La alfabetización mediática en la Unión Europeaevaluación del proyecto de formación del profesorado de "Media in Action"

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is the result of the European research project Media In Action, integrated by scientists from five countries: United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Malta, and whose essential purpose is to apply the tools, strategies and resources of media literacy in secondary schools in these nations, with the aim of providing teachers with the media skills to help students combat the epidemic of misinformation that plagues contemporary society, and which has been aggravated by the relatively recent phenomena of post-truth and the so-called Fake News (2016), two syntagms that affect a reality, that of large-scale manipulation, using new technologies, and which have not only endangered Western democracies, but the very concept of information society. The scientific work approaches the object of study with a multidisciplinary approach: An exhaustive review of the scientific literature (more than 8,481 publications contained in Web of Science and Scopus, between 1971 and 2021) to systematize the main speculative contributions in the field of Media Literacy, with the aim of putting in dialogue the relevant ideas of the most influential authors, and thus articulate a solid intellectual support that helps to understand why these approaches are not only still valid but are more necessary than ever. An experiential and participant approach with three qualitative techniques that analyze and contrast the empirical results: in-depth interviews, surveys, and content analysis of training actions. The objective is to measure the level of knowledge of the main media literacy tools of the teachers who participated in the sample at two key moments: before training actions in the discipline were carried out, and at the end of the organization of classes and workshops in the participating schools. The surveys and in-depth interviews made it possible to obtain valuable data that ratify the effectiveness of the application of media literacy strategies to confront disinformation and manipulation through the media and social networks. The analysis and classification of 35 European media literacy projects carried out in Australia, Austria, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to assess their effectiveness and, above all, to measure their impact over time. Both the speculative analysis and the qualitative studies allow us to conclude that media literacy fosters critical analysis, trains and empowers citizens in the face of disinformation, and turns them into actors and guarantors of the democratic order, and strengthens them as promoters of a fair and truly informed society; therefore, it turns them into individuals who cannot be manipulated by political and economic interests that use the media and social networks as polluting agents of public opinion. The analysis of European projects in which researchers, teachers and communication professionals collaborate has allowed us to conclude that these initiatives are not maintained over time and are only valid for the duration of the project, which hinders their real implementation in the classroom. This fact forces us to rethink the European Union's strategy in the fight against disinformation, which involves allocating more funds so that projects of this nature are not just a passing remedy.