The making of a critical mindset. Ideal media students in times of deep mediatization 221 of mediatization has entered a new era due to AI and other things.2 Still, he suggests that deep mediatization mainly should be understood as a “sensitizing concept”. This means that it gives the user a general sense of reference and guidance to what an ungraspable empirical process. I suggest that media literacy also can be understood as a sensitizing concept, since it is a term that helps us think that the (negative) effects of (deep) mediatization can be and should met by (more) communication about the me- dia, with media, to understand media. According to Buckingham (2004), media literacy is the outcome of media education but so far it has mainly concerned compulsory education. Still, media and information literacy in higher educa- tion has been addressed (BRAYTON; CASEY, 2019; BUTLER, 2020; INGVALDSEN; OBERG, 2016) also in relation to media and communication studies (c.f. MIHAILIDIS, 2014; STOCHETTI; KUKKONEN, 2011). However, I here want to address the specific function of critique, critical thinking and critical consciousness as important for both media literacy (c.f. FEUERSTEIN, 1999) and higher education (BARNETT, 1997). I conjoin these concepts under the umbrella term, the critical mindset, which I use to sig- nify an “educational imaginary” (RAHM, 2021) that concerns howwe can perhaps also should, try to qualify and socialize “the ideal media student” in relation in times of deep mediatization. My ambition is not to declare the content or politics of this idealized mindset. It is rather about opening a discussion around the didactic importance of criticality for us as media scholars and as media educators. Hopefully, this can evoke in- teresting discussions between departments, continents, generations of scholars, on how to imagine and didactically organize and design and pedagogically perform the critical imperative. I base my article on the following question: How can critical 2 Hepp (2020) describes mediatization as a “moulding force” and as a system of systems that connects agency in everyday life with different institutions. The term does not refer to the concrete act of mediation. Nor does it concern itself with specific forms of media content and effect. Instead, it addresses the long term structural effects of changes in relations between media and human com- munication, consciousness and knowledge. Krotz (2014) describes mediatization as “mover in modernity” and to a process comparable (and related to) other all-encompassing meta-historical processes such as globalization, individualiza- tion, and commercialization (see FORSMAN, 2019).
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