From Passive Consumers to Citizens: Reframing Media Literacy in the Age of Digital Democracy

Abstract

Digital media has changed many public aspects of life, however the discourse around media literacy remains centered on a negative, possessive model aimed at inoculating the citizen against misinformation. This paper proposes a new conceptualization of media literacy as an active, citizen-driven, participation-based process and argues for media literacy as fundamental to the functioning of healthy democracies. The paper empirically examines these hypotheses through three qualitative case studies, of how citizens are consuming content in: the WhatsApp political echo chambers in Brazil; communal violence-based on false information in India; and integrated digital civic learning in Estonia. Findings confirm that rote checklist approaches to fact-checking cannot counter the emotion-, network- and algorithm-based motivations behind digital misinformation. Future democratic health, the authors suggest, relies on a new literacy rooted in agency, participation and production. The paper lays out an argument for “critical digital citizenship,” one that encompasses critical analysis of socio-technical systems, demanding platform accountability, and utilizing individual agency and collective power to create and contest content. In short, argues the paper, until media literacy education evolves into more than an individual defense, democratic citizens will continue to be passive consumers, mistaking educated choice for empowered participation.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199963313.2026.191-198