “Why Increase Media Literacy?” This chapter talks about high media exposure, the information problem, media literacy, and a variety of other topics and ideas. On page 5 Potter states that “30% of the waking day was spent with media as the sole activity, and another 39% was media use coupled with another activity (pg 5).” There is no question that as a culture we have a very high exposure level to media. This causes an information problem. We are bombarded with so much information that we cannot possibly process it all. “More information has been generated since you were born than the sum total of all information throughout all recorded history up until the time of your birth (pg 4).” So, it is clear that there is a lot of information. The question then becomes what do we do with all that information? According to Potter “we put our minds on ‘automatic pilot,’ where our minds automatically filter out almost all message options (pg 6).” Our minds enter a state called automaticity. We process the information automatically. This at times is extremely helpful but can also be harmful. We can avoid useless information but we can also miss important information. We have the opportunity to become media literate so that we can be in control of all the media that we are exposed it each day. Being a person who is media literate will make that person more sensitive and selective in their media exposure.
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