Chapter 5. Chapter 5
Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Media Literacy Activity: Radio in Your Life
Activity Objective: In this activity, you will apply the critical process to examine how radio fits into your and your friends’ lives.
Pre-Activity Instructions: Identify ten friends and/or classmates that you want to interview about their use of radio.
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Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Reviewing the Critical Process
Developing a media-literate critical perspective involves mastering five overlapping stages that build on one another. Let’s review the critical process you’ll be using below:
Description: paying close attention, taking notes, and researching the subject under study
Analysis: discovering and focusing on significant patterns that emerge from the description stage
Interpretation: asking and answering “What does that mean?” and “So what?” questions about one’s findings
Evaluation: arriving at a judgment about whether something is good, bad, or mediocre, which involves subordinating one’s personal taste to the critical “bigger picture” resulting from the first three stages
Engagement: taking some action that connects our critical perspective with our role as citizens to question our media institutions, adding our own voice to the process of shaping the cultural environment
Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Description
Interview ten of your friends and/or classmates about their use of radio. Ask them the following questions:
- How often do you listen to radio?
- What type of device(s) do you use to access radio? For example, plug-in radio set, transistor radio, clock radio, stereo receiver, computer, smart phone, service from cable TV, home music system (e.g. Sonos), your car, etc.?
- Where do you typically listen to the radio? For example, home, commuting, while exercising, etc.?
- When do you typically listen to the radio (e.g., morning, afternoon, evening, weekdays, weekends, only while in the car, etc.?)
- What are your favorite radio genres (e.g., music, talk, news and information, sports, podcasts, etc.)?
- What are your favorite stations or channels? Why?
- Why do you listen to the radio?
- How does radio fit into your life?
Use the space below to answer the following question.
List ten findings about your friends’ and/or classmates’ radio usage based on their answers to the questions above.
Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Analysis
With the interview responses in mind, let’s explore what patterns emerge regarding your friends’ and classmates’ use of radio.
Use the space below to answer the following questions.
1. Are there patterns in how often, where, or when your friends listen to radio? If so, what are the patterns?
2. Are there patterns in their preferences regarding types of radio or the devices they use to access radio? If so, what are the patterns?
3. Are there patterns in their favorite radio genres, especially music genres, or their favorite stations or channels? If so, what are the patterns?
4. Are there patterns in why they say they listen to radio or how radio fits into their lives? If so, what are the patterns?
Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Interpretation
Through the following questions, interpret the meaning of the patterns you found to make connections to wider trends in radio usage in American society and culture.
Use the space below to answer the following questions.
1. Do you think your friends’ and classmates’ answers are representative of American college students or of the overall U.S. population? How might they be representative or unrepresentative?
2. What do your friends’ and classmates’ answers tell you about the relationship between radio and other media industries and the extent that radio has converged with other industries?
3. Is radio, as a medium, more or less important in American society and culture now? How? Why?
4. How does commercial radio’s need to make a profit (e.g., advertising revenue) affect its product and its listeners?
Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Evaluation
Next, evaluate and write about the radio industry.
Use the space below to answer the following questions.
1. If you were interested in a job in radio, what would you be most excited about and most concerned about?
2. Do you think the radio industry is in good shape? Why?
3. What do you think the radio industry will look like in ten years?
Media Literacy Activity:
Radio in Your Life
Engagement
Let’s take action! Moving forward, use what you have learned to engage with radio in a different way. Here are some suggestions to get involved:
- Listen to different types of radio. How are AM, FM, satellite, and Internet radio different?
- Check out different genres (listen to talk radio or podcasts if you don’t already listen to them; try out music genres that you haven’t listened to).
- Get together with friends to listen to the radio in the same way you might get together to watch television. Pay attention to your friends’ and your reactions as you listen as a group.
Use the space below to answer the following question.
How have your views of radio in your life changed? What do you want to do in the future to engage in a different way?