Teenagers’ reflections on media literacy initiatives at school and everyday media literacy discourses
2021
Often coined as digital natives, contemporary teens are ascribed
a paradoxical status of skilled but vulnerable media users.
Therefore, media literacy initiatives often target young audiences
in order to mitigate detrimental media effects as well as to facilitate
emancipatory media engagements. The literature on media literacy
draws from diverse disciplines (e.g. educational sciences, media
studies) and examines a wide range of thematic areas (e.g. privacy,
news, citizenship). However, the voices of those who are the target
population of media literacy policy and research are seldom heard.
We identify the absence of teenagers’ perceptions and experiences
as a limitation in contemporary debates on media literacy.
Therefore, this study aims to shed light on how teenagers give
meaning to media literacy, how they perceive the contemporary
discourse on the importance of media literacy for teens, and in
which way they encounter concrete media literacy initiatives at
school. Based on in-depth interviews with 31 high-school students
between 16 and 18 year old, we found how teenagers primarily
have a risk discourse in mind when talking about media literacy.
Contextualizing these perceptions, it became clear that both the
public discourse and media literacy initiatives largely draw from
protectionist approaches.
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