Educommunication and digital strategies for critical media literacy

Abstract

Introduction: In Ecuador, the digital divide particularly affects rural areas, where internet access reaches only 37.5% of households (Guerrero y Moreno, 2019, p.6700). This research objective to understand the lived experience of critical media literacy in rural students from a phenomenological perspective inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945). Materials and methods: A qualitative study with a phenomenological design was conducted. Twelve high school students from a rural educational institution in Pichincha – Manabí, Ecuador, participated, selected through intentional sampling. An in-depth phenomenological interview was applied, and the analysis followed the principles of phenomenological analysis. Results: Five categories emerged: bodily sensations and emotions; meanings attributed to technology; transformations in learning and identity; conditions of the rural context; and tensions and contradictions. Conclusions: Critical media literacy in rural youth reveals itself as an embodied, meaningful, transformative, situated, and tension-filled experience, showing that it is not merely a set of technical competencies but a lived experience involving the body, emotions, territory, and constitutive contradictions.