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Media Competence in Spanish Secondary School Students. Assessing Instrumental and Critical Thinking Skills in Digital Contexts

The ways in which young people communicate have changed in line with the impact of technologies. This change has been accompanied by growing differences between the young, and their "liquid" experience, and adults with their "solid" experience, and these shapes the state of the question that defines young people as digital natives. This work analyses Spanish adolescents' level of media competence. The sample consisted of 672 students attending secondary schools in 10 provinces in Spain. The average age of the participants was 14. The study aims to show that, although today's adolescents are described as the digital generation, and there is a widely held belief that they are digital natives, their level of media competence is low and there is need for fomenting greater literacy skills in this field. The "ad hoc" questionnaire yielded results that indicate an overall medium level of media competence, but a skills shortage in the dimensions relating to critical thinking, such as in reception and audience, production and programming processes, and ideology and values. The conclusions question the supposed superior competence of digital natives in media. This study underlines the need for a clear definition of the concept of media competence from a convergence perspective.

Media competencies of university professors and students. Comparison of levels in Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Venezuela

Media competencies are a set of skills that every individual should possess in order to be able to consume and produce media and digital and information products in a critical and analytical way. This exploratory and comparative work analyses the level of media competence among 1,676 university students and 524 professors in Brazil, Spain, Portugal and Venezuela. One of the main results shows that the level of knowledge of technology and interaction — which is linked to digital competencies — does not depend solely on age, thus contradicting theories of digital natives and migrants. Our study also found that the general level of media competence is no better than medium to low when considering language, technology, interaction, production and dissemination, ideology and values, and aesthetics. These results point to the need to develop transversal actions for instructing both university professors and students in media competencies to face an ecosystem dominated by fake news and disinformation, as well as public policies directed at improving these skills among citizens at large.

Comparative analysis of media framing in international news agencies east-west. Case Study: Attack at Istanbul airport

Social realities are discursive constructs, so that attitudes and representations are the reflection of an informative approach. In this sense, the cultural and linguistic gaps between different civilizations, together with a discursive construction of a war nature, could be creating the breeding ground for a continuous confrontation between East and West. The present study analyzes the different rhetorical frames of the international news agencies Reuters, Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera and Associated Press about the terrorist attack at the Istanbul (Turkey) airport on July 28, 2016. A quantitative study of the figures speech and the most repeated topics in the headlines of the attack is carried out. The power of the media in public opinion and the construction of reality generate a discussion about how these news are spread and their effects. The objective is to compare the different rhetorical frames in both civilizations and to identify if stereotypes are projected and if this framing contributes to the spectacularization of the conflict. The main result is that there are no significant discursive differences, which leads to the conclusion that east-west rhetorical figures are used to produce a certain effect in the population, among those that highlight the euphemisms, disfemisms, demonization and discursive polarization, resources that serve to emphasize fear and create even larger gaps of social significance

Media Competencies for the Citizenship Training of Teachers from Andean America: Colombia and Ecuador

In an increasingly saturated information and infoxicated world, Media Literacy emerges as a necessity for effective filtering of the vast amount of information we consume. The present research aims to quantitatively analyze the level of media competencies of Colombian(Medellin) and Ecuadorian (Loja and Zamora) teachers by means of the application of an adaptation of the taxonomy from the media competencies model, which consists of 6 dimensions and a total of 12 indicators. The total analyzed sample was comprised of 654 teachers from 81 public and private institutions. A data-gathering instrument was used with the aim of determining their level of media competencies from each of the dimensions. The results showed a low to medium level of media competency knowledge, which illustrated the need for priority interventions based on local, regional and international works, namely those that mobilize scientific, academic and political collaboration to improve the performance of a population that should lead the general training of citizens in media competencies.

Development of reading skills throught videogames: State of the art

This research analyzes the systematic linking of videogames in the processes towards the development of reading in the media and digital environment through the theoretical review. For this objective it was reviewed academic publications from international databases submitted between 2005 and 2016 related to the involvement of video games related on reading organized by school level, theoretical approach and research design. The results demonstrated its prevalence in secondary education basing its impact as an educational agent on changes in reading habits by opening a connection between readers and motivating of collaborative interaction. Likewise, the transformation of the process towards an oriented in- formation search and acquisition of reading comprehension skills. Following this argument, it concludes in favor of the inclusion of videogames in the educational curriculum focused on the development of reading in the digital and media context.