Being media literate is but one fundamental aspect of life in a time of complex planetary existence.

This should be considered a starting point for further exploration into how this posthuman approach might be implemented for the purpose of media literacy education

My research is an interdisciplinary exploration of media technologies and how our relation with media contributes to the constitution of our subjectivity.

Each word is a choice that has both benefits and limitations.

It is easy to become so distracted by the constant presence of technology in our lives that we do not recognize how many of our actions are being mediated in some way by these technologies.

In order to help guide an investigation into the various relations, the approach developed leverages the concept of intrasubjective mediation, which is the idea that we are—and continue to be—mediated by the constituting aspects of all of our relations.

Rather than a humanist way of understanding the subject, I employ a post-humanist approach

the approach often investigates the broader effects that media has on cultures and societies.

In order to better understand technological objects, and our relations with them, the fields of postphenomenology and media ecology excel at analyzing technologies, covering the micro level of the embedded and embodied human subject, as well as the sociocultural macro level respectively.

The study of media and communications can also have an interdisciplinary focus. Shaun Moores (2005) explains, ‘media have to be understood in their broad social and cultural contexts’

Here, media is a skill to be learned. The approach of the media literacy movement has ties to print literacy and focuses on the competencies needed in order to be perceived as being ‘literate’.

The field of media literacy attempts to help educate people—especially the young—in order to become more skilled and aware users of media by primarily looking at ‘four components: access, analysis, evaluation, and content creation’ (Livingstone, 2004: 5).

In this saturated media environment, the media tend to disappear into the background of our awareness.3 They become part of the environment in which we live. This immersion, as Figure 1.1 reflects, is especially visible with the number of smartphones in use and how often people are engaged with them.

Thus far, media literacy has focused mainly on developing the skills to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages, and has not focused sufficiently on the impact of the actual technological medium, how it enables and constrains both messages and media users.