MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
FAMILY VALUES FACE TO FACE
THE CHANGING MEDIA REALITY
Leona Stašová
ABSTRACT:
Contemporary family faces many deep changes in its structure, functions and
relationships. The fragile family shell has to cope with diverse inluences that
affect its everyday life. The more complicated media reality enters the homes
of contemporary families, the more important are internal family processes.
Importance of family media education and communication about media contents
grows with the power of virtual space in lives of today´s population. The growing
generation gap brings complications also in family education and relationships.
While most of contemporary parents belong to generations of digital immigrants,
their children are usually called as digital natives, generation M, etc. Responsibility
of parents to develop media literacy by their children often collides with their
own level of competencies and understanding of new technologies. Regardless
this situation, they are aware of family education´s signiicance and of family
value´s reproduction. The text stresses the generations´ differences between
contemporary parents and children and their negotiation concerning the media
use, media content and media inluence. The paper shows different views on
media topics between both groups and proposes possibilities to support the
family values in order to strengthen generational solidarity and family cohesion.
KEY WORDS:
family, parents, children, generation, media literacy, media education,
communication
1 Introduction
The concept of family values varies from society to society and mainly
consists from ideas of how to live your family life. The values partly come
from the culture and society; partly they are constructed in everyday life of
particular families. Family values could be understood also as foundation
for inding a good behaviour in various situations, for help to make good
choices and the way for strengthening of the family cohesion. Family
values are often “passed down from previous generations and include
the moral and ethical principles traditionally upheld and transmitted
within a family, as honesty, loyalty, industry, and faith”. 1 Family values
1 Dictionary com. [online]. [2015-01-23]. Available at: .
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