Mapping of Media Literacy Practices and Actions in EU-28

This resource provides a guide to what is happening in the European media literacy world. In it, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), part of the Council of Europe (COE), maps the recent state of play of media literacy practices and actions in all 28 European member states. For the purpose of this project, media literacy refers to "all the technical, cognitive, social, civic and creative capacities that allow us to access and have a critical understanding of and interact with media. These capacities allow us to exercise critical thinking, while participating in the economic, social and cultural aspects of society and playing an active role in the democratic process." This concept covers all kinds of media interactions (broadcasting, radio, press, the internet, social media) and addresses the needs of all ages. Actions relating to school curricula were previously mapped by the European Media Literacy Education Study (EMEDUS), so it is the media literacy actions that have taken place outside schools that were focused on.

In the absence of a common delivery network or evaluation framework for media literacy projects, a single point of contact for each of the European Union (EU)-28 member states was established to facilitate the collection of data. These "national experts" were responsible for gathering the data related to their country and completing a standardised questionnaire between May 2016 and October 2016. Each national expert was asked to provide the following information: statutory and non-statutory stakeholders; existing media literacy networks; the 20 most significant projects including details of Project Name, Project Type, Sector, Media Literacy skills addressed, Geographic reach, Timing, Reason, and level of significance; and more in-depth project summaries for the 5 most significant projects including information on the target audiences, budgets, stakeholders, and project outcomes and evaluation. In total, there were 547 featured projects. The report is made up largely of the country reports and annexes, which include short descriptions of all 145 case study projects identified.

As to the addressed media literacy skills, "critical thinking" was dealt with by 403 of the 547 projects, followed by "media use" (385). This trend is also confirmed by the case-study analysis of the most significant 145 projects, which also feature projects on "intercultural dialogue" (46 of 145), including skills around challenging radicalisation and hate speech online. Concerning the scale, over one-third of the analysed projects (228 of 547) were the result of "cross-sector collaboration", and the vast majority of them were of national importance (409), with 95 categorised as regional and 43 as European. This trend was confirmed by the case-study analysis. Regarding the degree of significance for the top 145 projects, on the one hand the most common audience group concerns "teens and older students", and this despite the exclusion of curricular-based projects. On the other hand, only 7 projects had as the intended group "older people".

The chapter summarising the main findings offers a view of the health and status of media literacy across Europe today. Some of the key findings are:

• Civil Society plays a very active role in media literacy projects.
• The majority of key media literacy stakeholders do not have a statutory responsibility around media literacy.
• 189 main media literacy networks were identified across the EU-28 countries.
• The level of media literacy activity varies significantly across countries.
• Providing front-line support to citizens is a priority for media literacy projects.
• Working in partnership is a key aspect of delivering a significant media literacy project.
• The Safer Internet Programme, which has funded or part-funded "Safer Internet nodes" across Europe, appears to have either funded, inspired, or facilitated the development and/or delivery of significant projects in 22 of the EU-28 countries.

"The results of this study provide a snapshot of some trends in media literacy projects across Europe with a view to highlighting some of the most diverse, interesting and innovative projects in the hope of inspiring and encouraging future activity and collaboration across Europe."