Public Policies on Media and information literacy and education in Latin America: Overview and Proposals

FINQUELIEVICH SUSANA; PATRICIO JULIAN FELDMAN; CELINA FISCHNALLER

Moscu

Conferencia; International Conference “Media and Information Literacy for Knowledge Societies”; 2012

IFAP - UNESCO

Which are the general characteristics of current public policies for Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in Latin America Knowledge Societies? Which are their priority areas? How do they respond to the Latin American citizens´needs? This paper revises briefly the state of the art in public policies and strategies in this area in Latin America, using desk research methodology. The selected case studies are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. The identified tendencies in the diverse models are then compared. Based on these reflections, the authors suggest proposals to be considered in the implementation of public policies for MIL in Latin America Knowledge Societies.These countries were chosen as case studies, among other reasons, because of their position in  the Internet Penetration Index (Internet World Stats, 2012): Argentina (67%), Chile (59%), Uruguay (56%), and Colombia (56%) have the highest index in the region. Mexico (37%) and Brazil (39%), have not the highest index in relative terms, but they do in  absolute terms, given that they are the largest and most populated countries in the region. From the 40% of Internet penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), 30% corresponds to Brazil, and 16% to Mexico. In the case of Perú (34%) its index is not among the highest, but it was one of the first LAC countries to implement initiatives towards MIL and e-inclusion, which were later replicated in other countries.The emergent Knowledge Societies conform a virtuous circle, in which the progress of knowledge and technological innovations, mutually determined, generate further knowledge and technological innovations in the medium and long run. As a consequence, knowledge production and knowledge-based social, economic and political practices undergo a considerable acceleration (UNESCO, 2005). Nevertheless, information and communication technologies (ICT) tools are a necessary but not sufficient condition for developping Information Societies.Issues concerning information and knowledge are related to ot her national strategies. Their transdisciplinary nature makes them transversal to other subjects (e -government, e-health, education, security, etc.), as well as to a number of social agents: government, private sector, universities, NGOs. Consequently, Knowledge Society issues are also at the base of the transformations in the economic and social organizations in the countries that implement National Information Society Policies - NISPS (Finquelievich et al., 2009).