Media Education and Digital Literacy

Dear Colleagues,

The digital revolution is profoundly modifying our lifestyle habits, our means of understanding the world. It seems evident that we are aiding the birth of a new stage in our civilization. The digital revolution of ICT—which has brought with it the digitization of all information—is paving the way for a new era. Physical space, as much a determining factor as in the previous historic stages, stops having such relevance when it is substituted by a virtual space where communications between human beings cover the whole planet, globalizing it in every scope (cultural, economic, social, etc.). In this new context, education has to offer responses to new needs. The human being of the 21st century needs knowledge, capabilities, and outlooks for a new society in which the communicative processes have so much relevance. Just like traditionally, when one of the basic objectives of education was linguistic and cognitive literacy—with the acquisition of fundamental competencies such as, for example, the ability to read and to write—today, literacy in the new multimedia and hypermedia languages is also necessary. This is what we would definitively call digital literacy.

At present, we are, due to the digital revolution, in a process of convergence that we call techno-media, and in which media—as much the traditional as the newest, from the press or the radio to the Internet and social networks—stop existing as separate entities in order to form part of a unique digital media that covers the whole of human communication. The divisions between the media cease to exist, and we find ourselves in a unique interactive communication system, borne out of the digital paradigm. In this sense, our knowledge of technology and means of communication, the absolute protagonists of our world become essential. Most importantly, in the world of education, to face the challenge, it is not necessary to create an extraordinary and complex innovation of uncertain productivity, since we already have a fundamental pedagogical paradigm of long-standing tradition and excellent results where it is applied: media education. This is something which should be essential in search of an authentic education for the needs of the contemporary world, and a fundamental pillar of a correct literacy of a citizen of the 21st century, which will allow us to transform and improve current society and undertake effective digital literacy from grass roots.

Research papers and reviews of research studies that focus on this important and complex issue from all multidisciplinary perspectives (education, sociology, information science, cultural studies, journalism, psychology, anthropology, etc.) are welcome in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. José Gómez Galán
Dr. Cristina Lázaro-Pérez
Guest Editors

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