Digital media in the development of school skills: dynamics of students from the interior of Pará during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This article aims to understand how students at Macário Dantas State School, in São Geraldo do Araguaia, in southeastern Pará, make use of the internet and digital media, and how this use favors the development of school skills. The school is located in the eastern Amazon region, which, like the entire northern region, experiences a lack of techno-democratic public policies. From a perspective based on studies on media literacy, a multiperspective analysis was carried out with students living in urban and rural areas, in the year 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Questionnaires were applied to understand and compare the statistical indicators of inclusion and accessibility to the internet and a focus group was carried out to observe the protagonism of young people in digital media and whether this protagonism favors the development of skills. The conclusions indicate that there is a disparity between access and consumption of the internet between young people from the city and the countryside, which weakens the protagonism in cyberculture and, consequently, the participation of this portion of youth in democratic citizenship processes.