MediaSapiens

We put together 7 activities to explore the topic of media literacy in youth work. Try them out with youth workers, young people, or by yourself. The activities are easily adjustable for the needs of smaller, or bigger groups as well as you can adjust them to the level of the knowledge and skills of the participants. 

Become media literate!

Interview was done by Macedonian journalist Bojan Blazhevski.

According to you, why media literacy is so important for our societies today?

A lot of people don't know, how important it is to think critically about what they read on the internet. We need to learn how to fight fake news/information, where and how we can find reliable sources.

 What kind of problems you think that disinformation campaigns can produce in our societies?

 From what I see, it can make people believe that something bad (for example war) is actually worth it and is a lesser evil. And it can split society in to different groups, which hate each other for their believes.

 What can we do as individuals in order to raise the awareness about the media literacy?

Interview was done by Macedonian journalist Bojan Blazhevski. 

According to you, why media literacy is so important for our societies today?

 We can all agree that the future is digital and is just a matter of time when the word "offline" will no longer have a significant meaning. As for our presence, we are surrounded with so much information "noise", arguably one is able to avoid. The capacity to sustain that traction and recognize the meaningful information, and confidently swim in the ocean of fake news, is crucial for any active citizen today. The spread of information has taken from printing newspapers the night before to posting online within mili seconds, which results with mass production of media content by any person with a smartphone in their pocket. But the difference is that does not make one neither a journalist nor a relevant source. So, being media literate will help us stay true to our core values and beliefs as a society, will give space to practice our laws and policies and move truthfully and respectfully forward.

 What kind of problems you think that disinformation campaigns can produce in our societies?

Misleading understandings of the truth. The term "white lie", but with a very longstanding implications to our surroundings. Lack of trust in democracy, disrespect of the differences among us, shift of mindset and destructive behaviour. Disinformation campaigns normalize the intentional spread of lies, and having to play with such a core value such as trust, is a very powerful and silent weapon. Moreover, the tools to carry it out are widely known and utilized, such as social media. Your target is there, all you need to do is to drop "the bomb". To sum up, there is not a problem you can think of that can not be caused by a disinformation campaign, crimes included.

  What can we do as individuals in order to raise the awareness about the media literacy?

 We need to be more aware, doubt and question almost everything we read, see and hear. Not to the extent of being paranoid, but take some action steps as in confirming the information and research about the relevance of the source. We should not fall for those sensational headlines and photos, promising tons of likes and retweets, but we need to re-program the way we get that dopamine shot and instant valorization, so we feel equally rewarded when discovering a news is fake, and reporting it to the authorities.

Interview was done by Bojan Blazhevski, Macedonian journalist and editor.

 According to you, why media literacy is so important for our societies today?

 Nowadays, our society is a more consuming and in a very faster way, that make everyone wants to reach every information and news instantly. That’s makes very difficult to avoid fake news. Moreover, be a sourced checked and fast journalist is quietly impossible in our society. Then if you look at it, most of news company want to earn benefice for their, their focus their article into the audience’s interest. The people most of the time believes every news share and they are literally out of the real life. That’s make media literacy an important aspect of the future being of our society.

 What kind of problems you think that disinformation campaigns can produce in our societies?

Disinformation campaign, with a repetitive way, will make us an idea that information share is true and reliable, and it will keep us about the true verity. In this way, people can be manipulated and make think as they want close to their interest.

 What can we do as individuals in order to raise the awareness about the media literacy?

The interview was done by Bojan Blazhevski, Macedonian journalist and editor. 

According to you, why media literacy is so important for our societies today?

Because these days we are surrounded by media, so it's very important to understand how media affects us. I think it's crucial for a young people to develop a set of skills that helps us to analyze and understand media, because without that they can easily fall into a trap of fake news, disinformation and even being deceived by some deceptive marketing messages.

What kind of problems you think that disinformation campaigns can produce in our societies?

 In my opinion, the big issue with disinformation campaigns is that people are being deceived and often it happens for sake of manipulation in order to achieve certain goals like, for example, creating more polarized society.

 What can we do as individuals in order to raise the awareness about the media literacy?

During the training course the participants worked on their own videos. Why? We believe that the ability to create own media messages is important part of media literacy. Check their video out! ...

The training course ‘Media Sapiens’ over. Nevertheless, in the upcoming months we will share with you activities that we used during the training course to increase competences of the participants in the field of media education and literacy. We will also share various links and materials. 

Participants from the Czech Republic, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Northern Macedonia, Poland and France are participating in “MediaSapiens: international training course about media literacy”, which is held in the Czech city of Prerov.

The first day of the training (March 13) started with an introduction by the trainers Ilona Olehlova and Inese Minsi about what specifically as competencies, skills and knowledge participants will be able to take and transfer from this event to future activities/projects that they may organize by NGO’s and youth organizations in their countries.

The training continued on the second day with the introduction of the basics of media literacy by the journalist and editor Bojan Blazevski. Through practical exercises, the participants analyzed the frontpages of printed magazines, photos of important international events published by world news agencies and published journalistic articles by media. Participants also were introduced on which elements have to look out when they read news websites (impressum, author of the article, sources of information, to further google information abou it, etc.).

In addition to the critical analysis of published media content, on the first day of the training, participants were able to learn more about how media functions today, the main functions of media, types of messages that all of us receive every day, the public interest as the basis of journalistic work and how a professionally structured journalistic article should looks like.

Participants had the opportunity to watch two videos why media literacy is important for us today and learn more about the specific case - creation of the whole network of young fake news producers in the Macedonian city of Veles. They worked on the task to make difference between information and comments through several practical examples. It was given a chance to them to do a practical journalistic work, searching for facts on the Internet for specific claims made by the trainer. The second day of the training ended up with an individual reflection of each participant on DO’s and DON’Ts in the news production.

The third day of the training was led by trainers Ilona Olehlova and Inese Minsi. Participants this time were focused on their own understanding of what media literacy means to them and what is their current knowledge about media literacy. Also, the topic of youth participation and activities that are important for working with young people through practical exercises were actualized.

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We are counting days to welcome people from Latvia, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia and other countries in Prerov for our international training course. After so many postponing the time is almost HERE. 

If you are interested in the topic of media literacy follow us from 12 to 20 March on this page and you will have an opportunity to explore the topic of media literacy together with. 

If you are coming from the Czech Republic, or you are resident of the Czech Republic you have now the possibility to become part of this training course! We are encouraging everyone who is interested in the media literacy, can communicate in English and can spend the time from 12. March to 20. March 2022 in Prerov in the company of 26 people from 9 countries. 

For more information check the Information Package, if you would like to apply please fill in the Application until 15/2/2022. If you have any questions contact us: [email protected]

Note to anyone coming from Latvia, Poland, France, North Macedonia, Lithuania, Greece, Croatia and Bulgaria. This training course is open also for the participants from these countries, check out our partners and if you are interested contact them. They are responsible for selection of the participants. 

While looking for resources for our project we also found several videos on the topic that we would like to share with you:

Introduction to Media Literacy: Crash Course Media Literacy Series of videos on the topic. You can start with the first answering the question: What’s media literacy and after continue with others ones that are part of this Cras Course. 

and 2 interesting TEDx Talks: