Media and information literacy is increasingly essential for citizenship in today’s digital age: it plays a key role in building public resilience to disinformation and empowers the public to identify trustworthy information. There are significant inequalities in how well-equipped different European citizens are to make full use of digital media, and the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive requires Member States to promote and take measures for the development of media literacy skills.
Media literacy is a complex, multi-faceted area involving a wide variety of stakeholders, and EDMO hopes to use its position as a platform bringing together a multidisciplinary community to encourage closer and more effective collaboration between the various national, civil society and industry initiatives that tackle media literacy across Europe.
To ensure that EDMO makes a valuable contribution to the state of media literacy in Europe, we are conducting a mapping and analysis exercise to thoroughly investigate existing European media literacy policies and initiatives and provide a roadmap for EDMO’s activities in the field.
This roadmap report will seek to clarify the problems that Europe faces in terms of media literacy in relation to combatting disinformation, map what has been done so far, ascertain which policies and initiatives are working and which are not, and identify any particular areas of concern. This will allow us to understand the best ways to complement and connect existing initiatives in this area, and to establish the best way to have impact, as well as how to measure this.
EDMO will then build a repository of media literacy initiatives and materials, using criteria developed during the research process. This repository could include national policies, civil society initiatives, and projects from tech companies and the news industry. The research also will be used to identify use cases for the repository as a resource, what the best mode of delivery is, and how to assess its effectiveness.
Examples of potential use cases for a repository of media literacy projects include:
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Providing a showcase to offer inspiration to media practitioners
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Allowing policy makers to identify gaps in media literacy provision
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Informing educators and citizens who do not know where to find this information (EDMO national/multinational hubs could provide a ‘bridge’ between EDMO and the public)
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Meeting the needs of the research community in this area
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Connecting different existing initiatives to build a community of media literacy practitioners.
To make this an inclusive process, we will conduct interviews and focus groups with experts, and collaborate with other key players throughout the process. Once the report is complete, we will hold a stakeholder workshop to discuss and invite feedback.
Any stakeholder interested in providing relevant information for the mapping and analysis exercise mentioned above, please contact [email protected].