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 This outdated approach still prevalent across schools but is of limited use in metaverse etc.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