Pobreza educativa digital: un nuevo marco para las intervenciones educativas en la sociedad postdigital

Since 2021, the Research Center on Education, Media, Innovation, and Technology (Cremit) at the Catholic University has proposed the adoption of the new construct of "digital educational poverty" to update and expand the concept of the "digital divide". This phenomenon is not merely understood as a lack of devices or access to the internet but refers to the absence of digital skill acquisition. As defined by Save the Children (2021, p. 15), "digital educational poverty thus refers to the deprivation of opportunities to learn, but also to experience, develop, and allow skills, talents, and aspirations to flourish freely, through the responsible, critical, and creative use of digital tools." This perspective avoids a utopian and cyber-enthusiastic view that associates the Internet solely with positive aspects, instead aligning with classical media-education frameworks to present the Internet as an "extension of reality" characterized by both risks and opportunities. The notion of digital educational poverty results from the hybridization of two perspectives in defining digital competence: the "rights-based" approach and the "New Literacies" approach. The rights-based perspective draws inspiration from the European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp) 2.1 . It also takes into account documents such as the European Union Strategy on the Rights of the Child (2021). This perspective aligns with the concept of "digital competence" outlined in Europe's Digital Decade 2030 (2021) and earlier surveys on digital competence, such as ICILS (2018) and DESI (2019). However, some declinations of DigComp reveal a limitition in their static conceptualization of digital competences, mistakenly relying on certifications, patents, and checklists. To address this limitation, the construct of digital educational poverty incorporates a second paradigm, New Literacies, which emphasizes the dynamic and interdisciplinary nature of competences. This is closely related to the concept of Dynamic Literacies, highlighting how a segmented approach undermines the "civic mission" of digital competence (Pasta, 2021). From a theoretical perspective, digital competence is reinterpreted based on three dimensions: critical (semantics, meanings, social and cultural significance), ethical (values, responsibilities, citizenship), and aesthetic (codes, languages, narratives). The first part of the presentation will focus on defining the concept, emphasizing the innovations introduced by this framework. The second part will translate the framework into practical educational designs and intervention methods across different contexts, analyzing completed projects or proposing potential lines of intervention. Specifically, the discussion highlights media-educational interventions with: a) adolescents in the context of Italian schools; b) educational communities in 0-6-year-old services, focusing on shared educational responsibility among parents, educators, and teachers; c) migrants from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.