Media literacy. Italy Country Profile (2009)

Technological developments in recent decades have made the media the almost absolute players in people’s lives. News, which used to be the prerogative of the printed press and television news, is nowadays conveyed by most technological tools (computer, mobile phone, palmtop, etc.) and takes the most diverse forms (articles, text messages, notes, blogs, etc.). However, the proliferation of IT tools and their increasingly widespread use have not been accompanied by proper training processes, aimed at allowing users-consumers a conscious and complete use of media.
In Italy, in particular, in the last few years, the school curriculum has focused on technical education (often referred to as digital education), i.e. pupils have been taught the operating mechanisms of the different media, in particular computers and the Internet, without promoting any kind of critical capacity with regard to the contents transmitted by these media. Therefore, the increasingly pervasive nature of the media and the amount of information they convey puts the promotion of training courses suitable for developing the critical capacity of today’s and tomorrow’s citizens to absorb this amount of information. Furthermore, the education system must be able to ensure real, and therefore active, use of these media. The achievement of this objective has been identified, despite many difficulties, with the promotion of Media Literacy.