The many faces of media education – 02/16/2023 – Education

In a 5th grade classroom, ten-year-olds prepare a web series that explains how their favorite influencers are paid, discovering the relationship between significant audience and income. In another room, 8th grade students study the conflict surrounding indigenous lands, analyzing how graphs can build different narratives and looking for sources that bring diversity of voices in the reports about the situation. In High School, a class focuses on photos of Machado de Assis, discussing how and why the manipulation of the images promoted their “whitening”.

What all these activities have in common is the possibility of taking to the school routine, in a transdisciplinary way, the constant practice of critical reading and the ethical and creative authorship of media, preparing young people so that they can learn, communicate, exercise their their rights and respect the rights of others in a highly media-driven society, where not only messages but also environments, formats, intentions and authors multiply.

Digital citizenship is a right, recognized by organizations such as Unesco and established in public policies. But long gone are the days when the notion of “digital citizenship” represented only a protective perspective, focused on empowering young people against threats such as cyberbullying, password theft, predators or overexposure. Today, we understand that exercising citizenship –inside and outside the digital environment– involves, above all, empowering young people so that they can safely, ethically and responsibly occupy the true public square that is the internet and its various channels and forms of communication. , taking advantage of the opportunities brought by the democratization of access to information, but also facing its challenges. This is the role of media education.

We need, for example, to mitigate the reach and impact of fake news, which threatens to destabilize governments, disrupt democratic processes and even harm public health. It is critical to educate all citizens, regardless of age group, to develop the habit of checking the information they receive and, in addition, to be able to identify reliable sources and information and understand how the media shapes our opinions and beliefs. It is no wonder that “news literacy” projects (education for the news) are multiplying all over the world; It also discusses ways of introducing the fight against disinformation through public policies and of incorporating education for information into the design of social platforms themselves.

But media education is much more than combating fake news. In times of post-truth polarization, society’s resilience to rights violations in the digital environment depends on a more holistic view. It is not enough just to know how to assess the reliability of the information. It is necessary to go a little further, learning to evaluate what comes to us in texts and images, recognizing their authors and intentions; to think and reflect ethically on norms, values ​​and beliefs that govern our work in the media; to produce content in a creative and ethical way, assessing whether we are infringing someone’s rights; to actively participate in our communities through the media, evaluating how we can act for the collective good*.

In short, reading, writing and participating in the connected world requires not only the development of instrumental and operational skills to deal with information and communication technologies, but also dialogical and reflective attitudes, citizen awareness and accountability.

All of society, in its diversity of contexts and regardless of age group, needs media education. If school is the natural place for the more sustained and systemic development of these skills, there is no denying the value of specific projects in other contexts. Outside the school context, adults and the senior population can also benefit from resources and workshops. And projects that choose a particular focus, focusing, for example, on information skills or the development of community media, are also valuable.

Media-educating society is much more than implementing a discipline: it is work for a generation. It is necessary to develop a reference curriculum; expand the initial and continuing education of educators; encourage initiatives by civil society organizations, the media and technology companies; mobilize opinion makers and strengthen the public policies that will support all of this. Facing this challenge requires a collective effort in which everyone is very welcome.

* Skills mentioned in the curriculum of the Colombian project digiMENTE