We’ve been living the change of the era. Almost nothing will be the same as before. Traditional societies keep transforming into information and knowledge societies. Human communication, work and culture develop through more and more powerful and flexible technologies. The local gets mixed with the global. And the time runs faster and faster.

All this keeps leading us towards a deep transformation of our sensibility, our minds and our skills. The most profound transformation that we’re experiencing is, though, the one of our abilities and skills.

Media literacy, which is the ability to use information and communication technologies in a critical way, and to exploit them for human goals, has become an essential issue as much for individuals, cities and states, as for the whole globalised world.

Humanity will surely have greater abilities, in the future, but we also need new skills and new ways of acquiring them.

MILION is an observatory dedicated to research and media literacy development.

MILION is a fruit of the convergence of different interdisciplinary groups, a result of the experiences collected in the field of media literacy and media education and, in the end, a fruit of the analysis of various international institutions, which decided to join their forces. Its aim is to study and promote media and information literacy.

MILION has tools to get to know, evaluate and measure information and media literacy (of individuals, groups, institutions, regions, states, etc.). On the basis of these analyses, MILION is willing to propose initiatives, strategies and plans to promote the development of media literacy.

MILION serves to develop the knowledge society. Above all, though, it serves to reach the development of human beings.

 

José Manuel Pérez Tornero

Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona