By Jessica Weiss
Whether you live in a democratic
society or a one-party state, the ability to sift through information and
evaluate media messages is a vital skill set in our era.
“Media literacy” means the skillful application of literacy skills to media and
technology messages. It's long been an important part of thoughtful
civic engagement, and the digital revolution has made it even more critical.
The explosion of digital media and social networking platforms has transformed
citizens into publishers and broadcasters.
A truly media literate citizen in 2013
is someone who not only understands the meaning behind the messages he or she
encounters, but who can also create quality content and distribute it in a
variety of forms in order to become part of society’s larger dialogue.
This new reality “means that media
literacy programs need to reach a vast audience,” according to a new report from
the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA). The report, Media Literacy 2.0: A Sampling of
Programs Around the World, examines some of the programs and
campaigns working across the world to equip citizens to analyze and evaluate
incoming information. (Disclosure: CIMA is a partner of IJNet.)
Although the report notes that media
literacy programs “have a long way to go before they have the size and scale to
be truly effective,” it highlights a number of different, and often innovative,
approaches to promoting media literacy, from Botswana to Jordan.
Among these is a two-year-old effort in
Cambodia called Loy9. It uses TV, radio, the Internet,
telephone dial-in and games to promote participation in civic life by young
people, particularly those in rural areas.
A 2012 survey found that Cambodian
young people consumed a lot of media and trusted almost all of it, the CIMA
report says. They seemed vulnerable to being misled by media, whether that took
the form of one-sided news reports or karaoke videos that carried damaging
messages about gender.
In response, Loy9 “tells the stories of
people who have contributed to their communities and shows how they can be
emulated,” according to an article by BBC’s Media Action, which
oversees the program. “The positive sentiment of inspiration and peer to peer
support is summed up in the [show’s] name, Loy9, which is a slang term of
praise among young Cambodians.”
With “music, brightly colorful
animations and ebullient hosts,” Loy9 tries to be fun and entertaining while
taking on serious subjects. Several episodes feature Loy9 personalities going
to villages to show local young people how to make a video, including
“storyboarding,” shooting, editing, and camera and tripod use.
Episodes have featured a drama in which
a young man runs for election as youth representative on a community council, a
visit with a young women’s soccer team, young people helping create a library
in a village and a scavenger hunt around Phnom Penh in which participants
engage in problem-solving and team cooperation.
According to Colin Spurway, the project
director in Phnom Penh, the idea is to impart skills to the young people in the
village, but also to make a point to the broader audience that behind every
video are people who have a particular message they want to convey, and who
have chosen to show some things and not others.
“We did not want to perpetuate the
illusion that TV programs just sort of emanate from your television,” Spurway
told CIMA. “We wanted to make it clear how it was made.”
Showing the back story about how a
program is made has paid off: the TV version, aired on Cambodia’s two most
widely watched TV networks, draws up to 2 million viewers, with some people
watching communally on TVs powered by car batteries.
Read the full CIMA report here.
Jessica Weiss, a former IJNet managing
editor, is a Buenos Aires-based freelancer.
Source: Ijnet.org
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