Look closer into Media literacy

Look closer into Media literacy

Mass-media is a diverse array of means to communicate via technologies that reach a large audience.

Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media. Media literacy is significant because it can help youth develop media skills like avoiding disinformation and misinformation. Why is this so important? Because by believing disinformation, youth can easily fall into the scheme and further create misinformation, basically, unwillingly helping the spread of fake news.

Young people from Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Slovakia have met in Look closer Erasmus+ project in Targoviste during 21-30 April 2022 to find out more about media literacy. The project is founded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union and is coordinated by Be You Association in partnership with Youth House Sliven, Darnoje and Youthfully Yours SK.

Thus, the aim of the project is to increase media literacy skills among young people empowering them to become more engaged in society, to become active and informed citizens, connected to the social and political events around them in a very informed way. 

During the Youth Exchage, young people were involved in non-formal education activities that promoted media literacy education, developed media literacy skills and increased youth interest in being more engaged in democratic life and decision making process.

As a result, young participants are able to use diverse media literacy techniques used by fact checkers to identify fake news and stop the spread of disinformation. A meeting with local authorities and young people from Aninoasa during the mobility, created a space for good practices sharing on youth involvement to community life and strenghtened the idea that media literacy is extremly important to facilitate youth participation in the decision making process. All the acquired skills and knowldege during the workshops were used to create a media literacy campaign raising awareness on the dangerous side of Internet and social media, and why youth should develop their media literacy skills.

Young people had an extraordinary learning and intercultural experience and we are happy to share some impressions:

          Throughout the ten days, we have improved our media literacy skills. As we live in a post-truth era, it is very important for people to be able to distinguish between real and false news. We’ve found that finding the right information isn’t so easy and quick – it takes time to search. Together we discussed a lot the importance of media literacy, shared our experiences and situations in our countries. So now is the moment to spread the importance of media literacy and the acquired knowledges in our communities.– Martynas, Lithuania.

To provide everyone with competences to use the media safely, to form a worldview and to actively participate in group activities there should be respected the following steps.

• Select reliable information, understand, analyze, critically evaluate the causes and purposes of messages provided in the press, radio, television, movies, Internet and other sources of information.
• Recognize the mechanisms, values, and economic forces that determine who reaches us through a variety of media.
• Assess the role of the media in a democratic society and understand the challenges it faces. – Kotryna, Lithuania.

Personally speaking, media literacy is a subject which everyone should be excellent as we use it everyday. I enjoyed meeting other cultures and the methods of learning new things about this topic. Additionally, it was interesting how creative and interactive was the project. It was an impetus to read more on this theme as well as develop myself globally. I am so grateful for this experience and hope that we will see each other in the future! –  Alin, Romania

It was so satisfying experience for me! I learnt so much about other countries and their culture. The name of the project captured my attention at the moment I heard it. Certainly it justified my expectations. The project was interesting and full of useful information. The content was presented in understandable way. The tasks was clearly assigned. The process of working was pleasant and comprehensive. I learnt about media literacy and media literacy education. I learnt to make a difference between misinformation and disinformation. I developed to be more critical in my thinking and to analyze everything which is in the virtual field. This knowledge now I can apply to my workplace. It was a pleasure for me to be part of this project! – Silvia, Bulgaria

Well, for me was really cool to work with people from other countries! I definitely appreciated the intercultural night, which was fun, enlightening and of course… Delicious!

The subject of the project, Media literacy, was totally fit for me, given the fact that I work as a Content Moderator for an online platform.

Even though I was aware about most of the topics at some level, due to my work field, it was great to actually cement more knowledge about data protection with the help of concept “My life is not a show” and made me more aware about notions like “Disinformation” and “Misinformation” and how one can lead to the other.

The most satisfactory in this project was the fact that it was highly interactive and it was always based on group work, as a team, and was based on learning while having fun (for example the videos and articles that we had to create, the stories that we had to made up while using the notions learned) which added up both to the fun and also helped to make it easier to assimilate information presented and better understand it.

Let’s do it again soon! – Răzvan, Romania

This project was a wonderful learning experience about media literacy. Through this project I dveloped my ability to analyse, evaluate and create media content. – Eszter, Romania

The project continues until December 2022 with follow-up activities and campaigns in the local communities of the participating countries.