The role of visual perception in media literacy is paramount in understanding the shift from a linear perceptual process (literacy) to a holistic perceptual process (visuality) by which almost all information is now transmitted through the visual forms of mass media: television, film, and the Internet. The media-literate individual must be educated in the processes of visual perception and how the media use the visual channels to transmit, and often distort, information. The media-literate person understands the meaning of the primary axiom of visual communication—The more we know the more we see—as well as the next most important axiom: What is not seen is as important as what is seen.
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