Social transformations related to digital technologies and new media offer significant challenges to education. The school is no longer the leading space, the ways of knowing and producing knowledge are expanded and diversified, and communicative practices they become more complex. This makes it necessary to examine the skills and learning that should be promoted to act and participate in media and digital scenarios. The article presents a review critical conceptual about media literacy and learning from Latin American traditions, American and European, based on the compilation and analysis of publications that deal with the two last decades. A reading is proposed that integrates theoretical contributions from both communication and of Education. Literacy is understood as a social practice that implies construction and social consensus for the generation and negotiation of meanings, thanks to the mediation of language; processes that are achieved from learning. .