Competencia mediática de mujeres bolivianas para la comprensión crítica de la violencia de género en programaciones informativas televisivas nacionales

Resumo

Violence is a structural problem in Bolivia, based on the patriarchal and sexist power that permeates institutions and society. In the context of violation of rights, several investigations establish that the media do not make women visible as social agents of change (Vega, 2014a), but rather from the reproduction of sexist stereotypes that expose them as objects of consumption, or from reproductive roles linked to the domestic sphere. Therefore, it is a priority to strengthen media competencies that allow the exercise of media literacy, as a powerful process of awareness with a critical sense, for change (Hobbs, 2016; Scolari, 2018; Aguaded et al., 2021). The thesis has a structure that links the epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and technical level, where the general objective of the study was to measure the level of media competence of women students of the Social Communication career of the Public University of El Alto, Bolivian Catholic University "San Pablo", Universidad Mayor de San Andrés of La Paz, for the critical understanding of gender violence presented in news broadcast by national television media. The basis of the thesis lies in the theoretical approach to media competence proposed by Pérez-Tornero and Varis (2012), which groups three dimensions that should be handled by citizens: "Access and Use", "Critical Understanding" and "Communicative and Creative Production". The dimensions are addressed, with special interest in Critical Understanding. The methodological approach is mixed, quantitative and qualitative, with the application of the survey technique to 833 female students of the Social Communication career of the mentioned universities. The qualitative approach is expressed in the development of three discussion groups with the use of a questionnaire that promoted dialogue and contributed to the triangulation process, providing validity and reliability to the results obtained. The study concludes that there is media competence (favorable) in the group of female university students of the higher education institutions where the study was carried out. At the same time, the research hypothesis proposed was correct in that the media competence of women students of the Social Communication career of the three universities studied is less than 75%, reaching 69.9% which corresponds to a rating of "Favorable" or "Positive" within a scale of evaluation of media competence that places it between 50.01% and 75%. Despite the complex context of machismo and manifest and latent patriarchy in Bolivia, with figures that make visible the violation of women's rights, it stands out as favorable that the university students of the Communication career of the universities mentioned have the level of media competence that links the dimensions of Access and Use, Critical Comprehension, and Communicative and Creative Production. In the work, the Critical Understanding dimension has a proportion that reaches 77% of the total value of the questionnaire score. In turn, the rating for this dimension was 71.06%, which corresponds to "Favorable" or "Positive". Therefore, it is evident the capacity of university women to have a critical reading to identify gender stereotypes, as well as a sense of autonomy and decision making that is expressed in a favorable way when classifying the types of violence exposed from the television media. The multidimensionality and intersectionality that includes gender and interculturality are identified as pending actions to be investigated, as well as the training of teachers and students in media education with a gender approach.