BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

A media scientist; he works at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities and manages the Centre for Popular Culture Research. The author of many publications about the influence of digital media on the social life and the forms of cultural participation. The editor of the "Kultura Popularna"quarterly and the author of "Wirtualny plac zabaw"(Virtual playground; WAiP, 2006).

ABSTRACT

30 September, Wednesday, 9.30 – 10.00  

Plenary session: Web 2.0: Challenges for media education

Web 2.0, the idea of the participative Web and user-created content, poses new challenges to media education. A new dimension is added to the existing media skills associated with critical reception of media messages: amateur production. This corresponds to the concept of the participation culture, where the culture is seen as a product of citizen activity and creation – an integral part of social life. At the same time, it poses new problems, because modern education is still torn between the “Columbine paradigm” (protecting children from threats related to the use of new media) and the “Web generation paradigm” (which says it is enough to seat young people in front of computers and let them use it for spontaneous creation and expanding their knowledge). 

The presentation will address such issues as new dimensions of digital exclusion; analyzing the activity within Web communities in terms of risk taking and group work; as well as the evolution of media’s role in young people’s lives (based on a research project “The Young and the Media”, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Heritag.