An Invitation to Continue the Dialogue on Educomunicación: North-South and South-South collaborations. (Part 5)

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An Invitation to Continue the Dialogue on Educomunicación: North-South and South-South collaborations. (Part 5)

by Julio-César Mateus, PhD and Andres Lombana-Bermudez, PhD

In the final post of our series, we would like to address some critical questions about the future and current state of educomunicación that were not fully discussed in the webinars, and share some ideas for promoting the South-South and North-South dialogues on media education and media literacies. 

Andres: 

As we have listened in the previous entries of the series, educomunicación, as a Latin American movement and tradition, offers situated knowledges and practices that can be useful for building a more plural ecology of media education and media literacies. However, given the diversity of educomunicación initiatives, systematizing the heterogeneity of practices can be a daunting task. Moreover, there is also the challenge of translating local and situated knowledge to other languages. One of the recent efforts that aimed to extend and amplify the Latin American dialogue on educomunicacion is the collective book  Media Education in Latin America (2019). What have we learned from this project? What are the key problems and thematics addressed in that book and how can they help us to promote the North-South and South-South dialogues?


Julio Cesar:


Indeed, we edited the book Media Education in Latin America to offer an updated state of the development of this topic in the region. Likewise, we also published it in English to promote dialogue with the Anglo-Saxon world, contributing to overcome language barriers that have historically impeded a more fluid and horizontal relationship between South and North. In Latin America, educomunicacion traces a parallel route to the media literacy traditions of the Anglosphere, most of which remain relatively unknown in English-speaking countries. As Michael Hoechmann says in the book, for the most part, the Anglosphere has not been good at South-North dialogue, besides two exceptions with considerable traction in English-speaking countries: the book “How to Read Donald Duck” by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart (1971), which is used to teach the concept of cultural imperialism, and the other, and perhaps most significant, common ground is the transformative work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. He did not work directly in media education, but his methods and ideas changed the teaching and learning dynamics in both Latin American educomunicación and the Anglosphere traditions of media literacy.


On the other hand, “one must remember that educomunicación was born from North-South and South-North dialogues. It is not a nativist tradition, but rather draws on multiple sources that include key authors. Jesus Martin-Babero cites Benjamin, Barthes, Williams and many others; Mario Kaplun (1998) references Bruner, Piaget, Vygotsky and Pierce; Freire himself quotes Lukacs, Lenin, Buber and Althusser. That is a recurrent factor in Latinamerican scholars”. (Hoechsmann, 2019, p. 265). 


While editing the book, we realized it was going to be useful to organize and preserve the memories from the long tradition of Educomunicación. One of the most prominent actors of this movement, Brazilian professor Ismar de Oliveira Soares (2019), explained that the first initiatives began in the middle of the 1960’s, focusing on film analysis. In fact, the first project of introducing movie analysis at schools, called “Plan de Educación Cinematográfica para Niños (DENI)”, rapidly spread to many countries. In the 1970’s, Media Education agenda aggregated printed media and, mainly, television production. At first, the predominant theoretical tendency at this period was the behaviorism theories of effects. In Latin America, moreover, many of the media education promoters working with popular groups in the communities added another perspective. As Oliveira recalled, they used “media analysis” to reinforce the critical awareness of audiences, in order to resist “cultural invasion”, as a result of the powerful media production coming from the North. Later, the strength of Latin American concepts in the field of communication for social development, with an emphasis on participatory planning, has had a profound impact on the construction of the concept of educommunicacion. Sadly, throughout this process, the school remained marginal. 


We concluded in the book that media education has had a varied presence in national policies in Latin America, and has not adequately responded to the citizen rights approach or the theoretical tradition of educomunicación. In the last 30 years, Latin American governments have made efforts to connect schools to audiovisual media, and later with digital technologies, but from the perspective of media as teaching assistants. Even when teacher education and training programmes on technology use have been undertaken, the balance is not positive because in most of these, technological action has taken priority over pedagogical action.



Andres: 


In terms of media education and literacy policies, there is a lot of work to do at the national levels in most of the countries from the region. As you mention, policy makers in Latin America have prioritized technological interventions over pedagogical ones. Digital transformation is part of several national policies but has tended to focus on promoting access to the Internet, computers and mobile phones and e-government rather than supporting access to knowledge and developing media literacies among the population. Although some governments have even included the terminology of “digital citizenship” in their policies and discourse, its conceptualization has been limited to enabling bureaucratic procedures online instead of supporting the participation of citizens across the multiple dimensions of digital societies.  Media education and educomunicacion can help to build that kind of active citizenship as our societies make the digital transformation. And it is precisely here where I see a space of opportunity for doing South-South and North-South collaborations, and for joining efforts across multiple stakeholders. The opportunity to support media education and media literacies, in all their plurality, across formal (e.g. schools, universities) and informal (e.g. home, museums, libraries) contexts is here. The pandemic and post-pandemic has even made it more urgent. And there are interesting examples of how those collaborative efforts are already taking place. The initiative of DW Akademy in Central America we heard about in one of our webinars is one of them. Other initiatives such as EducaMidia in Brazil and DigiMente in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, reveal the potential of North-South and South-South collaborations for developing and promoting open media education resources and programs in and out of school, and for combining global and local knowledges and practices. However, the opportunities go beyond curricular and educational interventions. Which other efforts can we develop to promote a more plural ecology of media education and media literacies?

Julio Cesar: 

I think global scientific publishing gives us some opportunities. For instance, using journals to spread and discuss educomunicación approaches and practices. Spain and Brazil created two more than 20 years ago: Comunicar, born in the University of Huelva and founded in 1993, published in English among other languages, and a year later, Comunicação e Educação, published in the University of Sao Paulo. Both are committed to disseminating experiences and research related to Educomunicación. Likewise, other journals have published special issues regarding these topics, such as the one we edited in Contratexto in 2019. Also the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC), with UNESCO support, launched an English-written journal, which is an excellent example of the willingness to share beyond the Spanisk-speaking academic community.

Also, in 2010, Roberto Aparici gathered texts written by Ibero-American leaders in the field, editing in Spanish the book Educomunication: beyond the 2.0, an exhaustive map of what has been said and done about media in relation to education from the 1980s to date. 

May be the most promising initiative in the region regarding educomunicación is Alfamed, an Euro-American inter-university research network on media literacy which brings together more than 50 researchers from 13 European and Latin American countries, aiming to promote opportunities and to improve the academic research and dissemination on "media education". This network has promoted five congresses in many countries and the 6th will be held in Arequipa, Peru, in 2022. These events are excellent opportunities for making more visible educomunicacion. 


Andres: 

One of the questions that we couldn't fully explore in the two webinars given the limitations of time, was the one related to the possibilities of educomunicacion and media education in a context characterized by increasing datification and by the deployment of artificial intelligence systems and algorithms. This context is global, national and local, and varies according to different material, cultural and geographical conditions. However, it is pervasive across countries and is shaping our everyday lives. The pandemic and post-pandemic have revealed how it is transforming all dimensions of society and how it is also exacerbating structural inequalities. From the economy to education, politics, culture, and health, datification is reconfiguring the processes of participation, decision-making, and access to opportunities in our societies. Hence, this process is also transforming democratic processes of deliberation and governance, and changing how citizens exercise their agency and rights. In order to participate in data-driven societies, people need to understand these complex transformations and become aware of how our citizen rights and responsibilities, decision-making, and governance are changing. This is of course, a process that requires access to knowledge, critical thinking and dialogue among multiple sectors, and that needs to be supported in schools and out of schools. How can the educomunicacion approach help us to navigate and to solve the inequalities and other wicked problems that societies and communities confront in the midst of datification?

Julio Cesar: 

When it comes to inequality as well as other social and political problems, we should try to focus our efforts in empowering the individual, and society at large, so they can navigate a culture that is becoming more and more digital. The jump from a protectionist to a liberatory paradigm,  one that genuinely supports “emancipation” is a key factor in the educomunicación approach. Many initiatives are already working on that basis even if they do not use that terminology. The objective of achieving parity in education opportunities  and literacy skills may be an ideal, but it's still a goal nonetheless that can orient interventions and policies.







Andres: 


I think that educomunicacion efforts to promote emancipation, freedom, creativity, social justice and self-determination through critical thinking, dialogue, collaboration and participation can be very useful today. Particularly, I think that supporting the development of critical awareness of how data infraestructures work, how they are shaped by power dynamics, and how they are changing our social lives can foster active citizenship and strengthen democracies.  However, given the abstract qualities of datification, becoming aware of it can be a difficult task. Although there is an increasing visibility in the public discourse about how using digital platforms can affect our privacy, security, and emotions, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of helping people to understand how our rights, agency and self-determination are changing. The dialogic pedagogy that characterizes educomunicacion offers some useful strategies for concretizing datification and grounding that process in real life stories told by students and teachers. Through dialogue it is possible to learn about how others experience algorithms and data in their everyday lives when they use digital platforms, and develop critical awareness of how datification affects people differently according to their social positions. This is an issue that is directly related to structural inequalities and social injustice, and that has been addressed by several scholars and activists working on critical data studies, digital rights, data justice and design justice. It is also an issue that is currently being addressed by several media education initiatives in the Global North but that still has not been fully tackled by educomunicacion in Latin America.


And here I see an opportunity to further develop North-South collaborations and dialogues. The term data literacy, for instance,  is already being used across the Global North and has become part of educational and learning initiatives that offer tools and resources for teachers, students, and people in general. Recognizing data practices as literacies helps us to support critical awareness and reflexivity of datification, and contributes to a more complex understanding of how citizenship has changed, and continues to change in our digital and datified world. For instance, the Data Detox Toolkit offers online resources for helping people control and understand their digital privacy, security, and wellbeing. Another initiative, the Data Culture Project is a self-service learning program offering free activities and tools for improving people's capacity to work with data. Among the different learning experiences available on the Digital Citizenship + Resource Platform, there is a collection of open educational resources for teaching and learning about data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Like these, there are other data literacy projects that are currently being developed (the Critical Big Data and Algorithmic Literacy Network has mapped many of them) and that can be put in dialogue with Latin American educomunicacion initiatives. Such kind of collaboration could not only support teaching and learning about datification in the Global South but also help to better understand how diverse data practices, experiences and imaginaries vary across different contexts and subjects. Although the process of datification is global, it varies across national and local contexts according to specific social, cultural, economic and political configurations.



[image: social DATA justice]






Julio Cesar: 

I believe media education has the potential to help individuals in exercising their political rights in a number of issues, like the right to access information. An immediate challenge in the region is to honor the long tradition of educomunicacion and "de-technologize" the way we look at the media. Today, to speak about citizenship demands that we speak of the digital not only in relation to skill development, but also in relation to the generation of an ecosystem. Faced with scenarios with precariousness and gaps, as the practitioners said in one of the webinars, it is difficult to avoid focusing on technology because it is the greatest demand: that is why most of the educational solutions in the region have relied on the purchase of tablets and other digital devices for schools. Yet, the problem of educomunicacion is not just about the jump from a discipline to a political program. A recent paper by Narvaes (2021) reminds us that there is a risk in believing that technology alone can resolve the problems of political democratization and knowledge democratization, even without explaining how these technologies improved the cognitive and communicative processes in the first place. 

Andres: 

Addressing the political dimension of education and communication, as mixed and intertwined processes, is key for building citizenship and democracies today. That is how the educomunicación approach based on dialogical and critical pedagogies aimed to empower individuals and vulnerable populations so they could become aware of the world and transform it. However, as you mention, the risk of assuming an educational approach that focuses on functional skills and technology use is high given the rapid digital transformations that are taking place in culture, economy, politics and all social dimensions. There is a pressure to become digital, to connect, to use digital infraestructures for working, learning, socializing and entertaining. That pressure affects governments, industries and citizens, and has become stronger during the pandemic and post pandemic. While communities and societies cope with that it is important to keep in mind that fostering citizenship and democracy requires dialogue, tolerance, “listening to and encountering the other.” Supporting the development of dispositions such as dialogue and critical thinking and reflexivity needs to be balanced with the development of instrumental and functional skills. This can be quite a challenge because the business model and design of most digital platforms and technological innovations we use today tends to privilege efficiency, fast interactions, consumption, and data extractivism. However, transforming that business model and infrastructure design also opens a space of opportunity for imagining alternative futures, data decolonization,  and advancing media education.  What is in your opinion about the future of educomunicación?

Julio Cesar: 

Regarding future perspectives, I want to recall some of the opportunities we identified in our book. The first is to recognise the existence of media education in Latin America as an interdisciplinary field of study and action, and to recover the theoretical basis of educomunicación instead of focusing on purely digital and technological rhetoric. Updating it and continuing to develop educomunicacion knowledges and practices is crucial for designing public policy interventions in our countries. One of the most important points for Latin American public policies is to overcome the understanding that educational technology and media education are different issues.

Secondly, we have to project media education to other audiences and spaces beyond the school context. This is an opportunity to generate new dialogues among generations and groups about the impact of media in society. On that matter, we need to incorporate dynamics that are characteristic of social media and of digital literacies as part of a training centred around the person and democratic values. This can help to combat intolerant speech in social media, diminish the circulation of ‘fake news’ and other issues that may endanger peaceful and respectful coexistence.

And finally, to be consistent with the educomunicación approach, we have to encourage media education that is oriented toward confronting inequality in rural or marginalised areas, starting with their own interests and needs. Media education is not only about getting technology there but also about guaranteeing fundamental rights to citizens that are usually disregarded, favouring their voice and their culture.


Works cited:







Authors


Julio-César Mateus (@juliussinmundo) is Full Professor and researcher in the Faculty of Communication at the University of Lima, Peru. He coordinates the Education and Communication research group and is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Contratexto. His PhD thesis explores the media literacy approach in teachers' initial training in Peru. He has published Media Education in Latin America (coedited with M.Teresa Quiroz and Pablo Andrada for Routledge) and several articles in indexed journals.


Andres Lombana-Bermudez (@vVvA) is an assistant professor of communication at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia. He is also an associate researcher at the Centro ISUR at the Universidad del Rosario, and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.  He is the co-author of  "The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality" (2018), “Youth and the Digital Economy: Exploring Youth Practices, Motivations, Skills, Pathways, and Value Creation” (2020), among other publications.