New Media World aims to make people understand and critically select the information they receive, avoiding ‘fake news
One of the challenges posed by new technologies is to filter and select what is useful or relevant amid the avalanche of information dumped daily by social networks, websites and media in general. Among experts, it is often said that today’s times can be called the Media Age, a pun on the Middle Ages, which defines the excess of information and communication. From this, a new concept of education has been developed in this regard: media education, which prepares people for a more selected, critical and qualified consumption of the information they receive daily.
“Media education, media education, or communication presupposes a critical attitude towards the media and their languages, the mastery of the necessary code competencies for the production of their own narratives.
The concept is imposed by the fact that, with the advent of internet and communication technologies, especially cell phones and tablets, all people have become potential consumers and producers of information and content. And also with the advent of false news, the so-called fake news, which can be used both as a weapon of political propaganda and for the practice of crimes related to honor and decorum.
Media education is necessary to expand and strengthen citizenship based on multimedia literacy, which is the ability to read and critically interpret everything that is published in the most diverse media, in its most varied types. “We understand that in order to achieve full citizenship, the individual is required to know how to interpret the media and its new languages. It is not enough just to read and write a text, you need to know how to deal with television, cinema, radio, and how to use the Internet for your own education,” he says.
Thus, schools can well apply media education by having teachers train students in three basic attitudes: reading critically, writing responsibly, and participating actively in discussions in the public space. “It can be taught and applied by responding to the challenges of reading the context, problematizing this context, learning the grammar and use of media, reading and critiquing, and producing their own narratives and interpretations for these problems,” the professor shows. Media education models can already be found in several countries, such as Canada, where this practice is mandatory at some levels of elementary school.
And at home? How can parents teach and apply media education with their children? “By monitoring the use of the media and discussing with their children some of the information disseminated by the media, and by offering a greater diversity of multimedia languages, narratives, and world reading formats built by the media.
It is important to emphasize with children the social role of media in a democratic society,” answers Ronaldo, pointing out that this should be done “from the moment parents allow their children access to the media,” delimiting and explaining the time, quality, meaning, and the way this access happens.