Cultural practices and media competence levels of young Brazilians

Abstract

This article presents the results of the research project “Media skills in Brazilian and Euro-American settings” conducted with 14 to 16 years old from public and private schools in six Brazilian cities. It was developed by the member universities of the Euro-American inter-university research network on media literacy for citizenship (ALFAMED) in Brazil. From a quantitative and qualitative perspective, it assessed the levels of each of the six dimensions of media competence (Ferrés and Piscitelli, 2015) of 499 students, taking into account their cultural practices. The results indicate that young people learn informally how to deal with media, have advanced level in the handling of technology and in language, aesthetics and ideology and values dimensions. However, in the dimensions of processes of interaction and of production and diffusion, which are related to consumption and media participation, they are at the basic/intermediate level, indicating the need for formative actions to promote learning and the development of critical thinking.