Teaching Media Literacy in Colleges of Education and Communication

Abstract

This work is part of an R&D project involving thirteen Spanish universities in which needs and wants in the field of media education in higher education are studied in the areas of Communication (Communication Studies, Journalism and Advertising) and Education (Teaching, Pedagogy, Psychology and Social Education). The objective of this study focuses on analysing the college textbooks directly related to Media Education most used in Education and Communication,. The report has been developed based on six educational competence dimensions: language, technology, interaction processes, production and distribution processes, ideology and values and aesthetics. Using each of these parameters the scope of the analysis and the scope of the expression were taken into account, based on guidelines set by Ferrés and Piscitelli in their well-known proposal of indicators for defining new media competence and which is structured around two areas of work: the production of own messages and interaction with others. The results were obtained by applying a quantitative methodology through a content analysis of semantic fields. The main conclusions point to a greater presence of the «Ideology and Values» dimension, and almost non-existent representation of the «Aesthetics» indicator..