Dr. Kundan Aryal

Today, people encounter a large amount of news, views and information every moment. Easily available on the website, they are edited or unedited. Amongst the instrumental information for daily lives, people are mostly dependent upon mediated communication. Amidst the bombardments of media content, readers/audience find it almost impossible to select suitable or useful news for them. However, people irrespective of their age, class or occupation select the news instantly. In the course of selecting and enjoying the news, everyone goes through a process called automaticity.
If automaticity is built upon a higher level of media literacy, there is little possibility for the readers/audience to be manipulated or misled by fake news or disinformation. It is psychology that enables everyone to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required as a result of learning, repetition and practice. Using different forms of media to obtain information and to be amused is an example of automaticity. Other common activities of everyday lives such as walking, speaking and driving also falls into automaticity. People use to gain the ability to perform a task by automatic processing.
In the case of uses and gratification from any news, such automatic processing is independent of conscious control and attention. Since such a way of processing is almost entirely automatic and one can carry out it knowingly, mental acuity is essential to get rid of manipulative news and views because automatic processing of information could also be dangerous.

Media literacy
In the world of mediated information and images, it could be dangerous to put the mind solely on automatic pilots. The automaticity as a rapid process needs to be well-founded on a person's capability to filter the media contents because there is always a danger with the automatic processing of messages which allows the media to condition the thought process of the audience. Media literacy is an idea founded against the media's discursive power. Thus, it is necessary to have a proper understanding of media literacy and the process of automaticity.
Fifty-five years back, renowned essayist Shankar Lamichhane had challenged a well-known editor in an essay entitled a letter to the editor. It was a question raised by an active and aware reader over the contents. Akin to Lamichhane’s challenge, media literacy is an idea to discourage the manipulation of the media message and encourage dissemination of fair, true and useful media content. Lamichhane's letter volleyed many satirical questions on the editor’s ignorance of the content of newspapers: You don’t know anything. You don’t even know why you wrote an editorial on bull? You don’t know why you never wrote an editorial on Bhimsen Thapa? You don’t know why you write an editorial?

His comments over the writing of a popular daily indicate a level of media literacy in Nepali society. However, it was not a comment made by a common reader. The media literacy in Nepali society, in general, is yet to be reached a stage where readers/audience are able to overcome the default model of automaticity traps. The model shows the flow from media locus to automatic exposure and finally to media-constructed meaning.
As suggested by James Potter, a US communication scholar, there are traps related to information fatigue, a false feeling of being informed, a false sense of control and faulty beliefs. In this context superficial, programmed feelings could keep the audience in a state of automaticity. They could lose the opportunity to exercise a high degree of control over their lives. Hence, if one wishes to be sane in the information-saturated world, he or she should be capable to filter out almost all messages automatically.

There is one dimension that divides the audience of mass media into three categories - general audience, audience as market and media literate audience. The third type of audience applies a set of perspectives to construct the meaning out of the media exposure to interpret the meaning of the messages. In order to build knowledge structures, they need tools and raw materials. In this context, tools are the skills and raw materials are information from the media and the real world. The media literates can locate the discrepancies between the real world and the picture of the real world created by media within them. They are aware of the messages and consciously interact with them.

Media message
Centre for Media Literacy (CML), a US institution working with a mission to help children and adults prepare for living and learning in a global media culture, has developed five core concepts in this regard. The first among them is that all media messages are constructed. Second states that media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules. The third says different people experience the same media message differently. The fourth one is that media have embedded values and points of view. The fifth core concept of media literacy is that most media messages are organised to gain profit and power.

Consequently, all these concepts provide a critical approach towards a skilled and aware stage to demystify the media message and cultivate the appropriate meaning by comparing the text with the real world. UNESCO has since 1982 been advocating that the young people must be prepared to live in a world of powerful images, words and sounds. From the media's point of view, automaticity founded on media literacy could be an alternative to censoring, boycotting or blaming the mass media. It is also a way of cultivating media's normative roles for a democratic, peaceful and just society.

On one hand, there could be a potentiality for the media literate audience to use the state of automaticity as a wonderful tool to protect themselves from being overwhelmed by the flood of messages. On the other, the state could be functioned as a trap to hold them back from achieving their own goals. The traps could divert their attention from the disadvantages of being in a state of automaticity.

(Dr. Aryal is associated with the Central Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Tribhuvan University.)