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Conference abstracts

Carol Arcus

Pros and Cons of Emerging Media Curriculum: A Practical Observation from the Trenches

How do we measure media literacy? Does teaching deconstruction ‘improve’ the student’s awareness of the workings of the media? Or does it merely provide an interesting and temporary diversion? In fact, does even the soundest media curriculum have any potential to work in the ways that many researchers and academics assume? And how can media teachers evaluate their own skills and classroom outcomes? Delivered from the perspective of a teacher immersed in the high school trenches, this paper will examine the realities and implications of teaching media to the contemporary adolescent, and will filter concrete examples through the work of such cutting edge researchers as David Buckingham and others.

Lynda Bergsma

Effectiveness of health-promoting media literacy education: A systematic review

Media literacy education to promote health among youth involves them in a critical examination of media messages that promote risky behaviors and influence their perceptions and practices. Research on its effectiveness is in its infancy. Studies to date have been conducted with more or less rigor and achieved differing results, leaving many questions about effectiveness unanswered. To elucidate some of these questions, we conducted a systematic review of selected health-promoting media literacy education evaluation/research studies, guided by the following research question: What are the context and process elements of an effective health-promoting media literacy education intervention?

Based on extensive analysis of 28 interventions, our findings provide a detailed picture of a small, 16- to 17-year (1990 to July 2006) body of important research, including citation information, health issue, target population/N/age, research design, intervention length and setting, concepts/skills taught, who delivered the intervention and ratings of effectiveness. The review provides a framework for organizing research about media literacy education, which suggests that researchers should be more explicit about the media literacy core concepts/skills they are including in their interventions, and should more carefully address who delivered the intervention with what fidelity, in what setting, for how long and utilizing what pedagogical approach.

Noa Elefant Loffler

Media literacy as a regulatory task - what does it mean and why is it necessary? An Israeli Perspective

New developments on media landscape have implications for the level of media literacy and its changing nature. These implications affect the role of the regulator on protecting the public, promoting the public interest and providing a platform for the public discourse regarding the position of the media in a democratic society.

In this presentation I wish to discuss the perspective of the Second Authority for TV & Radio, the Israeli regulator of commercial TV and Radio, regarding the regulatory task of media literacy promotion.

This perception is derived from a model, suggested by the agency, for content regulation in a converged media environment. One of the main elements of the model was the relevancy of media literacy of audiences to the type of regulation required and its level of intervention. In light of this regulatory perception, media literacy promotion was acknowledged as a relevant function, by the agency, and an operative policy framework was introduced recently.

The theoretical and practical perceptions of the Second Authority for Television and Radio, regarding media literacy, reflect a proactive approach. This is both an output of the legal definition of the regulator's role and an expression of the agency's self perception as a public regulator, and its duty to promote public interest.

The presentation will elaborate on that, and will offer examples for existing unique regulatory functions and planned future activities regarding media literacy.

Divinia Frau-Meigs

Medi@education.century21st: A Global Positioning System for Human Rights

My paper will present the main findings and results of a Council of Europe workshop that was held in Graz (Austria), December 2007, on the theme “Media Literacy and Human Rights :Education for Sustainable Democratic Societies”. It will address three main questions:

Which media literacy? An encompassing definition of media education, integrating human rights;
Which competences, skills, attitudes and values? A modular, cross-curricular approach;
Which way of developing these competences, skills, attitudes and values? Strategies for multi-stakeholders at web 2.0.

It will conclude with a proposal for a European action plan for standard setting and training of education professionals, fostering human rights education within general info and media competence. It will also address the complementary strategies available for other stakeholders, in the private and the civic sectors, ranging from policy-oriented ones to more voluntary-based ones, with a mix of bottom-up and top-down initiatives.

Tessa Jolls

Globalocal: Media Literacy for the Global Village

Today, we are tied together in a global village which has redefined the role of media in society. Not only has media become a primary educator of children, often replacing parents, schools and communities, but individual and cultural identity is also strongly influenced by media and the global branding media conveys.

An approach to global media literacy is emerging to address these media influences, offering a philosophy of media education that empowers individuals, utilizes a credible methodology, teaches process skills and incorporates critical thinking about media production. Policymakers, educators, parents, students and communities are engaged on a worldwide basis to prepare the workforce of the future with these important skills of analysis and participation.

Paul Jackson and Charlotte Hughes

Children and advertising: Media Smart’s approach to teaching critical thinking skills

Media Smart is a media literacy programme for 6 to 11 year olds running in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK. The programme teaches children to think critically about advertising and provides free materials for schools, funded by the advertising business. In this session, Media Smart will present how and why it was established, how the advertising business supports its work and demonstrate selected lessons from its teaching materials. There will be an opportunity to get in touch with Media Smart in other countries and receive examples of our lessons.

Sonia Livingstone and David Buckingham

Research in Media Literacy

Media literacy has long been researched from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Sonia Livingstone's presentation will address the key claims and challenges raised by media, communication and cultural studies in relation to media literacy, noting also that as media converge, work on information literacy is increasingly pertinent. She will argue for an ambitious definition of media literacy, encompassing creative and critical literacies, questionning conceptions of media literacy as an individual skill.

David Buckingham's presentation will focus specifically on the educational dimensions of media literacy. Among other issues, he will consider: some of the difficulties at stake in approaching media education from a regulatory perspective; what we already know, and what we need to know, about media education in practice (both in schools and in informal settings); and ways in which media educators might respond to the development of 'participatory' media.

Kristin Mason

The BBC as Media Provider: Enabling Media Literacy

Kristin is the Learning Executive responsible for audiovisual content across BBC Learning, including bringing together much of the BBC's content relating to media literacy. In this presentation she will outline some of the key projects, for a range of audiences, in media literacy from the BBC.

Annie Mullins

Industry Actions to Promote Media Literacy

The session will be focussed on taking participants through the European industry led initiative TeachToday: a resource to support teachers and the school community to understand children's use of new technologies such as mobile capabilities and social networking. The site is intended to support teachers in managing children's responsible and safe use of technology within the school environment.

Mark Reid and Cary Bazalgette

Reframing Literacy

In 2004 the British Film Institute embarked on a programme of classroom resources and professional development, to change the perceptions that teachers and policy makers have of the role of film in literacy. Retrospectively called Reframing Literacy, the programme pitched non-mainstream short films as a powerful way of engaging and inspiring even young children to develop their literacy, not only in print, but in moving image media as well. An evaluation of the project by the University of Sheffield endorses our argument that film and print literacy have many features in common, and that building teaching programmes out of this can have a big impact on children's attainment (see http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/mediacentre/2008/955.html).

Between 2005 and 2007 we have worked with nearly half of all Local Authorities in England to build capacity in schools, and similar work is going on in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In this session we will demonstrate the approaches we take, and share the outcomes, and questions, that the work has prompted.

Elana Yonah Rosen

Evaluation of the Implementation and Educational Outcomes of a Middle School Media Arts Curriculum

Ibrahim Saleh

Fires of Hate, Wars of Narrative & Happiness Machines: The Three Faces of Media Literacy in the Middle East

The Middle East is currently at a crossroads in how to maintain cultural integrity and religious identity on the one hand, while absorbing the changes associated with the globalizing world on the other. This has left a vacuum of misunderstanding among and across societies, a setback in the role of media literacy that has coloured the Middle Eastern societal map with heavy tones of religious misconception and fundamentalism.

There is a split between the public agenda and the media agenda resulting from both internal subjection to dictatorial governments and in being cut off from an external world seen through stereotypical negative images which accuse them of savagery and barbarism. The infringement on the right of individuals and societies to know, choose and engage reflects a cumulative projection of media fatigue.

Many media scholars & journalists have failed to deal with this perplexity because they mostly deal with this problem in a superficial manner, by describing the happenings, as if they are religious events, while completely ignoring and bypassing the real dilemma of the political PR-ization of the struggle over meaning involved! As a result, there is a harsh and aggressive break of social contracts between governments and the people, and a widespread fatigue in the institutional legitimacy and authority in the cultural capital of the media.

There is an urgent need to draw accurate parameters for the current status of media literacy in the Middle East, and meet its burdening challenges. This paper goes beyond diagnosis to prescription, especially with the current fires of hate, wars of narratives, and the addiction to the happiness machines that draws the lines of the current media’s negative effects.

Fifi Schwarz

The Newspaper as a Tool for Media Education

Newspapers have long taken been active in advocating media literacy. Newspapers in education programs contribute to media literacy because they stimulate critical thought among youth: they are aimed not merely at discussing the news itself (which in itself is a valuable way of improving citizenship), but also at how the news is reported. They don’t only discuss what happened to whom, when, where, how and why, but also who says what about them and that, when and why.

In the Netherlands, two themes have dominated the discussion about media literacy: the vulnerability of youth in regards to unsollicited and explicit content (sex and violence on tv and the internet) and internet and computer skills. Rather little attention goes out to how we can help young people to critically deal with content themselves.

I will briefly present three projects that the NIE Netherlands program is currently running: a news reading and writing contest, the recently launched Dutch online newspaper portal and our cooperation with School TV. These projects will help to discuss the following issues:

Improving critical thought value-free: how to teach youth to be critical news consumers without telling them what’s right and what’s not.
Literacy as a key element in media literacy: reading texts helps to understand images
Newspapers and television and internet can work together.

Jordi Torrent

The Alliance of Civilizations

The Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) aims to improve understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples across cultures and religions and, in the process, to help counter the forces that fuel polarization and extremism. AoC recognizes the impact that some uses of media have in developing cultural fundamentalisms and violent polarizations. AoC also recognizes the role that Media Literacy Education can have in developing critical thinking skills that could mitigate such negative influences while encouraging cross-cultural dialogue. AoC MLE clearinghouse (aocmedialiteracy.org) was created as a portal where educators, researchers, policymakers and students around the world can easily find information and resources relevant to media education.

Kathleen Tyner

Mapping the Field: Results from NAMAC’s Youth Media Initiative 2003-2008

The National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) is a major policy consortium of media arts organization in the United States. The membership is devoted to a wide range of community-based and fine arts media programs. Increasingly, these organizations also support youth media programs.

Research related to the number and kind of youth media programs in the United States is growing, but still relatively sparse. Although hands-on media production is increasingly found in formal education, an environmental scan of youth media advocacy efforts suggests that youth media programs are predominant in informal learning spaces, such as community-based organizations and after-school programs.

In 2003, as part of their Youth Media Initiative, NAMAC worked with Kathleen Tyner, a researcher from the University of Texas at Austin to provide baseline data on the number and kind of youth media programs within the non-profit, media arts sector. Using a rolling, snowball sample method, these organizations responded to an online questionnaire related to organizational support factors such as staffing, budgets and mission. In addition, questions were asked about the aims and purposes of the youth media work, barriers to its implementation, participant demographics, and programmatic activities.

The organization sampled members again in 2005 and is currently working to gather comparative data in Spring 2008. This presentation discusses results of the studies and focuses on the indicators, impacts, limitations and survey design needed to successfully map the emerging field of youth media.

Patrick Verniers

From the European Charter for Media Literacy to the second European Congress on Media Literacy: Steps forward for an inclusive media education movement

Media literacy is a major educational challenge in our societies. A large number of local, national or transnational initiatives exist in a growing number of European countries. There are structured networks already operating but the actors involved lack a transversal system for disseminating and processing their findings.

This presentation wants to highlight 2 significant initiatives showing the development of an inclusive media education movement in Europe.

a) The European Charter for Media Literacy
The Charter has been developed out of:

- an initiative/idea of the UK Film Council and the BFI
- a previous online observatory for media literacy in Europe (media-educ EC funded project)

The Euromedialiteracy network has become in two years the biggest media literacy network in Europe, with more than 2,000 registered individuals and organisations. The presentation will focus on four key questions:

* Why was the Charter been established?
* What is the origin of the Charter?
* Who are the signatories?
* What are the main characteristics of the European movement for Media Literacy?

b) Euromeduc: the next European Congress in 2009
The objective of EUROMEDUC is to launch such a system by bringing experts and practitioners together around a thematic programme. The aim is thus to improve the quality and relevance of educational projects by providing the results obtained to the existing networks and by developing more structured and intensive exchange practices. EUROMEDUC intends therefore, to support the effective and integrated development of media literacy in Europe.

The presentation will focus on:

* How to participate and be involved in the congress process (call for
Experts, participants, bursaries).
* Presentation of the 3 preparatory seminars and congress in 2009.

Matteo Zacchetti

A European Approach to Media Literacy in the Digital Environment

Matteo Zacchetti will present the European Commission's policy on Media Literacy, highlighting the content of its Communication document: "A European approach to media literacy in the digital environment". The Commission adopted the Communication at the end of 2007, responding to requests by the European Parliament and industry together with a number of Member States.

The Communication stresses the importance of media in today's rapidly evolving information society, in the daily life of citizens, and adds a further building block to European audiovisual policy. Through this policy document, the Commission intends to promote the development and exchange of good practices on media literacy in the digital environment.