Media education: a new academic curriculum

This last century of achievement can be considered the ‘mass media century’:Lumière’s first cinematographic projections, the birth and the development ofradio and television followed by the emergence of the internet can be considered the most notable events. Mass media seem to have underlined a turning point in communicative and technological developments. The significant change in communication dynamics and, moreover, in cultural sets caused by the huge advent of mass media, has greatly contributed to the shift of interests in social studies of communication. In the past 30 years, the interests of social scientists have focused on the consequences of the cognitive, perceptive and representational activity of individuals caused by the extended exposure to mass media, in other words, the social construction processes of life focusing on the communication– education nexus. It is emphasized that in technologically developed societies, young people grow up in a completely different social environment, where multimedia experiences can be considered normal everyday life. Apart from being a typical entertainment experience, mass media are an extraordinary source of knowledge for young people, even if sometimes this aspect can be seen to be negative, as it develops excessive selflearning dynamics, e.g. learning by doing, causing the loss of the typical guide-function-to-knowledge of mass media (Greco, 2004). Moreover, mass media act as socialization carriers for their cognitive-emotional contents whose modalities can be considered deeply influential, more so than family and school, thus evidencing a deep crisis of moral values and communicative incapability. We find ourselves, unlike in the past, in a completely different reality of rapid acceleration and unceasing checks of the power of socialization, in which friendship groups and mass media act as universally open elements (Morcellini, 1997). The actual environment appears open to new perspectives (new democratic and creative opportunities of knowledge and socialization) but also undeniably also open to risks (anti-socialization processes and new inequalities). All these points create an educational revival owing to incessant shifts caused by the transformation processes of the mass media (Greco, 2004).