The Ability to Access Analyze Evaluate and Communicate information in a variety of format including print and nonprint.

David Considine: An Introduction to Media Literacy: The What, Why and How To's

source: http://www.ci.appstate.edu/programs/edmedia/medialit/article.html

Media literacy is concerned with helping students develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the mass media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques. More specifically, it is education that aims to increase students' understanding and enjoyment of how the media work, how they produce meaning, how they are organized, and how they construct reality. Media literacy also aims to provide students with the ability to create media products.

Resource Guide: Media Literacy , pages 6-7, Ministry of Education, Ontario, Canada

source: http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FA/home_index.html

Media literacy is the ability to understand how mass media work, how they produce meanings, how they are organized, and how to use them wisely. The media literate person can describe the role media play in his or her life. The media literate person understands the basic conventions of various media, and enjoys their use in a deliberately conscious way. The media literate person understands the impact of music and special effects in heightening the drama of a television program or film...this recognition does not lessen the enjoyment of the action, but prevents the viewer from being unduly credulous or becoming unnecessarily frightened. The media literate person is in control of his or her media experiences.

A Few Words about "Media Literacy"

source: http://cmp1.ucr.edu/exhibitions/education/vidkids/medialit.html

Very simply put, media literacy asks us to look carefully and to think critically.

John J. Pungente: Windows on the Landscape - Taking Television Seriously

source: http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FA/MLArticleFolder/windows.html

Media literacy as an area of educational practice began with the film, TV, and visual communications movement in the 1970's. It was during that decade that educators recognized that non-print media employed unique visual and aural language frameworks to encoded information. The ability to read the "text" of a motion picture, television program, advertisement, or photograph, for example, became important in an in expanding definition of literacy.

A media literate person is not only an informed consumer of information, but is also one who is able to communicate using pencil, paper, computer, camera, and audio and video recorder. Being able to communicate in a variety of media should be as natural as it once was to communicate with words alone. The concept of traditional literacy has expanded to include not only text, but, pictures, and sounds.

Gary Ferrington: What Is Media Literacy?

source: http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FA/MLArticleFolder/whatisml.html