Media literacy is a life skill in the age of Internet

Media literacy matters and that’s that. Having a discussion on why it matters in 2017 is tragic, but it is a fact for the Balkans and Turkey, Nicoleta Fotiade, a media literacy expert said at a panel held by the Macedonian Institute for Media (MIM).
 
The panel, also attended by Platform for Independent Journalism (P24), was held in Skopje on March 28 and March 29 as part of an-EU funded project for the region.
 
The event started with a keynote presentation from Fotiade, a co-founder at MediaWise Society, who gave a brief introduction about media literacy policies (or their lack thereof) in Romania. She said in her work, she has “wasted” a lot of time working with the local authorities on the concept of Media Literacy in schools. Although these classes are important, Fotiade said that her experience shows that a “top-to-bottom” approach doesn’t work in spreading media literacy and shared a civil society-promoted model for media literacy to achieve results. She gave examples of local civil society groups doing such work, such as distributing informational booklets on verification, going to schools and holding workshops in disadvantaged areas.
 
She said in the immense ocean of online information, it shouldn’t even be discussed that strong media literacy skills for children are an important life skill.
 
As part of the same event, Alexenia Dimitrova from the Media Development Center in Bulgaria made a presentation of a comparative report on media literacy in pre-EU accession countries conducted by researchers in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. Dimitrova said several trends were identified in the Balkan countries. Journalism is in a decline, and media is highly dependent on politics. Media literacy is barely mentioned in legislative texts in those countries. There is no systematic or structured approach to media literacy in education in these countries as well. Other common problems included educating journalists about news verification in the digital age; and lack of media practitioners among academics and university professors who teach media literacy related courses.
 
Not unlike Fotiade, Dimitrova also emphasized a bottom-to-top approach, concluding that the civil society sector is a crucial actor in closing the media literacy gap in these countries.
 
Most of those problems also apply to Turkey, where civil society initiatives have had the most impact in debunking fake news and teaching users to approach social media and other news skeptically.
 
The research papers from the six countries examined at the panel were written by Ildo Londo (Albanian Media Insitute), Radenko Udovicic (Media Plan, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Zoran Bojarovski (Macedonia), Dejan Kozul (Serbia) and Milena Perovic Korac (Montenegro Media Institute) and can be found here.