Item
Dimensions of Media Literacy from the Intercultural Perspective of Digital Transformation
- Author
- Irene Tsintsadze
- Year
- 2025
- Publisher
- Review of Communication Research
- DOI/Link
- View Source
- Abstract
- This paper explores the multifaceted intersection of media literacy (ML) and inter-cultural communication (IC) within the rapidly shifting digital landscape. ML/IC overlap with the socio-cultural, economic, political, and socio-political tendencies, dimensions, and discourses of the globalized interconnected world. In these fluid digital ecosystems, understanding their synergy is essential for navigating complex media environments, where media users necessitate a guiding “orientation”, as conceptualized by Stegmaier, due to high, ubiquitous media exposure throughout individuals, social structures, and cultures. Employing a semi-systematic narrative review and the matic coding, this study introduces a Four-Dimensional Framework—comprising access and participation, representation and identity, interpretation and meaning-making, and ethical engagement—that illuminates the convergence of ML and IC and their implications in the digital era. Building on these dimensions, a Three-Layer Model is proposed, integrating foundational capabilities, interpretive competencies, and ethical-collaborative practices into a cohesive whole.Reframed through Stegmaier’s orientation philosophy, orientation is elevated to a cross-cutting meta-dimension, empowering media users to navigate—and shape—complex socio-cultural, economic, and political discourses on the global stage. Thus, this paper advocates are flective,“alternative-thinking” approach to IC within fluid cultural contexts, highlighting the need for critical self-awareness and deeper inter-, intra- and cross-cultural understanding in a media-saturatedworld.