The proliferation of mass media and new technologies has brought about decisive changes in human communication processes and behaviour. This fact has been recognised by global and European institutions, from UNESCO to the European Parliament and Commission. These changes in the role that media plays in the life of citizens has highlighted the importance of Media Literacy, which aims to empower citizens by providing them with the competencies (knowledge and skills and attitude) necessary to engage with traditional media and new technologies. (e.g. European parliament resolution https://goo.gl/efbsRP). The change in the media landscape has also impacted the role and social, professional and ethical responsibilities of journalists. The partners in this project will develop a training course delivering media literacy tools while providing citizens and media activists with valuable competences to face very topical challenges presented to both, media producers and audiences (fake news/alternative facts, infomercials vs. information, freedom of speech and hate speech, diversity and pluralism in media, production values and content placement). Furthermore, all the information will be then uploaded to an online training platform that will be accessible to the general public and that could be used as a e-learning tool or as a training resource. The training course will have two main objectives in terms of the most important learning outcomes: 1) Sensibilisation for the sources and premises of media products. Truth isn't truth at all. Being honest while producing media content and depicting the facts best of one's knowledge and belief may not be enough to produce "true" content. Every author and every editor has personal bias, premises, views of the world. We are all affected by our family and social backgrounds, our society and context, our language and political or religious believes. We can not change that and neither should we, but it's vitally important for anyone in journalism to be permanently aware of these restrictions. To instill that heightened awareness of self in the learners is one of the main objectives of this training course as it is in media literacy training in general. 2) Specific tools directed at helping journalists argue against false premises, hate speech elements in media products The second objective of this project is to build tools for the training course, that specifically help the learners to use this awareness in their journalistic work. Recognising false premises (about an event or a group of people, etc) and disrespectful or even misanthropic language is the first step. We aim to actually develop exercises countering such media output in an appropriate way, with thoughtful argument. We want to enable learners to counter those articles or features without resorting to just take the other side and getting caught in the populist trap by using the same conversational techniques and in a way reinforcing exactly the biased and prejudicial way of communicating they were aiming to counter.
The proliferation of mass media and new technologies has brought about decisive changes in human communication processes and behaviour. This fact has been recognised by global and European institutions, from UNESCO to the European Parliament and Commission. These changes in the role that media plays in the life of citizens has highlighted the importance of Media Literacy, which aims to empower citizens by providing them with the competencies (knowledge and skills and attitude) necessary to engage with traditional media and new technologies. (e.g. European parliament resolution https://goo.gl/efbsRP). The change in the media landscape has also impacted the role and social, professional and ethical responsibilities of journalists. The partners in this project will develop a training resources delivering media literacy tools while providing citizens and media activists with valuable competences to face very topical challenges presented to both, media producers and audiences (fake news/alternative facts, infomercials vs. information, freedom of speech and hate speech, diversity and pluralism in media, production values and content placement). Furthermore, all the resources and relevant document are now available in the project online training platform (http://ethicalmediatraining.eu/) that is accessible to the general public and that could be used as a e-learning tool or as a training resource. The training course will have two main objectives in terms of the most important learning outcomes and we also feel that the awareness and skills that will be acquired through the activities are transferable to other aspects of the professional and social life of participants: 1) Sensitisation for the sources and premises of media products. Truth isn't the truth at all. Being honest while producing media content and depicting the facts best of one's knowledge and belief may not be enough to produce "true" content. Every author and every editor has personal bias, premises, views of the world. We are all affected by our family and social backgrounds, our society and context, our language and political or religious beliefs. We can not change that and neither should we, but it's vitally important for anyone in journalism to be permanently aware of these restrictions. To instill that heightened awareness of self in the learners is one of the main objectives of the training resources as it is in media literacy training in general. 2) Specific tools directed at helping journalists argue against false premises, hate speech elements in media products The second objective of this project is to build tools for the training course, that specifically help the learners to use this awareness in their journalistic work. Recognising false premises (about an event or a group of people, etc) and disrespectful or even misanthropic language is the first step. We have developed activities countering such media output in an appropriate way, with thoughtful argument and analysis. We believe that these resources enable learners to counter this kind of content without resorting to just take the other side and getting caught in the populist trap by using the same conversational techniques and in a way reinforcing exactly the biased and prejudicial way of communicating they were aiming to counter.