ABSTRACT
I can’t recall the exact date, but it must have been in the early 1990s when the working group “Media Education” at the Department of Media Technology and Media Pedagogy at Klagenfurt University encountered Gunther Kress and his work. Under the auspices of Klaus Boeckmann, the group of which I was a member at that time grappled with the questions of media competency and media literacy by developing the concept of “Medienmündigkeit” (“Media Maturity”). Based on Kant’s understanding of enlightenment as emergence from self-imposed immaturity, “Medienmündigkeit” puts its focus on media-users’ agency, self-reflection, and social responsibility (Boeckmann, 1994; Schludermann, 1999). In this context, Gunther seemed to address in his work many of our questions and concerns but even more so, his social semiotics offered a theoretical foundation that in one way or another spoke to all our quite diverse backgrounds and research interests ranging from pedagogical, psychological, cognitive, political, and semiotic approaches to media.
