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Writer's pictureBrian Mulligan

Review of 'Making Sense of Media: Children and Media Literacy' Event held on 14th June 2023

Brian Mulligan from The MEA attended this online event in June and the following notes reflect his thoughts from the meeting. The slides from the event are also available below:

Julian Ashworth (Dir. strategy/policy) welcomed attendees to the conference then handed over to Claire Levens to introduce Making Sense Of Media. She presented a list of external organisations/ experts who meet four times a year which includes:

Tiktok, YouTube and Parentzone. There is an opening here for involvement from The MEA which needs to be explored further.

Ofcom has commissioned research into underserved communities and published 'Children's Media Lives' report which included 'Internet Matters' research into Metaverse.


A question on AI revealed that their research indicates a third of online users have used it.


Bullying/ Cyberbullying - headline findings that this frequently crossed into harassment.


Discussion Panel:

Matteo Bergamini

Laura Higgins

Ken Corish

Digital citizenship (LH)


Most pertinent for me was the criticism of what Laura Higgins of Roblox termed ‘Old school

literacy’. This outdated approach still prevalent across schools but is of limited use in metaverse etc.

  • Often trainers in schools give poor quality advice

  • Benefits for children being media literate (KC)

  • Empowerment leads to safety

  • Materials used by PHSE in schools (MB)

  • Only way to deal with mis and disinformation is media literacy

Research: 3k teachers revealed less than 1% felt they had skills/ knowledge to teach political

and media literacy


Questions

What reasonable expectations should we have of platforms re: safety?

How do we engage the hard to reach audience?

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