definizione di media education

Introducing Media Education
What does it mean?

Media education is a multi-semantic expression. In a basic definition it is the pedagogical method to look and face up to the media in our (both explicit and implicit) educative processes from childhood since adulthood.
M.E. is considerable like a science crossing education and communication researches aiming to contaminate the one with the media topics and the other with the anthropological needs. To summarize the complexity behind these efforts we can describe it according following three[1] main pedagogical/didactical lines of application:
- educating “to” the media, that means help the audience of a mediatic message to de-construct it, discovering the implicit contents. The goal is to give “each youngster the ability to understand the situation in which he stands when he is the target of media-related messages”[2];
- educating “with” the media; namely using the new (mass)media for the scholar didactic (e.g: watching an historical film instead to make a lesson about Middle Age);
- educating “trough” the media; in this way the students are asked to use and experience the production behind a medium (e.g.: a newspaper or a short film) by which they have to present or implement scholastic contents.

Fundamental key-words in M.E.
Media Education starts from the assumption that a medium message could be stronger than user, because it’s structured to be conformable with human reception system. So the aim is to teach the person to be the best reader and re-writer of media-messages.
o Awareness: M.E exists to make the media-user aware of all the socio-cultural and psico-educative implication of being the receiver of a “built message”. A lot of mediaeducator consider that media are the emotive path of our un-reasoned and implicit knowledge and skills.
o Learning by experiencing: only doing directly and discovering how a tool works is possible to reach a critical independence about its use and fruition.
o Citizenship: in a knowledge society full-of-media[3] M.E. is strategic to educate young people, future citizens and lifelong-media-user.
o Process: concerning media, both the uses and the effects are seen as processes, in which is urgent to implement educative scaffolds to not let the users alone in their experience.

Principal study trends and application fields[4]
Nowadays M.E can be described thanks to five trends (and corresponding application fields):
1. to product media materials;
2. to analyze and deconstruct media messages;
3. to teach communication and technological theories;
4. to explore media psyco-affective dimension[5];
5. to experience the media context trough simulated and safe games.


[1] From the “epistemological” work: Rivoltella, Media Education, Carocci, 2001, Rome.
[2] From: http://www.media-animation.be/Twelve-questions-to-define-media.html.
[3] The BFI researchers introduced the concept of “media environment” to define our life-contexts. See: Bazalgette et. al., New Directions. Media Education Worldwide, UNESCO Press, 1992, Strasbourg.
[4] According with professor Thierry deSmedt from University of Louvain-la-Neuve. To see in depth his analysis: http://didac.comu.ucl.be/Education_medias/comu2269.htm.
[5] See: Gonnet, èducation et médias, Presses Universitaires de France, 1997, Paris.