Critical Thinking in the Data Age. New Challenges, New Literacies

The article's aim is to make us aware of the situation in which we find today with regard to the media industry, marked by the so-called “fourth wave” of media development: data are the protagonists of this situation with their pervasiveness. Starting from this point, it reflects on how this reality of data challenges education, pushing us to rethink the meaning of Media Literacy. We let ourselves be guided by the Buckingham's idea of a Bigger Picture helping us to understand the problem of the use of tools in a broader scenario, in which the great economic and political logics affecting digital capitalism are the real protagonists. The point of arrival is to identify a framework for Data Literacy and to try, starting from it, to think about its teaching. The result of this work is to identify spaces in the educational contexts in which to raise the awareness of the subjects, helping them to live in an increasingly critical and autonomous way: as can be understood from this last emphasis, therefore, it’s impossible today do not consider Data Literacy as a fundamental element of our citizenship