Critical Media Literacy in Media Education: A Debate on the Contribution to Democracy

The convergence of media and technology in a global culture is changing the way we learn about the world and challenging the very foundations of education. Today, the general trend concerning the main stream media literacy has focused more on the protectionist approach. This study is aimed at discussing the importance of a critical citizenship awareness by media literacy. It is argued that critical citizenship and participative democracy are not able to acquire without seeing the ownership structure of media in the capitalist system. This study was based on cultural studies, political-economy and critical pedagogy theories where the concept of media literacy was discussed as a combination of approaches of critical media and pedagogy.