Competencia mediática en la Universidadcomparativa de niveles en cuatro países iberoamericanos

Résumé

Screens have gradually become a part of our daily routine, becoming the activity that occupies most of our daily hours of activity. It is therefore not trivial to study how they are used, especially when training on them has been, in most cases, autodidactic. In this regard, the subject of media competence arises as a set of skills, abilities, attitudes, and aptitudes that all people should possess to use and produce information in a critical and active way, in a communicational ecosystem that is increasingly reticulated, overloaded, and full of pseudo-content and misinformation. The current study, with an exploratory nature and quantitative design, analyzes the level of media competence of 1676 students and 524 professors from universities in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela. Among the emerging findings is evidence that the level of technological knowledge and interaction, linked to digital skills, is not only dependent on age, which contradicts the theories of “digital natives” and “migrants.” This research also reveals that, in general, the levels of media competence do not exceed the medium-low scale in both analyzed groups, when aspects such as language, technology, interaction, production and dissemination, ideology and values, and esthetics are taken into account. These results reveal that the university is not exempt from the social exclusion generated by the lack of media, digital, and information skills, coinciding with the results for Spain of the Digital literacy and education: country reports on the need to reduce the digital divide, which does not necessarily occur for age or geographical reasons.