[Asis-l] Questions for candidates

[nicholas belkin]

"S.Webber" wrote:
> 
> Nicholas Belkin wrote
> 
> >Media
> > literacy, which I think is not the same as information literacy, would
> > be based in a knowledge area that is not information science and
> > technology, for instance.
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing more about why you don't think it is part
> of information science - it would certainly fall within my conception
> of IS, since (I think) it concerns ability to use different information
> and communication channels effectively and exercising critical
> judgement.
> 
> Sheila
> ---------------------
> Sheila Webber, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.
> Email s.webber at sheffield.ac.uk
> Tel. (0044) 0114 222 2641
> Fax 0114 278 0300
> The Information Literacy Place: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/literacy/
> ... and now the Weblog! http://ciquest.shef.ac.uk/infolit/

Well, I guess the short answer is that at my institution, media literacy
as a research issue, and as practical education and intervention, is
housed in the department of journalism and media studies. The primary
concerns of media literacy, as construed by this, and several other
groups that I know about, have to do with issues of how to teach people,
especially but not exclusively children and young adults, to
deconstruct, evaluate, understand and act upon the messages they get
from the mass media. To this end, they bring to bear methods and
theories from psychology, communication, education, moral development,
economics and media and cultural studies, among others. These concerns,
and the ways of addressing them, seem to me to be related to those of
information science (indeed, we at Rutgers are a School composed of the
departments of communication, journalism/media studies, and library and
information science, which we believe address in different ways
different aspects of the underlying processes of information and
communication), but not the same as those of information science. I
suppose also that the aim of all academic disciplines is to teach the
exercise of critical judgement, so I'd be reluctant to ascribe that only
to information science.

Nick Belkin  
-- 
Nicholas J. Belkin
Chair, and Director of the MLIS Program
Department of Library and Information Science
School of Communication, Information & Library Studies
Rutgers University
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick NJ 08901-1071 USA
tel: +1 732 932 7500 x8271  fax: +1 732 932 2644
email: nick at belkin.rutgers.edu
http://scils.rutgers.edu/~belkin/belkin.html