Media Education in Latin America

Julio-César Mateus, Pablo Andrada, Maria Teresa Quiroz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429534676
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This book offers a systematic study of media education in Latin America. As spending on technological infrastructure in the region increases exponentially for educational purposes, and with national curriculums beginning to implement media related skills, this book makes a timely contribution to new debates surrounding the significance of media literacy as a citizen's right. Taking both a topical and country-based approach, authors from across Latin America present a comprehensive perspective of the region and address issues such as the political and social contexts in which media education is based, the current state of educational policies with respect to media, organizations and experiences that promote media education.

1 The state of media education in Latin America¹

Julio-César Mateus, Pablo Andrada and María-Teresa Quiroz

1.1 Building Bridges, Reviewing Tales: Why a Latin American Overview?

The Media Education in Latin America editorial project was implemented with a two-pronged objective. The first is to offer an updated state of the development of this topic in the region, from a transnational and multi-dimensional lens. The second objective is to promote dialogue with the Anglo-Saxon world (from its publication in English), contributing to overcome language barriers that have historically impeded a more fluid and horizontal relationship between South and North.

Media education is not a new concept in Latin America. On the contrary, as Ismar de Oliveira states in Chapter 13 of this book, it has an almost 50-year history. This intellectual field has been progressively built thanks to the contribution of researchers, teachers and activists, as well as projects and organisations. However, it has not managed to turn into public policies sustained over time.

As in other contexts, Latin America has also found itself confused in the face of conceptual dispersion regarding media education. This denomination overlaps with other terms in the English-speaking world, such as media pedagogy, visual information or digital literacies; new literacies; new century skills or transmedia competencies. It also overlaps with educomunicación in the Latin American world. Each concept has a particular approach that disputes a place in the education agenda of these countries. In this book, we start with a wide definition of media education, conceived as a system that develops critical and creative interaction abilities between citizens and media. We use ‘media’ to refer equally to the so-called ‘mass media’ or ‘traditional media’ and to ‘new media’, digital media and information and communication technology (ICT).

Today, when excessive information availability and false news traffic openly affect democratic coexistence, the world has turned its gaze to media education as a possible way out (Bulger & Davison, 2018). It is fair to remember, however, that this demand is not new. In 1980, the famous ‘Many voices, One world’ UNESCO report pointed out that relationships between education and communication were multiplying as a product of media expansion, especially audiovisual media:

Endowed with a greater educational value, communication generates an ‘educational environment’. While the educational system loses the monopoly of education, communication becomes itself a vehicle for and a subject of education. Meanwhile, education is an essential tool for teaching men to communicate better and to draw greater benefits from the exchanges established between them. Thus, there is a growing reciprocal relationship between communication and education.

(UNESCO, 1980, pp. 56–57)

The Grünwald Declaration of 1982, acknowledged as a foundational milestone of the media education movement worldwide, noted that ‘political and educational systems need to recognise their obligations to promote in their citizens a critical understanding of the phenomena of communication’ (UNESCO, 1982). More recently, in the Riga Recommendations on Media and Information Literacy in a Shifting Media and Information Landscape, UNESCO (2016) once again calls on its member states

to ensure that MIL programmes and policy are developed as central to national and international policies designed to promote civic participation in democratic life by spreading information, knowledge, awareness and skills that will enable people to enjoy the benefits of the new communications environment.

Despite the weight of media education in UNESCO declarations and recommendations, their implementation in the world has been asymmetrical and erratic. Some countries, such as France, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States have developed (with varying degrees of success) institutional projects and public policy along these lines.

The European Commission and Parliament also promote media education and discuss its teaching at schools in the educational field, and its incorporation as a task for regulatory organisms in the media field (Frau-Meigs, Vélez, & Flores, 2017). However, despite efforts, some experts are disappointed with what they feel is stagnation: ‘It’s now almost 15 years since the European-level discussion of media literacy began, and yet it seems as though most of the participants are still limbering up, and haven’t even made it to the starting block’ (Buckingham, 2018).

In Latin America, the situation is even more complex, as each country constitutes its own universe and, at the regional level, the concept has not had a major impact. This does not mean that technology has been marginalised in schools. On the contrary, Latin America is among the most dynamic regions in terms of purchasing technology, and its efforts to overcome access gaps are prominent (Lugo, Kelly, & Schurmann, 2015). However, these actions are hardly ever supported from the approach of media education that we propose in this book; they are closer to the field of educational technology.

1.2 National Outlooks: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis Proposal

For the production of the first part of this book, wherein each country’s status is presented separately, we reference the conceptual framework proposed by UNESCO (2013) in the report entitled Global Media and Information Literacy Assessment Framework: Country Readiness and Competencies. This document indicates the importance of knowing environmental factors to evaluate the state of media education in a country (among others, its presence in curricula, the existence of appropriate policies, the level of access and use and the presence of civil organisations that promote it). In the same way, some core ideas found inspiration in the book Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe (Frau-Meigs et al., 2017), although we do not follow their quantitative methodology.

In this book, we chose an outlook that is interpretative in nature. In this context, we called upon well-known researchers from 11 Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The countries that are absent here should be considered in a future study. We asked each author or group of authors to develop a chapter wherein they analyse five dimensions: socio-political context, regulatory framework, social actors, teacher training and academic production. We also asked them to propose a general assessment of these dimensions as a whole. In addition, we offered them some guiding questions, which we summarise in the following Table 1.1.

1.2.1 Socio-political Context: Media Concentration and Technological Gaps

Despite the peculiarities of each national context, it is possible to find common points among the Latin American countries that form the regional scene. Regarding the socio-political context, media concentration and technological gaps stand out. Both elements are framed, in turn, by a general atmosphere of political and economic instability that includes, in the past 30 years, dictatorships; coups; returns to democracy; and, in some cases, acts by terrorist or guerrilla groups with an enormous negative impact on the social atmosphere of countries.

Table 1.1 Dimensions and guiding questions

Latin America has one of the highest indexes in the world when it comes to media concentration. Technological convergence produced a transformation in the communication and culture industries, which facilitated the emergence of telephone companies that assumed dominant positions in the media sector, especially cable TV and later the Internet. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, the main communication groups in the region, which used to be family companies, transformed into conglomerates. This accelerated the trend toward concentration due to technological convergence. The big multimedia groups faced the challenges posed by an emerging global regulatory system, using their influence capabilities over national governments. (Becerra & Mastrini, 2017).

In addition, media concentration is related to the tendency to centralise content in urban centres, which is linked to digital network infrastructure administered by telecommunications groups. For this reason, UNESCO warned about the threats of this process: When combined with property concentration, geographic concentration also affects pluralism and diversity, as it generates a uniformity of agendas and informational contents. Concentration is perceived as ‘indirect censorship’ by international and supranational organisations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In addition, UNESCO noted that the change of laws inherited from military dictatorships was an opportunity to transform to a more plural and less concentrated media landscape (UNESCO, 2014).

The closing of the first decade of the 21st century consolidated the media sector’s metamorphosis. The connections between governments and big news media companies were altered, and new challenges linked to freedom of speech appeared. According to Becerra and Mastrini (2017), Latin America has reached a decade in the adoption of new regulations regarding activities that are convergent today, such as telecommunications and the Internet. During this period, the manner of government intervention in public space and property concentration were also reconfigured. In many countries, this allowed access to audiovisual licences to non-profit actors. Moreover, it established criteria and minimum requirements for national, independent or local content.

Regarding the status of technological access, digital coverage in the region is limited, of poor quality and expensive. Although the percentage of homes in Latin America that are connected to the Internet doubled between 2010 and 2016, more than half of the population still has no access to the Internet. The average speed is four times slower than in the OECD countries and citizens pay 43% more for service. In OECD countries, people allocate 2% of their income for acquiring an internet connection, a percentage that climbs to 10% in Latin America. On the other hand, regional figures show wide differences in access and connectivity among countries, social classes, urban and rural areas and between men and women, which places the region in a position of disadvantage in comparison to other regions. Latin American countries where investment per inhabitant is greater are also those where internet penetration in homes is higher (Cepal, 2018).

To finish illustrating the complex regional situation, it must be added that much of the technological infrastructure has been completed by the private sector, which implies an investment to obtain profitability. In addition, there are still voids in the regulation of internet services and some barriers to the distribution and allocation of the radio electric spectrum, which discourages many companies from investing (Cepal, 2018). All of this constitutes a set of indicators that frame the development of media education in this region.

1.2.2 Regulatory Framework: More Technological Discourse Does Not Mean More Media Education

In its report Global Media and Information Literacy Assessment Framework: Country Readiness and Competencies, UNESCO (2013) pointed out the importance of making visible, in nation-wide policies, the contribution of media education in the citizen education and their role in democracies. For this reason, the definitions and manners of application of regulatory frameworks from each country constitute an essential form of support. They guarantee a place for media education in the public agenda and can favourably condition its implementation.

At the regional level, political interest in incorporating a citizen rights discourse is notorious, as its verification in national constitutions is widespread. In curricular terms, there is also a growing intention to include technology in schools. However, in many cases, this incorporation has ended up being more of an imposition than a change proposal, discussed with other actors in the educational sector. This feeling of imposition has inflated demands on teachers and on their knowledge of so-called ‘digital competences’, conceived, above all, as knowledge of ICT for their teaching. As indicated in some chapters in the first part of this book, having technology in schools is not equivalent to having media education.

Regarding education policies, in the past few decades, most countries have set forth initiatives that had ICT as its core idea. These initiatives aimed at improving learning quality, the acquisition of technological abilities and the reduction of the digital gap in contexts of deep inequality. Thus, they highlighted several projects using the one-to-one model, based on massive purchases of computers or tablets and investments in connectivity (Severin & Capota, 2011). Some examples of this model are the ‘Plan Ceibal’ in Uruguay, ‘Connectar Igualdad’ in Argentina, ‘One Laptop per Child’ in Peru and ‘Um Computador por Alumno’ in Brazil. Results varied, and, in some cases, the projects were discontinued.

In addition, even when freedom of speech, information and opinion are constitutional rights in Latin America, in the field of education, training in media competences to enable different age groups to exercise them has not been a priority. An example of these competences would be children being aware of their rights as media users or having knowledge of media expressive languages. Even when most states assign an educational role to media, this is not a reality, given the lack of tradition of public media or private media that is interested in this mission on its own i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 The state of media education in Latin America
• Part I National chapters
• Part II Critical essays
• Index