Media Literacy in the Era of Convergence

The concept of literacy has been changed from an individual transformation of learning how to read and write, to the social transformation of becoming a media-literate audience. Especially in an era, when the convergence of media is shaping a new form of meaning-making process, media literacy skills are essential. Convergence of media is leading to need of facilitating multi-literacy in media education for creating a collaborative teaching-learning environment and a more responsible usage of media. This paper clarifies the concept of media literacy from the etymological foundations and theories that shape the perspective of the concept. It adopts a critical discourse approach and argues that though media literacy has been defined differently in different ages according to peculiarities of the times, it can no longer be defined as such in this era of convergence due to the presence of digital technologies, hence, acquiring critical media literacy skills helps the media producers and consumers in achieving autonomy in understanding and creating the meaning of experiences, accommodating differences in ideas and opinions in the age of convergence. The paper also emphasized the need for a multimodal curriculum of media education for developing critical media literacy in Nigeria.