Chapter 4: The Power of Representation

Chapter 4: The Power of Representation

But just as my own direct, real-world experience of the world is selective and incomplete because of my perception and interpretation processes, media representations are also inevitably selective and incomplete. (p. 73)

I think that this line speaks volumes. It is absolutely correct; no one has seen everything or done everything. There is simply no way that each of us has our own direct, real-world experience with everything that we have knowledge about. An author will make a representation based on their own thoughts, ideas, and interpretations of a topic. They use their own experience, mixed with the ideas that they have picked up from other sources.

My favorite example of real world experience vs. mediated experience that the text mentions is the difference between just listening to music and actually making the music. When you listen, you can think up all different ideas that you think the musician is trying to convey. Maybe it's obvious and you guess correctly. But maybe you never actually get what is being said. On the other hand, if you make the music, then you and you alone know exactly what your piece is saying. And unless you tell, other's might never know.

This thought can also apply to students. They mainly learning second hand, meaning someone (teacher, parent) is there to expose them to new ideas and knowledge. In fact, most of what we know is secondhand. We base our own opinions on what we think certain experiences would be like.

I've never to New York City, but from all the different representations of it that I've seen/heard throughout my life, I can close my eyes and see Times Square, Central Park, and even Ground Zero. I have an idea of what they would be like in real life, and how I would feel if I were there.

The work 'thrift' itself has the connotation of something that perhaps we don't want anymore, or something that is cheap. I believe, however, that it can have a different meaning when it comes to learning and knowledge. Thrift is a good word to describe the process of how experiences and knowledge are shared. I picked this image of "thrift" because I feel that we all have a lot of secondhand knowledge. As mentioned above, all the things that we "know" don't come from our own experiences. Someone or something passes their knowledge on to us, and chances are, we will pass it on to someone else. We are constantly 'giving our experiences away' to other people, and we are also constantly being given someone else's. Learning is a never ending process, and without the sharing of our own real-world experience, ideas, thought, and interpretations, all we would ever know is what we have actually lived through.




Hobbs, R. (2011). Research as Authentic Inquiry. In Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press.