Critical thinking applied to media and digital literacies

Abstract

What are the benefits of critical thinking for a daily practice of media content consumption? What are the information quality criteria in the news media and social networks? Critical thinking is a careful and insightful mental process of analysis and evaluation. Applied to the media uses and influences, critical thinking is the ability to understand connotations, ideological arguments and implicit assumptions that are often false or persuasive information. This text is a sociological perspective on the relationship between critical thinking and media and digital literacies. Based on a theoretical and conceptual approach, supported by a bibliographic research, critical attitude is defended as a media literacy tool. The objective is to characterize critical thinking, relate it to media literacy and highlight the criticism as a tool against disinformation in the (digital) public sphere.