Media Literacy is a broad and fascinating field of study that encompasses many different areas of knowledge and streams of thought. For me, the most interesting – and fundamental – aspect of Media Literacy is communication, especially in relation to the everyday literacy practices in the context of media and culture. It is mainly about the meaning making practices with which we engage through mediated communication. Being media literate, in this sense, means to be able ‘read’ the world around us, express our ideas and thoughts, and act upon this world, all of that through mediated communication.
This idea has driven all my work on media literacy education, whether it is a workshop on video production for young students, a webinar on disinformation for adults, a lecture on multimodality for future secondary teachers, or a learning resource on social media for a specific group of professionals.
My research has mainly focused on young people and digital media, and it has been a great experience to see how teenagers use digital media to express their ideas, exercise their criticality, foster their creativity, and engage with popular culture references. On the other hand, it has also shown me how much work we still have ahead of us, especially in relation to how young people deal with online information, digital environments and news consumption. There are many issues related to disinformation, privacy, identity, alienation, hate speech, bullying and many others that pose a real and very serious threat to our societies, and we are still at the early stages of understanding these issues and finding the solutions for them.
That is why I think it is a great achievement that we have a network such as MLI so that we can bring together people from different areas with different expertise. Media education, just like any form of education, requires collaboration over a long period of time, and it has been extraordinary to see academics, librarians, teachers, journalists, and others coming together to promote media literacy knowledge, skills and practices in this country.
In my view, media literacy must be part of the school’s curriculum, from primary to secondary education. We can no longer think of literacy in the traditional way – reading and writing printed text – after the changes in the way we communicate brought about by the digital revolution. This, for me, is urgent. Sporadic and local educational interventions, such as workshops, webinars etc. are important to raise awareness and provide some basic knowledge and skills, but the real revolution will only come when we enter the schools and create a long and solid educational plan to educate the next generations
