Educommunication - glossary item
For a clearer understanding of the concept of educommunication it is necessary to have a grounding in the importance of communication as an educative act and education as a communicative action. Freire's theory of communication emerges from Latin American cultures where silencing and suppression of public discourse, particularly in formal educational spaces, was the norm (Lago, et al., 2021).set of actions inherent to planning, implementation and evaluation of processes, programs and products destined to create and strengthen communicative ecosystems in educational spaces, improve the communicative coefficient of educational actions, develop the critical spirit in users of mass media, adequately use information resources in educational practice and expand people’s expression capability (Freitas & Ferreira, 2020, p. 57).
Educommunicación is a “sub domain of theory and practice that intersects between Media Studies, Journalism and Communications, on the one hand, and Education on the other” (Hoechsmann, 2019, p. 264).
The concept of educommunicación falls under the broader idea of communication as activism involved in creating social change, with a socio-political praxis at its core (Barbas, 2020; Mateus & Quiroz, 2017).
In Latin America, communication is “more about mediations than media, more about processes than objects” and the “processes and practices of people’s lived experiences with media form the backdrop to communication work” (Hoechsmann, 2019, p. 261).
References
Barbas, A. (2020). Educommunication for social change. In H. Stephansen & E. Treré (Eds.), Citizen media and practice: Currents, connections, challenges (pp. 73–88). Routledge.
Freitas, J. V. de, & Ferreira, F. N. (2020). Socioenvironmental educommunication as a pedagogical strategy in early childhood education. Educação & Formação (Fortaleza), 54–72. https://doi.org/10.25053/redufor.v5i14mai/ago.1449in
Hoechsmann, M. (2019). Tan lejos pero tan cerca. The missing link between media literacy and educomunicación. In J.-C. Mateus, P. Andrada, & M.-T. Quiroz (Eds.), Media education in Latin America (1st ed., pp. 259–267). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429244469
Lago, C., Viana, C., Palma Mungioli, M. C., & Consani, M. (2021). Media education in Latin America: The paradigm of educommunication. In D. Frau-Meigs, S. Kotilainen, M. Pathak-Shelat, M. Hoechsmann, & S. Poyntz (Eds.), The handbook of media education research (1st ed., pp. 241–251). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Mateus, J. C., & Quiroz, M. T. (2017). Educommunication: A theoretical approach of studying media in school environments. Dialogos, 14(26), 152–163. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julio-Cesar-Mateus/publication/320041999_Educommunication_A_Theoretical_Approach_of_Studying_Media_in_School_Environments/links/59ca6aa945851556e97e1527/Educommunication-A-Theoretical-Approach-of-Studying-Media-in-School-Environments.pdf