Browsing by Author "Campos, Ioli"
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- Cars for girls and dolls for boys: overview about gender differences in the relationship between children and the digital mediaPublication . Campos, IoliGender conceptualisation is an essential component of forming one’s identity from an early age, and mass media play an important role in developing the constructs one has about gender. For that reason, researchers have been studying the construction of media messages focusing on gender representation for some time. Other researchers have been looking into gender differences concerning children’s access and use of the media. This paper contributes to rethinking impact by presenting a critical overview of empirical studies about young audiences and the media, with a lens on gender issues. It organises differences and commonalities found by researchers in the following categories: media access, media use and exposure, media socialisation, parental mediations, and media literacies. The literature shows that despite some policies favouring universal Internet diffusion having helped reduce gaps in children’s access to the media, gender differences in children’s media use persist (McQuillan & Neill, 2009). Both boys and girls use all platforms (Lemish, Alony, & Studies, 2014), but they use them differently (McQuillan & Neill, 2009). In particular, boys and girls use social media differently (McQuillan & Neill, 2009). They also prefer different news topics, although they are equally interested in the news (Lemish et al., 2014). Children of different gender also have varying experiences of civic and political participation (Brites, 2018). When it comes to media concerns, while boys and girls are equally concerned about pornographic content, they reveal some differences in their concerns about issues like violence, contact and conduct (Livingstone, Kirwil, Ponte, & Staksrud, 2014). Gender gaps were also found in studies focusing on parental media mediation and parental role-modelling concerning media habits (Nabi & Krcmar, 2016; Talves & Kalmus, 2015). However, unlike some stereotyped ideas that males are more skilled in technology, the research shows that there are no significant gender differences in motoric media skills (Nikken, 2017) nor in news media literacy (Craft, Maksl, & Ashley, 2013; Kleemans & Eggink, 2016; Maksl, Ashley, & Craft, 2015). Nevertheless, results regarding ICT skills are still inconclusive (McQuillan & Neill, 2009). Based on this literature analysis, the paper also contributes to the scholarly debate by discussing the literature gaps and suggesting future research lines in the field.
- Media literacy for global education: toolkit for youth multipliersPublication . Campos, Ioli; Antilla, K.; Tratnki, V.; Ljubic, T; Stefan, V.; Kessir, M.A media literate citizen knows not only how to access media and technologies, analyse media messages, and critically evaluate them but also how to create media messages reflexively, paving the way to participate actively, continuously and responsibly in social and civic societies. This in line with the Global Education main aim: educating responsible global citizens for social justice and sustainable development. Being a media literate citizen is, therefore, crucial to succeed in Global Education and gain the skills and abilities to competently interact with the media and with the world through the media. By enlarging the scope of Global Education with Media Literacy elements, Global Education becomes a more effective tool contributing to the achievement of UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This toolkit offers an integrated approach towards Media Literacy in the context of Global Education. It explores a set of activities focused on the critical analysis and production of media messages, analysis of algorithms, active participation in societies, maintenance of privacy, maintenance of well-being and management of e-identity.
- Parenting in a world of deep mediatizationPublication . Winkler-Vilhena, Andrea; Campos, IoliChildren are handed digital technologies at a very early stage of their lives (Elias and Sulkin 2019). Based on the theory of social construction (Couldry and Hepp 2017) and research on media socialization (Trueltzsch-Wijnen 2020) media must be considered to have a major impact on children’s sense of reality, their acquisition of knowledge and their acting in society. As such children as media recipients are not considered to play a passive role but are active contributors that have the power to influence and co-shape social processes (Bachmair 2010). It is this impact on social processes that this communication will further explore by focusing on how parents need to adopt critical “digital parenting” skills (Mascheroni et al) in order to raise children to be not only critical towards media reception and production but also to use media to create an impact that shapes a more just, democratic and healthier society (Mihailidis et al. 2021). The research project presented here proposes to elaborate a media educational experience that makes parents more knowledgeable and critical about the impact of media on their children’s lives and teaches them ways to mediate their children “to be critical of media representations and discourses” and at the same time stresses “the importance of learning to use the media as modes of self-expression and social activism” (Kellner and Share 2005:372). By using the concepts “communicative figuration” and “recursive transformation” (Breiter, Hasebrink, and Hepp 2018) this communication will show how media education can create a useful and highly relevant impact on children and young adults and the society they live in.
- What we should know to design a debunking course: assessing logical thinking and perceptions about the information crisis among college studentsPublication . Campos, IoliVarious reasons have been pointed out for the current information crisis (Wardle, Derakhshan, Burns, & Dias, 2017): the information overload (Moeller, 1999), the post factuality and cultural relativism (McNair, 2018), the collapse of trust (d'Ancona, 2017), the filter bubbles and datafication of our constructed view of the world (Couldry & Hepp, 2018), apart from the political and economic causes. Various fact-checking initiatives have also emerged to tackle the misinformation problem: from online games to educative projects about verification and professional journalism websites dedicated to fact-checking. However, despite being an important tool to fight misinformation, the research tells us that fact-checking alone is far from enough (Ireton & Posetti, 2018). There is a whole body of literature pointing to the psychological dispositions that play a role in the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation, such as theories of cognitive bias, motivated reasoning and availability heuristic. The concept of media literacy is often associated with critical thinking. However, many media literacy measures do not put as much as an emphasis on logical reasoning, as they put on self-perceived media literacy, perceptions of the value of media literacy (Vraga, Tully, Kotcher, Smithson, & Broeckelman-Post, 2015), knowledge about audiences and reception, message construction, and production (Maksl, Ashley, & Craft, 2015; Primack et al., 2006). Likewise, most surveys done among the Portuguese University students’ population about media literacy focused mostly on media use and civic life (Lopes, 2015), knowledge about the median and message construction (João & Menezes, 2008), and less on cognitive-critical reasoning (Lopes, Pereira, Moura, & Carvalho, 2015). On the other hand, in Portugal, as in many other parts of the globe, the focus of journalism University education is more often on production, media sociology and theories of communication, and less often on media psychology, according to the curricula available on various university websites. Production can easily be learned through traineeships; however, once one enters the journalism job market, one has less time and perhaps less motivation to study and think about the media effects and psychological processes behind information acquisition. This paper aims at examining the use of logical and probability thinking by university students of communication in relationship to their awareness about the information crisis. This study is guided by the need to provide a research-based instructional strategy for the development of a new course on debunking. It does so by surveying a group of 37 Portuguese university students about their use of logic and critical thinking, through a validated scale (Pinker, 2021). Additionally, it assesses the student’s attitudes and perceptions about the problem of fake news through a measure used in a survey already conducted in 27 countries, but not in Portugal (IPSOS, 2018). The results support the argument that to fight the ongoing information crisis, it may also be essential to increase the teaching of critical thinking. This exploratory study contributes to filling a gap in the literature about the use of logical reasoning among communication students and to the wider debate about how we can teach them about debunking.