Media Literacy and Development of Human and Social Capital in the European Union

Abstract

Together with the growing level of the digitalization in the field of multimedia, also convergence of media, information and digital literacy have been growing up. In case of the traditional mass media, it was important to have skills to use the media content in a critical, aware and selective way. Nevertheless, in the era of the Internet and extended availability of information in the digital form, the importance of information and digital technologies literacy also grows. It regards to some extent the technical ability to use particular technological solutions, but also forming aware and active consumers and authors of the media content. The main goal of this paper is researching the relation between forming the media literacy as a component of human capital, and the realization the European Union’s targets in the area of building a knowledge-based economy. On the basis of the subject-matter literature and other source materials a hypothesis, which classifies the media education as a key process during creating a single European information space, shall be verified. In the first part of the paper, the author concentrates on presenting the dependence between human, personal and social capital. Next, on the basis of the European definition of media literacy, the author examines capabilities of achieving progress in the field of media education in terms of the present European audiovisual policy.