Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

104Comunicar, 39, XX, 2012categorization formulated by José Martínez de Toda(1998; 2002). Critical subjects question the representationof the media that confront their culture, valuesand meaning through cognitive strategies of criticalthinking.For the critical subject, «the media hide ideologiesand try to impose them. The subject must go frombeing naïve towards the media and their myths, tobeing critical» (Martínez de Toda, 2002: 330). Criticalreading and the exercise of deliberative thinkingencourage demanding and autonomous reflection onThe media programs mislead the critical spirit and theacquisition of knowledge. They propose that the studentbecomes implicitly more critical whenever he acquires theknowledge proposed by the program. But a fundamentalquestion remains unanswered: what do we understand bycritical thinking?the media. There are diverse modalities of media criticalreading that have generated a series of controversiesdescribed by Buckingham (2005) and adapted tothe Latin-American context:1) It is believed that the only critic is oneself.2) Only the left see the critic as an entity that isproposed and executed.3) The emphasis is on aspects of ideology, not criticalautonomy.Consider «everything that goes against the systemand, evidently not just revolutionary democrats such asFreire are against the system, but also neo-Nazis likeHaider» (Aubert & al., 2004: 2) 6 .In the Latin-American case, the relation betweenthe different postures linked to Media CriticalReadings has already been pointed out by Valderrama(2000). The author outlines what are considered tobe, in general lines, the principal parameters of criticalreadings: 1) To unravel the ideological content of themessages; 2) To create mentally active habits; 3) Toenable receptors to discover the elements that form thestructure of the messages; 4) To teach how to deci -pher ideologies, guided by semiotic orientations, usedas theoretical methodological referents.Piette affirms that the different practices in mediaeducation ultimately aim to develop Critical Thinking:«All the programs share the same relevant objectiveswhich consist of developing the student’s critical thinking.Likewise this common objective leads us to considerdiverse aspects that belong to this same studyfield such as experiences that appear to be differentfrom each other, both in as much as what the objectof study refers to and in its approach to teaching…according to this perspective, any research on mediadeserves to be published as long as it contributes to thedevelopment of critical thinking…to achieve developmentin a coherent and autonomousway, media educationmust offer a clear and precisedefinition of the concept of criticalthinking and suggest specificways for making this conceptoperational in appropriateteaching patterns for differentaudiences and different schoolcontexts» (paragraph 8 andfollowing).At first sight, it appears likeany Educommunication actionmust include the promotion ofCritical Thinking and the activationof critical readings. Butthis is not always the case; a certain media criticism ispracticed that only seeks to repeat determined andpre-established points of view, avoiding those thatmight be different, which is inconsistent with the proposalof critical autonomy proffered by Masterman(1993). We consider that media reading that lacksreflective thinking is an incomplete actions.Kurland asserts that critical reading is an analyticalstrategy for re- reading texts or audiovisual messageswith the purpose of identifying categories tied to discussionand interpretation, according to establishedguidelines. Critical thinking involves reflection on discoveriesarising from critical reading: to value not onlythe results but also to propose strategies for reflectionand, above all, to re-think the possibilities for changeand transformation that lead to creative thinking.Critical reading is based on the cultural compe -tence of the reader, as he/she identifies/understandsthe message, relevant aspects of the text without theminterfering with the reader’s previous knowledge orpoints of view. It is a work based on the content just asthey appear. It is common for readings that aim to becritical to be wrongly done, due to:1) Absence/ lack of text, meaning there are elementsthat are missing from the text.© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 101-108