Struwwelpeter 2.0

Clarification of concepts 3
Clarification of concepts
Dr. Edwin Hübner
“Students have alarmingly poor
reading and spelling skills—but great
media competency” was the title of
a report in July 2012 about a previously
unpublished study. 1 In it lecturers
at philosophical faculties in Germany
complained about a serious lack
of quality in students which “positively
jumps out at you”: “There are
difficulties above all in spelling, orthography,
the command of grammar
and syntax. A lack has generally been
observed in the ability to formulate
something independently, write coherent
texts and, above all, also a lack of
competency in reading, for example
when making notes during lectures.”
A few sentences later the report says
about the same students: “They undoubtedly
have greater media competency,
there is no dispute about that.”
Reading this, we might start to ponder
what is meant by media competency.
Because writing is most certainly a
medium. And there are clear complaints
that writing skills are too poor.
So that cannot be what is meant with
media competency. However, if we
only understand it to refer to the
competency in handling information
technology, then the quoted statement
makes sense. It is nevertheless true
that much information and many
scientific texts on the Internet are only
available in written form. But if we
have difficulty with the medium of
writing, what, then, does the competency
in dealing with the Internet
mean? Finding an essay buried away
somewhere on the Internet and
cleverly being able to download it to
one’s computer, but not understanding
its content?
This example makes clear that there
is a lack of conceptual clarity. What is
media competency? And at an even
more basic level: what is a medium
at all?
This question can be answered with
a general definition but that does not
get us much further because there is a
great variety of products or machines
which can all be described as media:
newspapers, magazines, books, radios,
televisions, computers, etc.
If we try to determine phenomenologically
what human beings encounter
in their environment, there are essentially
three key aspects:
• Writing
• Transmitted or preserved speech
or music
• Still or moving images
1) Pany, Thomas: „Studierende mit alarmierenden Lese- und
Rechtschreibschwächen“, in: Telepolis 24.7.2012
www.heise.de/tp