Why media education?

Media rule our private sphere as much as our working life.

The technical facilities for multiplication, transfer and networking are gaining ever greater influence on the “natural” environment of young people and students; they are part of their reality, their world.

Education should accompany and encourage the children and adolescents in their relations to the world/reality.

Look at  how much we use media these days. See the way people are constantly communicating on their phones everywhere. You tweet. You send SMSes. You use your phone to get on facebook. there's what'sapp and pinterest. Yesterday I discovered my maid watching a video on her phone as she cut the vegetables in the kitchen!

It seems that we depend more and  more on the media to experience reality.

The share that the media have in our experience of the world or reality is constantly growing – a new dimension of reality has been created by the emergence of highly developed technologies.

Considering that a reflective encounter and discourse with realities is a fundamental part of the science of education, the conclusion is that media pedagogy should become a much more integrated part of pedagogy.

 Pedagogy must double as media pedagogy.


Media experience by way of language, images, drawings, books, theatre plays, etc. has indeed long contributed to shaping human reality.

 The sheer extent to which these media helped to form our reality/view of the world has, however, been virtually ignored in the teacher training system. The fact that and the means how “language” as a basic medium is instrumental in the establishment of reality, is only now entering subject-specific didactics. Similar considerations apply to the audio-visual media.


The process of mass communication through mass media has made it possible to transmit the same message to an infinite number of recipients over a geographical and/or temporal distance.
With this, the media open up opportunities for global communication, a cosmopolitan outlook and the on-going development of democracy, yet they also harbour the danger of greater manipulation.

The reality changed by and changing through the media is a challenge and an opportunity at the same time.

Within the meaning of media policy knowledge, media education is a discourse not only on the causes, effects and types of media communication, but also on the various interests which determine the choice and content of information and the method of its communication.

 So.....
Media Education is the process of teaching and learning about media.

It is about developing young people's critical and creative abilities when it comes to the media.

Media education should not be confused with educational technology or with educational media.

Being able to understand the media enables people to analyse, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media, genres, and forms.

Education for media literacy often uses an inquiry-based pedagogic model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, hear, and read.

Media literacy education provides tools to help people critically analyse messages, offers opportunities for learners to broaden their experience of media, and helps them develop creative skills in making their own media messages.

So, Media education is about giving people the tools with which they can access, examine, and understand the ways in which media functions, and then enable them to participate in media, by constructing their own messages.

Critical analysis can include identifying author, purpose and point of view, examining construction techniques and genres, examining patterns of media representation, and detecting propaganda, censorship, and bias in news and public affairs programming (and the reasons for these). Media literacy education may explore how structural features—such as media ownership, or its funding model—affect the information presented.

Media education concerns all communication media and their combinations made possible by  what is called 'New Media'. These communication media are constituent parts of all texts, regardless of the technology:

 the word, printed/spoken, graphics, sound, stills and moving pictures.

 The New Media (including the Internet), being developments and combinations of the above modules, are essentially technologies that serve their distribution and have an effect on several social dimensions. Critical reflection on the possible effects is also included in media education.