Being literate means to be able to read and write. Being media literate means to be able to understand the meaning of the images and sounds that are the 'language' of media. The challenge is that it doesn't seem like it takes any learning to understand media. Everyone can see what is in an image, right? But what does the image communicate, what did the creator want the viewer to think, to do? How did this communication work? Why do people react the way they do? Being able to answer these questions is what makes for media literacy.

Media gets much of it's power by the way images build upon each other. Our minds make connections between images that we see next to each other and between the images we see and the sounds that acompany them. Here is an excellent illustration of this.