With the advancement of technology and the Internet age, many adults believe that today, teenagers do not know the culture of effort. But from the perspective of educommunication it has been proven that, even though the instruments have changed, the learning and training values of the new generations are the same.
This January, the Faculty of Communication and Institutional Relations of the Blanquerna Ramon Llull University (FCRI) hosted the conference “Media life in adolescence”, to delve deeper into identities and stereotypes in social media. This is research by the DIGILAB group, led by Dr. Sue Aran and financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Doctors Concepción Medrano, professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of the Basque Country and member of the Unesco Chair in Communication and Educational Values, and Joan Ferrés, doctor in Communication Sciences, teacher and specialist in Media Education, shared their experiences on the challenge of educommunication. It is a new model that is revolutionizing the entire education sector, since it involves constant dialogue and communication between students, the teacher and social reality. This theoretical-practical field proposes a total break with previous systems, by creating a study environment where there is communication between the sender and the receiver.
“Just because teenagers are digital natives does not mean that they do not need to train in this field,” explains Medrano. “Cyberculture has changed human relationships and young people's perspective of space-time. This places the rest of us in a new reality and we have to adapt educational goals to this context,” adds the doctor. This is achieved by being aware that among today's adolescents there is no "discontinuity between their online and offline lives." The results of her research indicate that some of the factors of change are her easy handling of interactivity, hypertextuality and connectivity, and these are useful for her academic training. “The perception that our young people have of reality has changed. The means have also changed, but not the goals of education: we continue to focus on comprehensive training,” she concluded.
The day continued with a second table where examples of projects that bring the worlds of educational research and communication closer were presented. It included the participation of Dr. Edorta Arana (UPV-EHU-Aplicaka), Co-IP of IKUSIKER, the audiovisual observatory that analyzes audiovisual consumption and the use of ICT among Basque youth between 11 and 23 years old, and Dr. Maddalena Fedele (UB, Faculty of Communication) is Co-PI of the TRANSGELIT (Transmedia Gender and LGBTI Literacy) project, in which she determines that “the gender perspective in subjects improves the representation of young people in society.” She stated that The interests of adolescents are the same as always, even with social networks, but he explained that "we must be alert to the gaps by age, spaces and groups and take into account the context of each particular student."
Dr. Mònica Figueras, IP of the project "Audiovisual participatory methodology in secondary education to reverse gender inequalities (Educogen)" spoke about how adolescents integrate feminist discourse into their daily lives. In her research, through monitoring the social networks of a group of girls aged 12 and older and through self-narrative videos, “it was interesting to see certain inconsistencies between their speech in the clips where they talk about empowerment and the messages they posted on the networks.”
Finally, Dr. Rosario González ((UCM, Faculty of Education), PI of the Critired project, which develops a predictive model for the development of critical thinking in the use of Social Networks, also participated in the debate. She emphasized that All the responsibility for digital education in adolescence cannot be overloaded on schools. “There is a co-responsibility with families and institutions,” he noted. González also shared the opinion that every educational and communicative project has to have commitment " of an ethical transfer of information, not purely with data, but also adding social values.” The expected result is that research will be a contribution to society and not simply generate knowledge.
Starting from a common base of knowledge, the day served to share different experiences and methodologies, with the same final objective: to give more voice to adolescents in this type of debates and integrate them into research, not as subjects but as objects of the study. The event closed with a demand and recognition of young people and the work that educators do in the different stages of training.
