The crucial capacities that enable people to interpret and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right can be described as information and media literacy. Information literacy in expressions of a set of competencies is that by which an informed citizen can participate actively and intelligently in the informed society. It can also be known as the knowledge of commonly used research techniques because, information Literacy enables the individual to recognize what information is needed, how can the information is organized, discover the best sources of information for a particular need, find those causes, evaluate the sources critically and then share that information.

 

IML is a combination of information literacy and media literacy. The intention of being informed and media literate is to engage in a digital society, Individual need to be able to comprehend, inquire, correspond and think critically. If an individual have these characteristics, he can effectively access, systematize, explore and evaluate. The transformative nature of IML includes innovative works, forming of new facts to publish and collaborate responsibly require moral, cultural and social understanding.

 

Media literacy - a collection of competences that facilitate people to consider, estimate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genre and forms. Media literacy can be learned by an inquiry-based academic model that encourages people to ask questions about what they observe, heed, and interpret.

 

Importance of information and media literacy:

Information is critically an important factor for an individual to understand media literacy because we are surrounded by a rising ocean of information in all formats. One has to informed by all the aspects which are reliable, current and commanding because if information would be misleader and outdated it would be of no use. The amount of information available should going to keep increasing. And the types of technology used to access, operate and create information should also expand. A Media literacy education grant tool to help people critically analyze messages, offers opportunities for learners to broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in producing their own media messages. By media literacy, individual can incorporate identifying author, purpose and point of view, examining construction techniques and genres, examining patterns of media representation and detecting propaganda, expurgation, and predisposition in news and public affairs programming and behind reasons of these programs. Media literacy education may search how structural feature like media ownership and its subsidy model.

 

Media literacy can be seen as causation for an prolonged conceptualization of literacy, treating mass media, popular culture and digital media as new types of content that requires analysis and valuation. By altering the practice of media consumption into a dynamic and critical process, individual gains greater attentiveness of the potential for falsification and manipulation and can understand the role of mass media and participatory media in assembling views of reality.

 

Applications:

With building knowledge and competencies in using media and technology, media literacy learning may provide a type of protection to children and young by helping them make good choices in their media consumption habits, and patterns of usage. Convenient media literacy related abilities can be used to create new learning and teaching methods such as through mobile phones, interactive whiteboard and internet based learning. Media literacy teaches the language that is understood by the human condition worldwide and so is used to convey messages all over.