This workshop was based on a new series of CIMA reports on media literacy: Understanding the News and Citizen Journalism by Susan Moeller and Empowering Youth Worldwide by Paul Mihailidis. A media literate population is crucial to sustaining democracy, yet few media development programs are specifically geared towards this issue. The goal of this workshop was to discuss the role of media literacy training in providing the public with tools to be active and informed citizens. Among questions participants discussed were: How can the development community play a larger role in helping citizens become media literate? Should there be greater emphasis on youth media literacy education in schools? How do citizens know how to sort fact from opinion and propaganda on the Internet and other media?
Agenda
Session I: Overview of Media Literacy
Moderator
Marguerite Sullivan
Senior Director
CIMA
General Public
Susan Moeller
Author of Understanding the News
Director, International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, and Professor, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland
Youth Education
Paul Mihailidis
Author of Empowering Youth Worldwide
Assistant Professor, Hofstra University
Director of Media Education Initiatives, International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, University of Maryland
News Literacy in the Classroom
Dean Miller
Director
Center for News Literacy
Stony Brook University
Open Discussion
- What are universal objectives for media literacy projects?
- How can the development community play a larger role in helping citizens to become media literate?
- Since conditions in each country are different, how can “lessons learned” in one be copied in another (or should they)?
- How can such programs be monitored and evaluated?
Session II: Media Literacy for Citizen Journalism
Moderator
Marguerite Sullivan
Senior Director
CIMA
News Consumers as News Producers
Susan Moeller
Author of Citizen Journalism
Director, International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, and Professor, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland
Network Journalism
Patrick Cooper
Product Innovation Team
USA TODAY
Media Literacy and Copyright
Patricia Aufderheide
Professor and Director, Center for Social Media, School of Communication, American University
Interactive Journalism in the Public Sphere
Shanthi Kalathil
Consultant, CommGAP
World Bank
Open Discussion
- What happens when citizen journalists do not check the sources of their information?
- How can they be made to understand the importance of accurate news?
- How can donors support citizen journalists living under repressive regimes where independent media doesn’t exist and the need for investigativereporting is the greatest?