About this session
This session moves from the concept of media literacy as an educational practice to its implementation as a design layer within digital products and platform infrastructures. It focuses on how critical thinking, transparency, and misinformation resilience can be embedded directly into user journeys across social media, search engines, video platforms, messaging systems, and gaming environments.
The session analyses how platforms translate regulatory requirements such as the Digital Services Act into operational design choices, balancing compliance obligations with usability, engagement metrics, and brand identity. Special attention is given to how different platforms adapt media literacy interventions to their audience expectations and product ecosystems.
Through European and UK case examples, participants will evaluate real-world implementations of on-platform media literacy strategies, including friction-based interventions, algorithmic transparency tools, and user empowerment features. The session connects governance frameworks, design constraints, and behavioural science to demonstrate how media literacy can be operationalised as a system-level design principle rather than an external educational intervention.
The aim is to equip participants with practical design patterns, policy translation tools, and evaluation frameworks that can be directly applied to platform development, regulatory assessment, and educational technology design.
What participants will learn:
- Understand the principles of Media Literacy by Design and how platforms can embed critical thinking, transparency, and safety mechanisms directly into user experience flows as part of regulatory and systemic obligations.
- Examine governance, accountability, and regulatory frameworks (including Ofcom-style approaches) that translate media literacy requirements into platform-level design and risk management responsibilities.
Target group
Media literacy practitioners; digital platform designers; social media policy teams; regulators.
Meet your Trainers
Bethany Marson is a Strategy Manager at Ofcom with experience spanning digital regulation, consumer policy, and media literacy. She currently leads the implementation of Ofcom’s media literacy recommendations, helping shape initiatives that empower citizens to navigate an increasingly complex media environment. Prior to joining Ofcom, Beth worked at the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) and Which?, advocating for UK consumers and supporting policy development across the digital landscape.
Sara Dethise Martinez is a FRESH F.R.S.-FNRS PhD student in information and communication sciences at the University of Namur (Belgium) within the CRIDS/NaDI. She is writing a thesis on the practices of young video game players. She is the University of Namur’s representative of DiGRA Belgium. Her knowledge of the gaming world has also been enriched by professional experience within the RTBF iXPé team, RTBF’s dedicated video games media channel, with which she collaborated regularly between August 2021 and October 2024.
Eileen Culloty is an Associate Professor in the School of Communications where she is Deputy Director of the DCU Institute for Media, Democracy, and Society. Her work focuses on disinformation, media literacy education, and the future of public media. Eileen leads the Ireland Hub of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), serves as Co-Chair of Media Literacy Ireland, and is a member of Ofcom’s Making Sense of Media Research, Evidence and Evaluation Working Group.
