In a study by Yolande Maury on the socio-cultural context of information, all the actors that impose a different approach on the perception of information in the time of digital convergence are extensively treated. A new vision of media education proposes a social practice, shaped by culture and context, undoing traditional standards, in a sense close to the definition of information culture. Exactly, in this line, exploration with new realities in the media space appears as a necessity, especially in the treatment of information on social networks. This framework remains described by many defects that appear in different forms. This situation above all implies the brutality of anonymity
Author: Bardhyl Zaimi
The online world remains flooded with information. No matter how much we try to simplify it in the perception of fair and accurate information, it appears complicated in its multiplicity that is often dominated by the fog of chaos. Human life can no longer be thought of outside of this information media that dictates the interaction of social layers as interdependence of ruling groups, but also the interaction with the functioning of institutions that remains the daily and permanent essence of citizens’ lives. It has already been proven that the quality of the information received also depends on the quality of democracy as a space where human beings measure their own political, social and cultural existence. The higher the quality of the information, the higher the perception of social developments, of the general context in which the dynamics of political and social life are conceived. And, on the contrary, the lower this quality of information reception is, the lower the right perception of developments, events, and everything that democratic life means. Qualitative information is attacked from all four sides, because everyone seeks dominance and primacy at the level of politics and hierarchy.
Among many attacks, two poles can be highlighted that constantly try to pour qualitative information from the public space. On one side of the pole is the lack of institutional transparency, while on the other pole are the often brazen “deformers” who constantly play with half-truths, with accidental stories made up unilaterally in the name of a “non-conformist” opposition and who in most cases is nothing but a personal agenda placed on the ruins of the general interest. In fact, it seems that the entire media space, especially online, remains dominated by the internal battle between the PR information of the institutions that try to brutally impose their truth outside of the principles of transparency and fair information and counter-information that is not in the function of existing realities, but which is always a function of another manipulation with tones of political power and certain ideological causes.
In such circumstances, it remains very difficult to constitute a comfortable space for the presence and circulation of qualitative information, which remains the main predisposition for the constitution of a normal political and democratic environment. The flows of distorted information on whose back “blow” the winds of causes and ideological discourses have decomposed to the highest heights the paradox of reliability and unreliability. The reliability that comes as a time-honored device of mysterious people and the unreliability that comes as extreme doubt, as a relativization of even that little objective information.
However, amidst this chaos that is appearing in various forms and where fair and qualitative information suffers above all, there were already basic principles promoted at the international level that come in the form of statements. One such internationally accepted principle is the International Declaration on Information and Democracy initiated by Reporters Without Borders.
The communication and information space must guarantee the freedom, independence and pluralism of news and information. As a common good, this space has social, cultural and democratic value and should not be reduced only to its commercial dimension. Dominant positions in the production and distribution of information must be prevented in order to preserve the diversity of facts and views.
In a study by Yolande Maury on the socio-cultural context of information, all the actors that impose a different approach on the perception of information in the time of digital convergence are extensively treated. A new vision of media education proposes a social practice, shaped by culture and context, undoing traditional standards, in a sense close to the definition of information culture.
Exactly, in this line, exploration with the new realities in the media space appears as a necessity, especially in the handling of information on social networks. This framework remains described by many defects that appear in different forms. It remains a situation that implies the brutality of anonymity that claims to occupy a place in the public space, in the online space in the crudest possible forms, stigmatizing, invoking a moral peace and cracking the impulses of a meager personal interest. which is packaged as general interest in the field of information and communication in the public space.
In this fragile situation, which is burdened day by day with pieces of subcultural information, with various “frustrations”, with injections before which ordinary interest groups stand, it remains very important to emphasize the need for a re-dimension in the perception of information. In no case will we be able to receive a self-evident information without a cultural elevation, without a wider field of view, which surpasses the schemes offered as ready-made narratives produced by the various propaganda machines. Necessarily, in this enterprise, which also means media education, the reading of books is included as an opportunity to expand the space of self-realization of our being in the political and cultural dimension. Outside of this premise, the human being risks being exposed to various dogmas, which aim to absorb freedom.
Cultivating a culture of reading can be the only counterweight to hazard information that is imposed for propaganda purposes. It is precisely this cultural rise that enables qualitative information to be accepted, while man as a subject in this new interaction of digital convergence already has the possibility of selecting and observing relevant information. This really creates a new predisposition in the democratic space, an opening towards more substantial things that are related to culture, humanity and the universal value system. Without these deeply socio-cultural predispositions, the individual risks remaining hostage to predetermined schemes, which do not count the human being as a free spirit and an active citizen, but as a number in the endless ideological and personal interest calculations.