ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes methodological guidelines for theorizing media literacy competencies based on the empirical analysis of media practices. We consider the ability to understand one’s own media practices in terms of more or less complex situations in which one can act as being at the heart of media literacy competence. The method outlined in this chapter therefore adopts an interpretive perspective and seeks to identify qualitatively different ways in which media users understand their media practices. We argue that ordering qualitatively different conceptions of the same media practice in terms of their complexity yields a description of levels of media literacy competence. This chapter discusses and provides principles for addressing three major challenges related to this topic: the delineation of media practices as an object of study, the process of inferring competencies based on the analysis of practices, and the integration of the actors’ teleologies into the definition of the normative judgment of what it means to be media literate. We see this methodological approach as a means of renewing, refining, and augmenting the theoretical apparatus of media literacy research, and of building intelligibility and common ground between researchers and social actors, by fostering dialogue in the very process of defining media literacy competencies.
