Education for the media through university extension

a liberating proposal

Abstract

This article is the report of the pedagogical experience of the media-education project entitled “Education for the media – for a liberating approach” which aimed to bring Freire's praxis into media education through on-line university extension. The extension program, as a space of intersection between the university and the community during the historic moment of the Covid-19 pandemic, expanded the outreach of the University, contributing to the inseparability between teaching, research and extension programs. This public health crisis, which led to the social changes in question, had unprecedented effects on the way we organize and regulate all aspects and domains of life, including how to carry out activities, social interactions and the management of spaces (offline and on-line). The social distancing resulting from the pandemic has caused a sharp increase in the use of media as a public space for interactions as never experienced before. At this juncture, media education proved to be more than necessary in the individual's formative context. The course, based on Freirean pedagogy, was developed in a multi-campi public university and some of the results achieved were: interdisciplinarity between communication and education; geographical coverage and cultural diversity.