Study guide: Media Literacy and Data Visualisation

📋 Course Outline

1. Framing and Message Construction
2. Communication and Media Systems
3. Media Watchdogs and Gatekeeping
4. Ownership, Propaganda and Press Freedom
5. Graphs and Data Vocabulary
6. Describing Trends and Charts

📖 1. Framing and Message Construction

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Framing: the way news stories are constructed to evoke a particular interpretation or reaction from the audience

★ Must-know

• Framing choices affect how a message is received by readers or audiences.

Further detail

• Framing can involve:

  • personal pronouns
  • modal verbs such as “could” and “should”
  • word choice and connotations
  • metaphorical semantic fields
  • hiding or revealing agency

• Using the lexical field of “war” and “battle” to discuss political or economic issues is an example of metaphorical framing.

💡 Memory Hook

Framing choices → audience interpretation

📖 2. Communication and Media Systems

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Communication: making something common
• Encoding: the process of putting an idea into a language or code that can be transmitted through a channel and understood by the receiver
• Media: Media is the plural of medium and refers to a tool; “media” does not take a final “s”, and “the media are” and “the media is” are both used.
• Feedback loop: occurs when the receiver answers the message and encodes their own message

★ Must-know

• The communication model includes:

  • a sender or source
  • a receiver or audience
  • a message
  • a channel
  • encoding
  • decoding
  • a field of experience
  • noise

• The First Amendment to the US Constitution and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantee freedom of expression.

Further detail

• Doris Graber argues that new transmission channels can become paths for citizens to engage in real conversations rather than receiving lessons from the media. - Between Power and Counter-Power: The Media, Society and Democracy

💡 Memory Hook

Sender → encoding → channel → message → decoding → receiver

📖 3. Media Watchdogs and Gatekeeping

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Muckrakers: social reformists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who exposed corruption and abuse through sensationalist journalism during the Progressive Era
• Legacy media: traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers that predate the internet and social media
• New media: products and services that provide information or entertainment using computers or the internet rather than traditional methods such as television and newspapers
• Gatekeeping: the control exercised by a small number of media professionals over which stories are selected for publication or broadcast

★ Must-know

• Stories may be selected because they: are important, fit a newspaper’s political or editorial line, interest the target audience, attract attention through violence, disaster or scandal, offer an exclusive scoop, concern geographically or emotionally close events, respond to political pressure, support advertising revenue

Further detail

• Fewer than twenty-five people within a large newspaper or television organisation are generally involved in the final decision about which news to use.

• Gatekeepers can include:

  • reporters
  • editors
  • web editors
  • television programme executives
  • wire service reporters

• Only 22% of gatekeepers are women.

💡 Memory Hook

Watchdogs expose abuse, while gatekeepers control visibility

📖 4. Ownership, Propaganda and Press Freedom

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Press Freedom: RSF - the freedom of journalists to select, produce and share news safely without political, economic, legal or social interference

★ Must-know

📌 Public media ownership combines public funding through taxes with advertising, while private ownership relies on subscriptions and advertising.

📌 Public ownership is associated with less commercial and more educational or cultural content, whereas private ownership is associated with profit-oriented programming and more commercial content.

• Media outlets were controlled by around 50 companies in 1983, whereas in 2023 they were controlled by six companies: Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Paramount, Sony and Fox.

• Propaganda exists in democracies but operates subtly without official state censorship, while concentrated ownership and resource inequality shape who gets media access.

Further detail

• Private media seek larger audiences because larger audiences allow higher advertising prices, but they may still need to please advertisers, investors and audiences.

• In the 2025 press-freedom ranking, Norway scored 92.3, Estonia scored 89.5 and the Netherlands scored 88.6, while Eritrea scored 11.3, North Korea scored 12.6 and China scored 14.8.

💡 Memory Hook

Public ownership serves education; private ownership prioritises profit

📖 5. Graphs and Data Vocabulary

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Data visualisation: Data visualisation represents data through graphical forms such as charts and graphs.

★ Must-know

• A graph can contain:
  • an X or horizontal axis
  • a Y or vertical axis
  • an origin
  • a scale
  • variables
  • coordinates
  • axis labels
  • a legend
  • a title

📌 A bar chart uses separated bars for numbers, whereas a histogram uses bars that are not spaced.

Further detail

• The source lists pie, bar, column, line, doughnut, bubble, spider or radar, scatter, comparison, stacked bar and gauge charts.

📖 6. Describing Trends and Charts

★ Must-know

📌 Correlation is the interdependence of two factors, whereas causation is the fact that one factor is the cause of another.

• Upward-trend verbs include:

  • rose
  • increased
  • went up
  • grew
  • climbed
  • jumped up to
  • shot up
  • surged
  • rocketed

• Downward-trend verbs include:

  • decreased
  • fell
  • dropped
  • declined
  • dipped
  • sank
  • plunged
  • plummeted

• For pie charts, the source advises: using proportional data, limiting the number of slices, starting at 12 o’clock, sorting the slices, avoiding poor formatting such as a 3D effect, using direct labels instead of default legends

Further detail

• The course states that correlation does imply causation.

• Unchanged trends can be described with:

  • stayed the same
  • remained constant
  • remained steady
  • remained stable
  • levelled off
  • was unchanged
  • did not change
  • plateaued

• Graphs can describe: low points as having bottomed out or reached a low, high points as having reached a peak or peaked, variation as having fluctuated, zig-zagged, fluttered or undulated

💡 Memory Hook

Correlation links factors, whereas causation makes one factor produce another

📊 Synthesis Tables

Media Ownership Comparison