The Video Essay as a Practice of Audiovisual Literacy in the Digital Society: A Case Study of Generation Z in Ecuadorian Higher Education

The consolidation of digital society has transformed the communication practices of new generations, and with them, the literacy demands facing higher education. In this context, the video essay emerges as a practice situated at the intersection of technological innovation, social change, and university education: based on audiovisual analysis, it requires its creators to interpret, argue, and communicate through images. This study examines how Generation Z university students appropriate the video essay as a practice of audiovisual literacy and a communication strategy of their own. A qualitative case study was conducted on 24 sixth-semester students in the Communication program at Universidad Técnica del Norte (Ibarra, Ecuador), combining the production of video essays, classroom observation, and focus groups; the 15 highest-rated video essays were purposively selected for in-depth analysis through thematic coding. Within this high-performing corpus, students redefined the video essay as a language of their own: they incorporated visual codes from the platforms they used but oriented them toward critical and sustained argumentation, which nuances techno-deterministic readings of this generation. The study provides situated evidence from an underrepresented region and offers insights for rethinking digital literacy in the university education of media communicators.