Defining and measuring media literacy as competent situated action

Fastrez, Pierre [UCL]

This presentation will articulate methodological, theoretical, and epistemological insights from two ongoing strands of research in media literacy. The first strand focuses on developing task-based instruments for assessing media literacy, while the second aims to contribute to extend its definition within the evolving digital media landscape while maintaining theoretical continuity. Both strands share a theoretical conception of media literacy as “situated competent action”, which will be introduced in the initial segment of the presentation. Next, I will highlight two lessons learned from a recent project assessing teenagers’ media literacy in information search and content creation activities: one is related to the limited reliability of declarative survey data in measuring media literacy levels, and the other pertains to the contextual dependence of participant engagement and performance in assessment tasks. The notion that situations affect assessment outcomes will lead to a discussion on the need to ground the definition of media literacy as competent situated action into qualitative studies of real-life situations. Methodological inspirations informing an approach seeking to reach that goal will be detailed, alongside an outline of a research agenda for this approach within the context of generative AI.