MEDIA COMPETENCE AND SELF-SOCIALIZATION OF THE CONTEXT NEW MEDIA

Abstract

The Internet opens the access to media offers that can be individually formed more than othermass media, so we must wonder how to learn new individual methods of dealing with media offersand whether the altered media forms affect the processes of media socialization. These possibleimpacts will further be viewed as forms of self-socialization.

The concept of self-socialization can be put into various contexts of previous studies of socialization,if it is, as always, aimed at the independence of subjects. Socialization theories can bedistinguished by the way in which they measure the aspects of self-socialization and socializationthat is realized by some other person (teacher, parent, peers). The more we adopt direct externalpossibilities of impact, instructions and intervention on subject, the more processes of socializationrealized by another person are emphasized. In contrast to this, the more we emphasize the processesof self-organization, self-regularization and self-constructiveness, the more we have theaspects of self-socialization in mind.

Relationship between self-socialization and the use of media, i.e. media competence, is notnew, and in the broad field of examining the mass communication it is described and discussed indetails. The subjects are not, as various studies oriented towards reception show, passively andhelplessly left to media impacts, but they independently handle media offers. This aspect of mediasocialization could be performed step by step, according to studies of the media aimed at mediacoercion and effects.

Precisely in the field of socialization in dealing with the new media, we can now indicate tothe fact that new generations are increasingly being left to themselves and, therefore, they havebeen socializing on their own. The use of media as self-socialization, means that those who aresocialized, they manage the choice of media and media content, relatively autonomously decideon time and place of accessing the media and independently construct the meaning of media contentin reception process, which is also reflected by independent development of meaning. Thisalso refers to the aspect of interactivity of the new media, i.e. individual disposition with mediacontent. From this it follows that: possibility of intervention and organization for users increasesthe autonomy in handing the media. Unlike the older, as it is frequently said, the younger generationclaims more value to determining, all by itself, which media content, when and in what formit will handle.

The new media set the task to media pedagogy to think about assumptions, processes and termsof adopting media competence. That could happen through the discussion about the relationshipbetween interactivity of new media and self-socialization.