Educação midiática crítica: combate à desinformação sistêmica na era da economia da atenção e do capitalismo de vigilância

Abstract

This thesis proposes and substantiates the concept of critical media education as a structural response to systemic disinformation, understood not as an occasional deviation but as a phenomenon that is functional to surveillance capitalism and the instrumental rationality that shapes digital platforms. It differs from notions such as media literacy, educommunication or competence-based models by defending critical media education as a distinct category, anchored in ethical-political foundations and in a critique of informational power structures. Grounded in the Critical Theory of Society (especially Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin and Marcuse), the research mobilises the concepts of semiformation and damaged life to explain the vulnerability of subjects to manipulative narratives in a digital environment that reinforces a technical, adaptive and uncritical form of education. The central objective is to analyse, from a theoretical and documentary perspective, how critical formative practices can enable citizens to resist algorithmic logics, the attention economy and symbolic manipulation that permeate the contemporary informational ecosystem. Methodologically, this is a qualitative, theoretical and analytical study, based on a literature review and documentary analysis of public policies and media education programmes in Brazil, Finland and the United Kingdom, with UNESCO’s formulations as an additional reference. The results indicate that, although documents such as the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) and the Brazilian Media Education Strategy represent important advances, structural challenges remain, such as regional inequalities, fragile federative coordination and gaps in teacher education. The thesis concludes that only a critical media education capable of denaturalising technologies, problematising algorithms and reading disinformation as an expression of the power asymmetries of surveillance capitalism can rebuild the link between education, emancipation and democracy. This requires robust public policies, continuous investment in the critical training of educators and intersectoral coordination that recognises critical media education as a human right and as an instrument of resistance to systemic disinformation.