From infoxication to the right to communicate

Abstract

W e spend hours hooked to our screens for many and various reasons: for work, study… but increasingly for pleasure and to feel connected. Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp are now part of our everyday language and habits. The latest figures for 2013 show that there are 6 billion mobile phones in use around the world one for each inhabitant -but unevenly spread among regions and social classes. A ccording to recent stats, teenagers in Germany and the USA spend more than seven-and-a-half hours a day using these media in what can only be described as a total convergence of the audiovisual, multimedia and digital. We are witnessing compulsive hyperconnection, a global excess of information, an obsession for perpetual communication but which is devoid of content… Infoxication, infopollution… are now real factors affecting our lives. Overexposure to the media is generating more infrainformation. Moles saw this coming decades ago, that this pollution of information was going to require «an ecology of communication». There have been many responses to this situation and most seem to take to it like «a fish to water», blithely unaware of the changes that these technological absorbents, which are increasingly universal, accessible and cheap, have on our lives. Media have become the mod cons of our lives today, almost like «extensions of our personal selves» as Marshall McLuhan put it. There always appears a radical reaction, none more so than Nicholas Carr, who left his hyperconnected life behind to retire to the Colorado mountains, as he relates in his book «

The Knowledge and the Use of Educational Applications from University Students in Spain and the Czech Republic

“…In this context, the most reasoned alternative to develop is the "critical competence" (Caldeiro-Pedreira & Aguaded-Gómez, 2015), that is, the ability to reflect critically and autonomously on the massive amount of information that we are exposed to. A capacity that needs to be developed for the infotoxication environment (Aguaded, 2014) seems to take over the everyday social reality.…”

Educomunicación y Buenas Prácticas en los nuevos escenarios tecnológicos: Análisis del Caso Gallego (España)

“…Con el fin de que la ciudadanía en general y los más jóvenes en particular superen la "infoxicación"-sobrecarga informativa que está expuesto el usuario-, (Aguaded, 2014) y, se comuniquen e interrelacionen en el contexto digital surge la necesidad de alcance de la competencia digital. De forma general se entiende esta como una habilidad de carácter teórico-práctico que busca no solo capacitar para localizar información y seleccionarla, sino además para comunicarla de modo adecuado.…”

The Smartphone as a Pedagogic Tool. Student Profiles as related to its Use and Knowledge

“…For example, the free access to information, the establishment of new pedagogic practices with technological tools, the generalized dissemination of constant learning and life-long learning, among others, is now possible. However, possible limitations and dangers such as infoxication (Aguaded, 2014), the development of a pre-fabricated e-identity (Gardner & Davis, 2014), social exclusion through the digital divide or dependency (Sevillano, 2013), should also be reflected upon. Thus, we find ourselves with Higher Education students who are highly familiar with technology and an almost unlimited access to information, but in many cases they do not have the necessary information for selecting, analyzing or integrating this information, as well as little knowledge on how to use these technological tools for educational goals.…”