After one year’s break, the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, a worldwide theme week dedicated to literacies related to media and initiated by UNESCO, will be celebrated on 24–30 October.
After a year’s break, UNESCO will organize the main conference of the annual theme week, the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, together with the Hashemite Kingdom in Amman, Jordan. Because of turbulence in the area, the festivities were postponed last year. This year’s theme is “The New Digital Frontiers of Information: Media and Information Literacy for Public Interest Information”.
The main conference is open to the public online and can be followed on 30–31 October. This year’s concept note highlights the needs of supporting people to navigate in an information landscape that is exacerbated by increased spread of disinformation and uses of artificial intelligence.
In Europe, the newly established temporary working group at the European ECREA conference, focused on the study of media literacies, organized a post-conference webinar with the title Developing Digital Literacies in Algorithmic Cultures. In the virtual seminar, 20 European scholars of digital literacies shared their ongoing work online. The keynote talk delivered by professor Julian McDougall, editor of the Routledge media literacy series and co-editor of the Journal of Media Literacy Education. It can be watched as a recording below.
More media literacy related events are expected to be hold across countries in the world, as UNESCO’s aim is to promote the awareness of ongoing initiatives, resources and studies about media literacy. Recently, the European EDMO Working Group released Guidelines for Effective Media Literacy Initiatives to strengthen the launch and development of media and information literacy initiatives. The guidelines emphasize the importance of setting clear goals, promoting critical thinking, inclusivity, ethical conduct, adaptability, and robust evaluation of initiatives.
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