In this fast-changing production context, teaching users to question the authority, objectivity or quality of mediated knowledge becomes ever more crucial. How much contextual and critical knowledge is required? What are the appropriate and legitimate grounds for criticism - aesthetic, political, ideological and/or economic? How do or should these relate to the values of those providing ICT resources and teaching media literacy? To answer this, media literacy programs must address the broader relation between literacy and critique, particularly given shifting criteria of quality, authority and standards. Buckingham (1998) argues that throughout the history of media literacy education, differing versions of the tension between a positive approach to education-as-democratization and a defensive or paternalist approach to education-as-discrimination (or cultural demarcation) been played out, often undermining the media educator. Exactly this tension continues to shape contemporary discussions over the appropriate uses of newly gained ICT literacy, with the vague term, 'empowerment', ambiguously open to both democratic and defensive constructions.