critical viewing

The idea of critical viewing developed in response to concern over the effects of television on children, who typically lack an understanding of how television programs are produced. The term is now also used in discussing film and video viewed on any device, including tablets and smartphones. Critical viewing can be understood as the ability of viewers to evaluate and manage their own viewing habits; to recognize the behind-the-scene mechanisms employed on television, film, and the Internet; to understand the ideas and information presented in the context of their own sociocultural milieu; and ultimately to recognize the effects of such media on their own lives. This entry discusses curricula designed to teach critical viewing and then provides a detailed look at the skills encompassed by the term critical viewing.

Much of the discussion about critical viewing has been about the taken-for-granted effects of too much television viewing on children, including concerns about the potential for television to promote violent behavior, materialistic attitudes, and stereotypic portrayals related to gender, sexuality, and race. During the late 1970s and 1980s, terms such as good TV diets, media diets, and television diets sprang up in the research literature. Subsequently, critical viewing curricula were developed for schools as media education was introduced in a few countries.

Originally designed for Grades 3–5, critical viewing curriculum was developed by two researchers and codirectors of the Family Television Research and Consultation Center at Yale University, with funding from the American Broadcasting Companies. The curricula were primarily focused on modules such as television literacy, teaching about television, and critical television viewing. With time, however, the curricula developed to include teaching students ways to critique and use new visual technologies and to develop visual literacy.

The need for critical viewing is not just a concern involving children. It also can be a challenge for adults to interrogate and negotiate the images, symbols, ideologies, and messages emanating from the media and to understand that screen media present constructions of reality and not always accurate depictions of reality. This entails individuals not just seeing with their eyes but also engaging their emotions, memory, and value system whenever they have a media viewing experience. Uncritical viewing, be it of television, films, or the Internet, can give rise to the idolization of media figures, a fixation on celebrities, and the negative influence of advertising on value systems.

Authors David Considine and Gail Haley proposed some salient elements of critical viewing, which include interpreting the content of a programme; interpreting its frame in terms of media form and style; recognising external forces and factors, such as media ownership, that shape the programme; examining how media representations correspond to reality, such as by looking at how often violent incidents are shown on television compared to how often they occur in real life; and recognising the potential effects of television form and content. Critical viewing skills are acquired skills that give the viewer the ability to understand, analyse, and judge the value and truth of media content, the techniques used by content creators, and the elements of a particular message.

A critical viewer

1. Understands the ways that excess exposure to screen media affects him.

2. Can identify how conflict is resolved on the programs she watches and relate how these programs portray conflict resolution to how this occurs in real life.

3. Recognizes stereotypes transmitted by the media about certain groups such as children, women, people of color, and people of certain religions.

4. Can identify what else is being sold besides the product in commercials and advertisements.

5. Pays attention to the characteristics of the media figures with whom he identifies and does not idealize them.

6. Questions the reliability of information sources in the media and whether a message is consistent with other sources or information the viewer already knows.

7. Does not believe everything she hears and sees in the media, nor does she necessarily accept media messages as representing real life.

Viewers sometimes fail to realize that media representations are constructed with certain interests, ideologies, and motives behind them. Deconstructing such media messages and representations is the crux of critical viewing and, more broadly, media.

The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society.