Health, planning, youth and cities #GlobalMILweek

Some liveblogged impressions from a session on "Imagining city transporation, healthcare systems, city planners etc. that stimulate MIL cities" at the Global Media and Information Literacy week feature conference.

Agnaldo Arroio (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) reported on a project in Mozambique on the methodology of teaching to use media tools in health education, as part of a project to strengthen teachers' technical and pedagogical skills. Some watchwords were: autonomy, decentralisation and production. Videos can be very useful to show at health centres, for example videos which stories giving health messages in local languages can be shown when people are waiting to be seen in health centres. Since there is a literacy problem, using videos is a good idea. The photo shows one of his slides.
Sherri Hope Culver (Center for Media and Information Literacy, Temple University, USA) was focused on general practical steps towards creating a MIL city. Her steps were: (1) Assemble your dream team (who you want to bring to the table); (2) Align the vision (at the start, before moving forward); (3) Grow the rainbow (4) Place a line in the sand (e.g. finalise deliverables, timelines etc.); (5) Engage and Share (making things timely and relevant, sharing it in an intentional way); (6) Fill the toolbox (thinking about essential elements such as a logo, website, press release templates); (7) Build the excitement (8) Plan the future.
Yunting Zheng (Peking University) talked about health information inquiry habits and health information literacy. She identified that health is a UN Sustanable Development Goal and also presented Harold Lasswell's 5W model (who, says what, in what channel, to who, to what effect). She also presented some definitions and a model of health promoting information literacy developed by Bergsma. Her first research study focused on internal migrants in China (of which there are many millions). These migrants tend to have low socio-economic status and low health literacy. The sample size was 7200. 62% had ever proactively sought health info, risk factors were gender, education, occupation and duration of migration (so highly educated professional females who had been migrated a while were most likely to seek). TV was the most popular source, except for the higher education/ younger group (who used the internet).
The second study looked at service employees in Beijing. The sample size was 2030. Both these studies were drawing on (I think) quantitative data from larger studies. Risk factors were age and education in this group, and 23.5% were judged to have information literacy. One of the recommendations was designing interventions to accord with the different inquiry habits and demographics of the different populations.
Amina Alaoui Soulimani (Blogger, Afrika Youth Movement, Morocco) was the next speaker. She started by talking about the origins and nature of the Afrika Youth Movement https://afrikayouthmovement.org/ The organise forums, bringing together young activists and tackling issues that matter to them. She identifed that "a city is a place where we interact", and the cities where there are hubs are very different. This was youth led, so that their voices were to the fore, and there were various campaigns e.g. #periodnotshame and #ilovemycontinent. There were committees focused on different issues, namely: health, gender, education, peace and security, agriculture.

Sara Haddou Amar (an engineering academic at the Universite Ibn Tofail, Morocco) presented on Introducing MIL in urban planning: a reconsideration of MIL cities and technology, and she started by talking about the importance of efficient structure and information flow in manufacturing, and that similarly a city was a network which needed to function effectively and efficiently. She observed that it was evident from the presentations at the conference, that each country had its own culture and norms: this meant it was difficult and probably undesirable to impose the same ideas about a MIL city in every country. Amar talked about how in her neighbourhood people exchanged and demanded information very actively in the neighbourhood, and distrusted official media. She had done a study in her home country, and found there was very little awareness of media and information literacy, including a lack of awareness amongst academics. There was awareness of issues such as fake news, but not awareness of what could be done to challenge or prevent it. She identified some factors (see photo) for designing and planning a MIL city, and requirements such as strategic planning, easy data gathering and data analysis, reachable services and community.

Safe, inclusive, media and information literate cities #GlobalMILweek

Some more liveblogging today from Global Media and Information Literacy week feature conference, from a session which covered various aspects of MIL cities. The session was chaired by Paulette Kerr (University of the West Indies) who also presented her idea of a smart city (smart - security, town planning, transportation, water & sanitation, infrastructure, energy, healthcare, education, building, governance) and noted that "smart cities require smart actors". She also stressed that a creating MIL cities involved effective creation, storage, retrieval, interpretation etc. of information.
Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco (University of Gastronomic Sciences, Italy) talked about the project aiming to combat online hate speech: Words are stones https://www.wordsarestones.eu/ One of the points he made was that people make assumptions that young people understand social media and the impact they have when they use it: their research showed that this is not the case (so this shows the harm of buying into the "digital native" discourse!) He stressed that what is said online has an impact on what happens offline, and young people, as much as anyone, need consciously to learn how to engage thoughtfully and carefully with each other online as well as offline.
Maximo Dominguez Lopez (Autonomous University of Mexico) started by talking about the importance of learning how to communicate inormation (e.g. using infographics or videos to communicate research results). He then mentioned the initiative to educate citizens about the issue of fake news, at the time of national elections, which also showed how librarians are relevant and active. Lopez moved on to identify the importance of copyright and ethical approaches for academic work. He emphasised the value of public libraries in working for equality, including for migrants.
Supreet Karanjit Singh (Red Dot Foundation, India) talked about the issue of violence against women, and ways of making cities safer for women. Singh stated that you cannot have a smart, MIL city if it is not safe from sexual harrassment. She identified the widespread problem of sexual harrassment and violence, and that 80% of these events do not get reported, and that if you do report incidents you go through a gruelling process that may not end up being successful. This raises the question "how do you solve a problem that is invisible". They created a web app, encouraging people to report sexual harrassment saying what happened and where, so they could develop a map. They have had 11,000 over 4 years. She said "you can use it like a TripAdvisor", which can make you more situationally aware when you visit somewhere. The website is at http://reddotfoundation.org/ and you can download the app from that. Singh talked about one practical example, of a road that showed up was a site of a lot of sexual harrassment, and going to the community, engaging with the women and girls' stories. A key outcome was covering a wall with a mural that identified the problem and also the fact that it was illegal, and that led to citizens starting to self-police, and the road becoming a much safer place.

Livingstone on media literacy #GlobalMILweek

Sonia Livingstone (LSE, UK) is the keynote speaker in the next session I'm liveblogging from the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy week in Kaunas. As usual, I have the caveat that these are my impressions as she spoke. The overall session is entitled MIL empowering active engaged communities and participation in city elections but Livingstone focused on her current thoughts about Media Literacy (she talked about Media Literacy rather than MIL throughout). She talked about the all-encompassing nature of media, and that this made a key question - how do people communicate through and with media in their lives. There was an ever widening group of stakeholders, some of whom are not aware of the existing work in media literacy (let alone information literacy, I would add). This has led to one-shot campaigns from companies or government agencies who want to show they are "on board" with media literacy.
In terms of policy, media literacy has been seen as a policy of last resort: she thought that there tended to be discussions and calls for legislation to start with, with calls to educate for media literacy following on.
Livingstone stressed that she obviously in favour for media literacy education, but she saw challenges. Firstly, education was an investment (including investment in teaching training and assessment), and in many or all countries inadequacies in education systems was identified, and seeing education as the "solution" was problematic. It was unclear what agencies and people would deliver education for media literacy for those outside formal education; which private and public sector organisation would be involved. Secondly, the rhetorical aim for education is democracy and equality, but in fact education is inequal in terms of takeup etc. and in some cases by its structure it fosters inequality.
Then there were also digital challenges. Firstly, digital grows at exponential rate, with more things expected of people (e.g. understanding the way search engine algorithm works, understanding how to protect your privacy on a smartphone). This was a great deal to teach, especially when even experts struggle to explain these matters coherently. "We can only teach people what they can learn" - she gave examples such as understanding the detail of Terms and Conditions. She felt that there needed more transparency in the design of the digital environment, before it became easier for people to learn about this. Secondly: postponing the benefits. Livingstone felt people were too obsessed with the negatives that needed to be battled before the positive things can happen. Then there was sustainability - too many small scale underfunded ventures "start up culture without the venture capitalists". Thirdly there was the lack of robust evidence and evaluative base for media literacy, which she felt would involve research such as randomised controlled trials. Livingstone also felt the need for cost-benefit analysis.
She then moved on to talk about the problem of making individuals responsible for solving media literacy challenges that governemnts etc. cannot solve. This can lead to a blame culture, with calls for people to be dutiful and to fit in, with media literacy as a moralising discourse.
Livingstone ended with suggestions for the positive. Firstly this would involve working with others and making more realistic plans for what could be changed. Secondly, charging the whole variety of agencies that could be working for media literacy to get more involved and think what they could be doing to improve transparency. Thirdly to bear in mind goals of empowerment and critique, so that citizens are empowered to propose new solutions and to protest, not just be dutiful citizens.

#Libraries, museums and Media and Information Literacy #GlobalMILweek #MILcities

I will liveblog a few snippets from a session on Revitalizing city libraries museums and archives through creative MIL actions, from the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy week. Aleisa Fishman (Levine Institute for Holocause Tducation, USA) talked about an educational exhibit they had developed on how the Nazis used propaganda, with material available to help educators teach students about the issues arising from that. "We wanted visitors to be better consumers of media". She referred to the website which they had collaborated to produce: Mind over Media https://propaganda.mediaeducationlab.com/node/1 which focuses on issues such as recognising propaganda, and analysing propaganda. It also has an interactive element.
Kyoko Murakami (Director of the Asia-Pacific Media and Information Literacy education Centre) talked about Empowering future citizens through MIL in city libraries and social network services. She started by highlighting how libaries are using social media. She went on to talk about the Japanese situation, identifying how everyone is using smartphones, with a dramatic change in the way they use the internet. A map of Japan showed coverage of the internet - with the big concentration on big cities, in particular Tokyo. In terms of use of social media, it is a minority of city libraries that use it. She showed a slide (see picture) which had some characteristice of library use. She used the University of Tsukuba as an example of effective use of social media, a video of a robot helper at a public library, and also use by the National Archives.
She summed up issues for libraries: that communication was mostly one way; that libraries were seen as unattractive; and that only a quarter of Japanese were confident in evaluating information (from one research study). Murakami advocated collaboration with other stakeholders, more understanding of effective use of social networking applications, education for effective use of these applications, and more participative use of the services by libraries.
Monika Straupyte (Culture Manager for Public Relations, Kaunas Municipal Vincas Kurdika Public Library) talked in particular about their computer classes for seniors (with several thousand participants) and their Media and Information Academy for seniors (with 36 participants, 60-80 years old). Activities varied from searching, to editing and uploading. She said that they learned about dangers as well as opportunities. This helped the seniors to become "full members of society". The MIL academy also included public lectures on topics such as fake news. They also had a course in MIL for librarians.
Viorica Palamarciuc (IREX Europe) talked about, in particular, librarians becoming ambassadors of MIL in Moldova. 113 librarians have been trained, so they can then carry out activities in their own (I think, rural) communities. They have organised over 250 events for over 3000 people. They have set up "media corners" in libraries in some cases. She also talked about activities with young people in Moldova.

Frau Meigs identifies important MIL isues at #GlobalMILweek

Divina Frau-Meigs (Professor, Sorbonne Nouvelle University) gave the first keynote speech which I am liveblogging from the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy week.
She felt we needed to change the metaphors and terminolgy. She identified that MIL was important lifewide. She saw it as an ecosystem that has changed drastically. Whereas the first image of the internet was about surfing (being free and open) but as it developed, continents have developed. For example there are social media, search engines, navigators and exploitation systems owned by companies (she saw this as the blue continent) and the orange continent, with similar systems but operated as open access or as alternatives. From the metaphor of surfing, we have gone to the metaphor of mining and what she called the black continent with private and illegal networks and systems. With the black continent have come threats such as cyberterrorism.
Frau-Meigs, went on to talk about the information disorders associate with these developments. The first was: disinformation in the "blue" continent. In some cases it brought back problems that it was thought had been conquered. She highlighted some research in this area, including how people react emotionally to social media and the life cycle of fake vs. true news. Secondly she mentioned use of the "black" continent used to fuel radicalisation and hate, noting how "extremists are early adopters" who also use the "blue" continent to produce their own narratives of victimhood, war etc. Research she was involved in has identified that the internet is not a cause of radicalisation, but it is a facilitator.
Digital engagement, critical MIL, counter narratives, multi-stakeholder engagement were all needed to address information disorders. She noted the rise of fact-checkers as a response to these problems e.g. citizenevidence.org Whilst she thought this was good for fact checkimg, she was not so sure it was good for MIL. This was because fact checkers were not always really aware of MIL, and there were also other issues: problems of sustainability, lack of clarity of objectives, lack of communication with those involved in MIL, specialisation on text, little evaluation of effectiveness, risk of subjective evaluations, low use of automated solutions.
Frau-Meigs also stressed how it was importance to promote these issues into policy, and not to just rely on good practices: these good practices needed to be promoted into policy. This implied external evaluation of good practice. She noted also that these good practices were often not based on frameworks of MIL competences (whether national, international, produced by associations etc.)
She finished on the opportunities for Media and Information Literacy. MIL has changed, and she acknowledged that MIL is not just about news, but also about all kinds of documents and data: she saw these as three interacting environments. This formed a huge ecosystem of information that could be turned into malinformation, which can go as far as threatening countries' stability and democracy. This had also widened her idea of the scope of MIL. She identified "MIL and digital citizenship education" as being important and presented a "butterfly" of competences associated with it: she also talked of this beig a discipline which was needed from primary school level.
Frau Meigs highlted the EC work she has been involved with and noted one weakness was the current private-sector (rather than public sector) funding.

#GlobalMILweek award winners

I was privileged to be on the international judging panel for the Global Media and Information Literacy awards, which were just announced at the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy week. Alton Grizzle (UNESCO) and Carolyn Wilson (GAPMIL leader) presented the prizes.
First Prize: Jane Tallim and Cathy Wing (Canada), for their work on Media Smarts , "Canada's Center for Media and Information Literacy".
Second Prize joint winners: Jordan Media Institute (Jordan) and Hemmo Bruinenberg (Netherlands) for his media production project for young migrants, with the ITHAKA film festival and "video bakery"
Third Prize: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (Mexico) for its MOOC aiming to promote information literacy to fight fake news, aiming to reach the public at large.

Opening of feature conference of #GlobalMILweek - vital importance of MIL empasised

I am liveblogging from the feature conference of Global Media and Information Literacy week, which takes place in Kaunas. Lithuania, starting today.
Ineta Dabasinskiene, Vice Rector at Vytautas Magnus University made the opening remarks, identifying the vital need for Media and Information Literacy in the 21st Century, and the general need for people to become media and information literate, within all levels of education, and beyond. She also read a message from the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Construction of Knowledge Societies, which contrasted the Soviet era which controlled media and polished the image of government, with democratic processes of citizen engagement. He also identified the current risks for democratic openness and participation, and the need for MIL in fostering critical thinking and participation in democratic society.
Moez Chakchouk, UNESCO Assistant Director General for Communication and Information brought the welcome news that the United Nation has endorsed an annual Global MIL week. He also emphasised how member states can no longer assume that MIL is already covered, and how important it was to civil society to address the development of MIL and take account of this in policy and strategy. He identified MIL as a flagship area of UNESCO’s work.
Patrick Penninckx talked about how the digital revolution was more insidious than had been the industrial revolution, the digital “Creeps into our lives”. He felt that the digital was bringing about a paradigm shift, influencing state and society, that we were not prepared for. For example, education was preparing students for the 20th rather than the 21st. He quoted Kofi Annan, saying that literacy was “ a bridge from misery to hope” and vital for culture and development: and now the meaning of literacy had expanded into a multilayered concept. He noted that “the virtual world is also the real world”, for example it may be the first place in which people encounter their life partners. He also noted the importance of taking account of informal as well as formal education, and also the needs for the rights of the child. Penninckx emphasised that the expertise of those at the conference was needed to help transform our environments, each of us needed to think what our own role was in the digital revolution.
Anni Hellman, EC DG CONNECT, talked particularly about the problem of disinformation, the fact that the news media has fragmented, that people don’t seem to have the time to assess the trustworthiness of information. She also mentioned the European Union’s high level expert group and its work, she “hoped that our democracy will not be at stake” because of the problem of people posting untrue information and people’s inability to judge good quality news. This problem has, on the positive side, led to more attention from the European Commission for Media and Information Literacy and more funding possibilities.

UK iSchools celebrate #GlobalMILweek including free webinar on 24 October

The University of Sheffield Information School kicks off events to celebrate Global Media and Information Literacy with a webinar from Pamela McKinney and Sharon Wagg on 24th October and my liveblogging from the Global MIL week conference in Kaunas, Lithuania.
Global MIL weeks runs 24-31 October and information about this UNESCO sponsored initiative is here https://en.unesco.org/globalmilweek2018
Webinar details, Wednesday 24 October, 10.15 UK time. Pamela McKinney, a faculty member in the University of Sheffield Information School will present on Information and data literacy of using mobile apps for diet and fitness tracking. Sharon Wagg, a graduate of the University of Sheffield MA Librarianship programme, has worked for the Good Things foundation and is now undertaking a PhD at Loughborough in the field of digital inclusion. The title of Sharon’s presentation is A literature review on the linkages between digital inclusion and information literacy. You can join the webinar live at https://sheffield.adobeconnect.com/global_media_and_info_lit_week It uses the Adobe Connect platform, so if you have not used it before, check in a little while in advance and see whether you need to download the Adobe Connect app. The webinar will be recorded, so you can catch up with it afterwards; we will publicise the address after the webinar.There will be further webinars next week.

On the first day of the Global MIL week feature conference, 24 October, I will be presenting on #AFMIL - the age friendly Media and Information Literate city, and also liveblogging here on selected sessions. I was one of the international judges for the Global MIL awards, and these will also be presented tomorrow, so I'll be excited to reveal the winners.

Elsewhere in the UK, the CILIP Information Literacy Group has organised events to celebrate Global MIL week. There are more details and booking links here: https://infolit.org.uk/cilip-ilg-events-for-unescos-global-media-and-information-literacy-week-2018/
The events are:
Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018: Emerging directions for IL research and practice
University College London, Department of Information Studies, Monday October 29th 2018, 6pm – 8pm
A range of talks from recent UCL Library and Information Studies Masters’ graduates, highlighting emerging directions for IL research and practice in a range of contexts.

Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018: Information literacy – an antidote to fake news?
Manchester Metropolitan iSchool, Manchester, Thursday October 25th 2018, 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Geoff Walton and guests will discuss the latest research which addresses this question.


Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018: Digital competencies for digital citizenship: an emerging agenda for students, academics and libraries in partnership. 
N204 (Meeting Room) in Sir Ian Wood Building of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Wednesday 31st October, 4.30 – 6pm.
Dina Martzoukou will talk on Digital competencies for digital citizenship, Jacqueline Geekie will share the New Definition of Information Literacy and the work of the Information Literacy Group and there will be some time for networking with your fellow professionals before heading home and going out Trick or Treating!

Global Media and Information Literacy Youth Hackathon #globalMILweek #GlobalMILHack

A Global Media and Information Literacy Youth Hackathon will take place in Global MIL week 24 – 26 October 2018. "Disinformation, Sustainable Development Goals, children protection in media, dialogue and social inclusion, these are some vital challenges and opportunities that are present today in the fields of information and communication. How can we tackle these issues through media and information literacy (MIL)? Join the Global MIL Youth Hackathon and find answers together with other young people from around the world and win seed funding from MiSK Foundation and UNESCO to support your youth-led project."
The hackathon is coordinated by DesignEDly and Global Student Square, in cooperation with University of Latvia, Vytautas Magnus University, and University of Tampere, with the support of UNESCO and MiSK Foundation, and in the framework of Global MIL Week 2018.
Deadline for registration is 21 October 2018. This is aimed at young people: it says "Age of the participants have to be within the age criteria for youth respective to the country of origin."
People can participate online, or in person if they can afford to get away to Riga. The options are: "Online: work with your team on Facebook and submit a video presentation of your final pitch." OR "Offline: come join us in Riga and work with your team on-site."
The website is here https://www.globalmilhack.com/ (you register on a different form depending on the challenge you want to address e.g. "Disinformation")
The Facebook page (that lays out the key information clearly) https://www.facebook.com/events/480874172430809/

Presentations from Global Media and Information Literacy week #globalmilweek

Some of the presentations from the Global Media and Information Literacy Week conference (held in Kingston, Jamaica in October) have been published at https://en.unesco.org/global-mil-week-2017/conference-resources and also there are photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/139453419@N05/sets/72157688708494891/with/38486926696/
The conference started with a youth conference, and there is a report of this at https://en.unesco.org/news/building-cloud-critical-minds-global-media-and-information-literacy-week-2017-youth-agenda
Photo by Tina Berezhnaya/UNESCO, reproduced under a Creative Commons license. Berezhnaya, T (2017). Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2017, https://flic.kr/p/ZE34fd - I'm in the front row behind the MIL CLICKS poster, you can just see my head and my hands above the UNESCO logo

Libraries & SDGs for Media and Information Literate Lives in the 21st Century #globalmilweek

I forgot to post my own presentation from the  Global Media and information Literacy Conference Kingston, Jamaica, 26 October 2017, so here it is. It is entitled Libraries & SDGs [that's the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals] for Media and Information Literate Lives in the 21st Century. There is a short report here on the IFLA site about this session (which was sponsored and chaired by IFLA) 

Libraries & SDGs for Media and Information Literate Lives in the 21st Century from Sheila Webber

MIL CLICKS Twitter discussion #GlobalMILWeek

As one component of Global MIL Week 2017, the MIL CLICKS Twitter Webinar is being held tomorrow 28 October 2017 on the topic Privacy online: How important is it? in the form of Twitter Q&A sessions. The webinar will virtually gather a group of experts in the field of media and information literacy and privacy, as well as youth leaders, to discuss the topic through tweets and to answer questions from interested people around the world.
There are three time slots for different time zones. Each slot has a duration of 1 hour. Each presenter (intervening via Twitter) can choose one or several slots to participate. The detailed time slots are below:
- Asia-Pacific: 15:00 – 16:00 (Beijing and Singapore Time)
- Africa and Europe: 14:00 – 15:00 (Cape Town, Cairo, Belgrade and Paris Time)
- North America and South America: 11:00 – 12:00 (Washington and Kingston Time)
During the allotted time, the presenters along with the UNESCO @MILCLICKS Twitter page will tweet around the topic using the hashtag #GlobalMILWeek.
Presenters will tweet to discuss the topic and share relevant resources.Anyone holding a Twitter account can tweet to ask questions in connection with the topic to any of the presenters in using the @ function (a list of presenters' Twitter handles will be made available on social media and on the webpage of the MIL CLICKS webinar)
Tagged presenters who receive a pertinent question shall respond and give an answer, comment or opinion in one or several tweets with the hashtag #GlobalMILWeek.
Presenters will tweet on their own Twitter page. The @MILCLICKS Twitter account will also post relevant content. See more about MIL CLICKS at: https://en.unesco.org/milclicks.

MIL in Latin America, CIS, China, Sweden #globalmilweek

The last plenary at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week conference is on Incorporating MIL in education policies and other social policies and programmes.
The session was moderated by Carolyn Wilson (Chair, GAPMIL International Steering Committee, Lecturer, Western University, Canada). The first speaker was Tomas Durán-Becerra (National Research Director, National Unified Corporation of National Education, Colombia) who talked about MIL in Latin America. He started by acknowledging the work of Jesus Lau. They had undertaken a content analysis of documents relating to policies, curricila etc. in 11 Latin American countries, as well as a literature review, and examination of relevant statistics. They identified whether there were relevant national agencies or campaigns. A questionnaire was produced: asking questions about MIL curriculum, policy, MIL industry and telecommunications industry, MIL and civil society, and other MIL activities. The speaker presented findings in terms of literacy rates, internet users etc.
In terms of some larger conclusions: on the good side, for example, there is a variety of OERs, all countries have departments for education and access to and policies on technology, but there were problems in a number of MIL-specific areas e.g. few countries had MIL agencies/departments, there were few MIL policies, there is a huge emphasis on digital skills, but little development of media competence. (There was lots of detail in this presentation, I couldn't capture a lot of it)
Out of all this they calculated the MIL-readiness, Costa Rica came out as the most MIL ready and Ecuador the least (using the UNESCO assessment framework). There were big differences in some specific categories, e.g. Civil Society.

Wang Tiande (Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, China) presented on the research status of China's media literacy education. He said that media literacy was effectively introduced into China in 1997 as a research topic. In 2003 the first international media literacy conference was hosted in China. Strands of ML research included: developing ML theory and focusing on ML practice (including looking at ML education in schools and teacher training). Distinctive specialisms, relating ML to other subjects, also have emerged.

Monika Johansson and Tobias Ruhtenberg (University of Borås, Sweden) talked about Media and Information Literacy in education. They described a course, of the same name, based on the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy framework. It is an online course, with the target learners being educators and librarians. Topics include the MIL concept, digital tools, professional development, collaboration between teachers and school librarians, social media and big data, source evaluation, the digital divide, action research, and sustainability of MIL development.
Collaborators are the Swedish Media Council, the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company, Filmpedagogerna, and the Nordicom Clearinghouse at the University of Gothenburg. Additionally the two speakers come from different departments (librarianship and education). Course work consists of a report on a practical MIL project and a wiki-page demonstrating critical skills. Following on from this they are talking with Kenyan partners on extending the course and incorporating intercultural dialogue.

Tatiana Murovana (UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, Russia) was the next speaker. She identified that there had been an increase in activities and awareness of MIL in the Commonwealth of Independent States. For example, there are secondary school curricula incorporating MIL in Moldova and Armenia, Russia had a government programme on the information society (but the latter only focusing on media literacy, rather than MIL). There has been localisation and promotion of the UNESCO MIL curriculum for teachers in Russia.
Nevertheless , media education is a sensitive issue as regards values and social effects, which can hinder its acceptance and development. The speaker felt that there was a need to have a more unified MIL brand and definition,
Finally Leo Pekkala talked about Shifts in Media Literacy education paradigms. He contrasted school education in the 1950s with the current Finnish approach which supports learners constructing their own reality, and this includes developing multiliteracies. He said that there had been a Media Literacy Week for 6 years in Finland, and there is also a gaming week. As an example, one thing they developed to help develop media literacy in politics is http://www.populismibingo.fi/en On the other hand he warned against seeing ML as a solution for everything. Pekkala referred to the term “expansive learning”, which is required for being able to learn about/discover new ways of doing things in a changing world. Finally, Media Literacy was not needed for itself, but for what it can support or enable e.g. peace.
Photo by Sheila Webber

MIL in the workplace #globalmilweek

I just gave my own talk at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week conference, and I'll do a blog post on that session later.
Following that, I attended a session on MIL in the workplace. The presentaters were all packing a lot of interesting material into a short time, so I hope this account is reasonably accurate. Yanqiu Zhang (Communication University of China) talked about a study of Chinese government officials' training in media literacy. The Government has encouraged public sector agencies to engage with social media to deliver better services etc. There were differences by region and by profession. Similarly there were variations on what was studied and the approach to teaching. Mostly the people who received training were spokespersons, with responsibility for communication. One of the conclusions was that there was an aspect specifically to do with using social media as an organisation rather than as an individual.

Julie Roberge (a poor photo of one of her slides of herself is shown) talked about MIL in the context of the Canadian Armed Forces (she had been Senior Public Affairs Officer), and specifically in serving in Afghanistan. She talked about the low literacy rate, and the lack of schooling, especially for girls. Only 14% of Afghani recruits were literate, so that had issues for training them (which is what they were doing). Roberge stressed how important cultural understanding was, particularly in this situation where they were there to train. It was difficult to know who to trust, and it was a challenge to convince the local population that you were there to help. There were seven local languages, and a translator was needed, especially as communication had to be verbal.
Thus she felt that the development of intercultural skills prior to a mission was vital, including for the mental health of soldiers on their return. Roberge felt that use of mobile phones did combine with MIL to give more hope, enabling Afghani citizens to connect internationally. There is also a serious game on cultural competency in Afghanistan which soldiers can take prior to deployment

Daniela Cornelia Stix (University of Applied Science and Art, Germany) talked on Perception and usage of online social network (OSN) sites in youth work and its influence on educational relationships. She saw OSN as "performatively constructed spaces". She used ethnographic methods including interviews and a grounded theory approach for analysis. I think there were about 20 interviews of youth workers. For the youth workers who were subjects of the study, there was more emphasis on informing and creating a profile, rather than social interaction. She looked at how the youthworkers were using social media in the context of engaging students educationally. For example, by being on Facebook the youth worker can create communication offers, and also individual barriers (e.g. expressed worries from a young person about clashing with some other people) can be overcome (e.g. saying what alternative spaces could be used). Thus OSN provide a direct channel, a personal one, and also one that can be maintained.
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Better Internet experiences through MIL #globalmilweek

I'm attending the second day of the Global Media and Information Literacy Week conference in Jamaica, and the first plenary focused on Better Internet experiences through MIL (opportunities for learning, engagement, and advocacy; respect for privacy, cyber security and safety. It was chaired by Keith Campbell (CEO,Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica)

Hopeton Dunn (Jamaica, Director, Caribbean School of Media and Communication) was the first speaker. He pointed out the widespread adoption of the internet globally. There were numerous positives and opportunities, and he noted that these (with other technological developments) have led to “the fourth industrial revolution”. However he noted that digital productivity and literacy are not necessarily outcomes of investment in high-end digital infrastructure; it does not necessarily address the digital divide (which replicates the economic divide). For example, Africa accounts for just 10% of internet users. It can be noted that, in particular, use of networks via mobile phone is growing in Africa, that still is likely to be the more affluent section of the population. As an example, in Nigeria, challenges include “rights of ways”, distance and equipment cost. In Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere although people may have access, they may not have sufficient access to be able to use the internet effectively for education etc. High roaming charges were also a barrier.
Dunn proposed various policy and regulatory changes, and also measures such as including MIL in the curriculum, to counter these barriers. He presented a model of the 21st century media practitioner. He felt that MIL offered the best chance to enable people to navigate the challenges of the 21st Century successfully. It was important not to become the "tool of our tools" i.e. we should be focusing on what technology is good for, it should not be vealued for its own sake. Dunn also emphasised the importance of identifying indigenous solutions, not relying on solutions from putside ("uploading and not downloading")

Gabriella Thinsz (Executive Producer, UR, Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company), talked about a media education toolkit aimed at Tunisian young people. It is available in English, French and Arabic, as an app and a website, and has four themes. The website with more information is here https://www.edumedia.tn/en/. They had involved young Tunisian people, educators and media professionals in creating the project. She gave an example of where a vlogger had cooperated in a humerous film that highlighted how vloggers may be biased in recommending items they've been paid to recoemmend. The speaker also noted that there had been a lot of media literacy education in schools, and the result was that young people seemed to be more aware of issues than adults.

Monowara Begum Moni (Vice president, German Journalist Union, and freelance journalist) talked about ICT and its effect on the young generation. She defined "communication" and identified how it can arise from words, singing, movement etc. and also that conflict tends to involve communication problems. To solve problems, there is a need to keep people engaged and communicating. Technology has had a significant impact on communication. The speaker felt that effective communication between young people and their parents was important, and have discussion around issues of identity and use of technology.

Aichurek Usupbaeva and Nazira Sheraly (Media Support Center Foundation, Kyrgyzstan) made the final contribution. They had undertaken research to find out how young people use the internet, the vast majority used social media on their mobile phones (spending 1-4 hours a day). Whatsapp and Instagram were the most popular social media. The majority did not have control from their parentsd over their use. Critical thinking seemed to be lacking. Following on from this the are developing a training programme, including a programme for teachers: this will be done through an online platform. It will have resources on media literacy: tutorials, videos etc.
Photo: reflection of me taking a photo here

Global MIL week conference awards #globalmilweek

Yesterday morning at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week conference the  GAPMIL (Global Alliance Partnerships for Media and Information Literacy) global media and information literacy awards were presented. The recipients were: Professor Jesus Lau (pictured here), to the Media Support Foundation in Kurdistan, to the Media Initiatives Center (Armenia) and to Rose-Marie Farinella a French teacher.

Before this, the speakers at the opening session had emphasised the vital importance of MIL in society today. We were all urged to develop MIL and to pressure our governments to support and develop it. The speakers emphasised that critical minds are necessary for peaceful and equal society, as well as access to information. The speakers (pictured) included Ruel Reid (Jamaica) Minister of Education, Olivia Grange (Jamaica), Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sports, Glòria Pérez-Salmerón (Spain), President, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and Luz Longsworth (Jamaica) Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of the West Indies.

Resetting MIL #globalmilweek

This is the second part of my report on the n Resetting MIL session at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week conference.
Meri Seistola (Metka Centre for Media Education, Finland) talked about Make Kids Win. She introduced the concept of phenomenal learning, for which MIL was important, and which could take place with or without technology. She mentioned aspects such as learning analytics, the increased use of educational technology including virtual reality, "the power of joyful learning and games" and also the concept of hacking the classroom. They have developed some learning modules using the CLANED app, including one addressing MIL. Also she mentioned the SEPPO platform for educational gaming.

Wesley Gibbings (Association of Caribbean Media Workers) put forward the value of journalists as heros, and valuable (in contrast to people who saidthat journalists were no longer needed). He felt that resetting MIL should “force us back to our societies” and cause us to reboot our societies: the viability of societies was stake. Gibbings felt that unless there were enlightened populations who wanted to move forward (and that entailed media and information literacy) then there were serious problems. People did not just need information, they needed understanding and ability to take action. He specifically talked about the recent natural disaster that had depopulated islands in the Caribbean region.
Fundamental questions like “What is MIL for”? needed to be asked: it was not enough to have a mechanical process, just to keep media going as before. Gibbings felt that the media industry, which had lost its monolopy, needed to take a hard look at itself, but this didn’t mean abdicating to “citizen journalism” (which he felt was a misnomer). Gibbing felt that media practitioners themselves needed to pay more attention to MIL (so it was about educating the MIL practitioners, not just educating other citizens).

The last speaker in this plenary session was Itay Weiss (Youth representative, Networks of Mediterranean Youth Israel). He talked about the dangers to democracy of social media, for example enclosing you in a filter bubble. So what can be done? Education, not just of young people, was the obvious response, using a variety of tools, and also face-to-face meetings of people from different paths of life.
Photo by Sheila Webber: lunctime at the conference, Kingston, October 2017

MIL and gender equality #globalmilweek

Media and Information Literacy as a tool for gender equality and advocacy in information environments was the session I attended after lunch at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week in Jamaica, where I'm liveblogging.
Stephen Wyber (Manager, Policy and Advocacy, IFLA) started off by talking about Making the link between information and development: libraries, gender and media and information literacy. He asserted that information can be power, and obviously libraries have been contributing to this for a long time through access to information. However, access alone is not enough if people are unable to use the information etc. Lack of connectivity, lack of acces to technology and social and cultural norms can all be barriers to women having access to information. For example, women may stay in rural (low connectivity) areas while men go to the city, cultural norms may mean girls and women being prevented from their male relatives from using the internet. He cited the World Wide Web Foundation report which said that women are 1.6 more times more likely than men to report lack of skills as a barrier to using the internet. The gender digital divide is also growing, not getting better.
Wyber put forward libraries as being effective "one stop development shops", experienced as welcoming, safe places by women. There were reports from a number of countries that, whereas men tended to use places like internet cafes more, women used libraries more. This enables many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (apart from the one specifically to do with gender equality, this helps with supporting health etc.)

Secondly, there was a presentation from Isabel Moya (Department of Hender and Communication, International Institute of Journalism, Cuba). She highlighted that photographs provide an essential record of collective and individual memory. From early days this was not just something for the rich. Today it might be that the use of photos has contributed to a narcissistic culture, but certainly it is a background to life now.
However, stereotypes of female images persist, including in selfies. The project Moya was talking about aimed to encourage Cuban teenagers to express themselves playfully in photos. The teenagers became sensitised to the issues, through the project, and also produced a large number of photos, which expressed individual views of themselves and of their community. I think she said that they had been exhibited.

Hilary Nicholson (World Association for Christian Communication, Jamaica) then talked on Gender focused media monitoring for building critical media and information literacy skills. She talked about the Global Media Monitoring Project, is a news monitoring project which is carried out every 5 years. It uses "a gender lens to monitor news worldwide". Various elements are analysed (see the slide at the top of this post). 22,136 stories were analyed from over 100 countries (with trained local team), in the 2015 survey. In traditional news 24% women were covered: the male domination was linked to the coverage of politicians, businessmen etc. Spokesmen and experts (e.g. quoted in news stories) in particular were predominantly male. These differences seem to persist across countries and over time (there was little change from the 1995 survey). The gender gap in those reporting news is closing, but still only 37% of news reporters are female. Women were more likely to appear in stories written by women (so perhaps if there were more female reporters, perhaps more women would be in news stories). Additionally, women are three more times more likely than men to be portrayed as victims, and their family status is more likely to be mentioned. The website is http://www.whomakesthenews.org

Propaganda, campaigns, misinformation, MIL #globalweekweek

I'm continuing to liveblog the session on MIL as a defence against misinformation etc.at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week (this is a photo of break time).
Renee Hobbs (University of Rhode Island, USA) talked Finding truth in an age of digital propaganda, talking about the new media forms. She proposed relacing the term "fake news" with more precise terms like propaganda, satire, errors, hoax, disinformation etc. The motives and potential outcomes for these forms of "fake news" were different. Hobbs talked at more length about propaganda. She felt that "virality" (as a process of interpersonal influence) was something that should be taught at schools, encouraging citizens to think about who influences them and who they influence. She mentioned the tool Videoant https://ant.umn.edu and her own website http://mindovermedia.ushmm.org
Tara Susman-Pena from IREX talked about their Learn to Discern campaign, which included training the trainers, a distance learning course and various other activities. https://www.irex.org/projetlearn-discern This was a 9 month pilot project in Ukraine, and there was a lot of evaluation afterwards: people self reported increased discernment, and 90,000 people were reached indirectly. They also did some qualitative research into the project. The initiative seemed to work because it followed demand: of people's joy in teaching (a detailed curriculum was developed, but there was flexibility in how it was taught) and in learning (ownership of the project by teachers and learners was encouraged). Great care was taken in choosing examples to study, aiming to find relevant examples that was not going to ignite conflict. People were also encouraged to move from "shock" to action. Susman-Pena finished by flagging up future developments and also cautioning us not to encourage people to distrust everything.
The final speaker was Ana Kozlowska (a librarian at Dickinson College, USA) who talked about Is fake news the only problem? How information literacy helps first year students develop critical habits of mind while evaluating information found online. She talked about how they had created a programme on teaching undergraduates to detect bias, to understand the implications of their action on social media and also that information has value. The librarians selected four classes in which they would teach these elements. They had pre class activity (reading and 48 social media monitoring). Then they had discussion in classes focused around issues of polarisation, bias etc. This did have some limitations, such as self-censoring in reporting media use and also faculty's hesitation about the project. Then the students had to find two news articles covering the same issue from different angles and pose themselves critical questions about both articles. There was evidence that the students became more aware of differences in ways of presenting information.

MIL as a defence against misinformation and false news #globalmilweek

MIL as a defence against misinformation, false news, disaster risk reduction and management was the theme of the first plenary at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week in Kingston, Jamaica today, and this is a liveblog of it.
Alice Lee (Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist Universy) chaired the session and spoke first. She proposed an integrated model of MIL consisting of critical thing, reflective things and positive thinking in combination. Lee characterised this as "mindful access" with reflexive and positive interpretation of what they discover (for example, considering of taking positive action in their own lives or affecting others). Reflective use and constructive creation followed on from this. This model could guide people at a personal level (leading engaged and meaningful lives) and at a societal level (taking positive action and fight against isinformation).
Rose-Marie Farinella (a public school teacher in France) spoke next. She described her initiative with her children on media lteracy - this included taking an oath on their computer mouse that they would use their computer responsibly. She said that one has to understand what "true" information is, before you can understand what false information is. She runs role playing games (e.g. of a car accident) which helps them understand the contradictory news that might be presented about the same event. Thus the pupil understands the different points of view of participants, and the cognitive bias.
Building on this, they investigate the truth and falsehood, and part of this involves learning how search engines work and asking key questions (what, where, who, why etc.) Pupils learn the importance of contextualising text and images, and ways of identifying fake images etc. She mentioned use, for example of Google images and maps to help authenticate. Farinella said how the students had created texts, drawings and videos during this project, expressing what they find (one of them is at the head of this blog entry)
Liar Liar pants on fire (re-loaded) was the next talk from someone at Deutsche Welle (apologies, I didn't catch his name and he wasn't on the programme - I'll add this when I discover it). He identified the huge number of people on social media, and also the false news created as click bait, and it also meant that any breaking news incident was immediately surrounded by a wealth of false news. This includes memes (e.g. people who are regularly accused of involvement), altered videos and old videos of similar incidents passed off as new new news. Sometimes this misinformation got trapped in the news ecosystem for some time.
Then there were people and organisations deliberately spreading misinformation because of their agenda (e.g. political). Finally, the pants on fire refers that "anything can happen on social media" even a nuclear threat. He saw the deliberate misinformation campaigns as "a pointed gun to journalsim itself", trying to erode trust in journalism and the free press. To combat this there was a need to train people, gear-up and finally co-operate. He mentioned relevant initiatives being mentioned on the DW blog http://blogs.dw.com/innovation
I'll continue in another post!