TEACHING MEDIA COMPETENCE IN THE CLASSROOM: TELEVISION, ADVERTISING AND FILM

Nowadays we have to give new literacies to our students, to prepare them for a new citizenship in digital society. Following Bauman´s metaphor, we are in the “liquid” information culture, where media, technology and the Web 2.0 have relevant effects.We consider that media competence has three main aspects or areas to teach, and inside each on them we may include several dimensions: knowledge (media industry, technology, language, processes of production, access to information), understanding (ideology and values) and expression (communication, creation, citizen participation). We want to consider media education as an educational practice, rather than a line of research, so we need to create a series of practical activities, experiences that aim to train learners in active and critical interpretation of the mass media (film, radio, television, and printed media, among other new media.) As we have mentioned, it is more a pedagogical activism than a theoretical development. Knowing the discourse structure of news or announcements allows students to maintain focus on the ideological part; but this will only happen after a learning period in which they are taught the basic codes that are used, the visual semiotics. The student has to internalize this analysis; he or she has to know that there is a misinformation, a manipulatio