media platforms, Ofcom has been given enhanced responsibilities in heightening the public’s awareness and understanding of how to protect against online harms. The Act is vague about how Ofcom might go about this, but the regulator gave some preliminary indication about its approach when it published a draft strategy8
for
consultation last April. The draft is artic- ulated around three broad priority areas: developing the evidence base and eval- uation methodologies for media literacy interventions; working with platforms to help ensure that they pay heed to media literacy; and engaging and working with stakeholders who have an interest in media literacy. Forty-five organisations respond- ed to the consultation, including MILA9
.
The final version of the strategy is expected no later than the end of 2024. Although it might be argued that developing public awareness and understanding is a broadly educational endeavour, school education is out of scope for the media literacy compo- nent of the Act.
These developments represent important steps in the right direction. They amplify the gradual and sometimes cautions UK public policy recognition of the impor- tance of MIL over the past few years, with the Cairncross Review (2019), the Online Harms White Paper (2019), the Online Media Literacy Strategy (2021) and the long drawn-out legislative process leading to the Online Safety Act. But however welcome the direction of travel, we should
40 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
remember that MIL is not a panacea. It was the recent riots and their associ- ated disinformation that prompted the Secretary of State’s remarks quoted above – but MIL forms only part of the armoury against disinformation stemming from extremist and conspiracy theory discourse. There is a view, for instance, that combat- ting campaigns of extremist disinformation through interventions such as fact-check- ing will always have limits. Thus it’s much better, according to Dr Richard Fern, Lec- turer in Media at Swansea University, to identify the silos and online communities that produce the disinformation, and then target the algorithms that create them. In his words, “we can then mediate and ameliorate the problem by reaching out to these groups, spending our energies intro- ducing alternative views, new symbols and foundational myths, negating the effects of algorithm that led them to their silo.” 10 Or, as put by Dr Paul Reilly, from the University of Glasgow, “we can’t blame social media on its own without looking at the root of these tensions in the first place. It is expedient for politicians to blame online platforms rather than acknowledge their role in producing a toxic political discourse in relation to asylum seekers and immigration.” 11
The point is that deploying MIL to com- bat toxic disinformation is not separable from the huge and rather more political (and potentially contentious) task of addressing the causes of the doctrines and
of the narratives that produce and feed on disinformation. That too is an educa- tional challenge – and not just for young people, not just in schools. IP
References
1. Nick Gutteridge, Schools to wage war on ‘putrid’ face news, The Sunday Telegraph, 11 August 2024 – www.
telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/10/schools-wage-war-on-putrid-fake- news-in-wake-of-riots/
2. The Labour Party (2023), Breaking down the barriers to opportunity –
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ Mission-breaking-down-barriers.pdf
3. Stephen Burnley, The impact of Govian reform has been unremittingly bad, School Management Plus, 15 February 2024 –
www.schoolmanagementplus.com/assessment/ the-impact-of-the-govian-reforms-has-been-unremittingly-negative/
4. Department for Education, Government launches assessment and curriculum review, 19 July 2024 – www.
gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-curriculum-and-as- sessment-review
5. Media and Information Literacy Alliance, Media and information literacy for every student in every school, June 2024 –
https://mila.org.uk/influencing.government/
6. Sarah Pavey, All Change Ahead for School Librarians: The Labour Party’s Education Policy and its Potential Impact, Information Literacy blog, 6 August 2024 – https://
infolit.org.uk/all-change-ahead-for-school-librarians-the-labour-par- tys-education-policy-and-its-potential-impact/
7.
legislation.gov.uk, Online Safety Act 2023, part 7, chapter 8 –
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/contents
8. Ofcom, A positive vision for media literacy – a con- sultation on Ofcom’s three year media literacy strategy, 29 April 2024 –
www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/ documents/consultations/category-1-10-weeks/consultation-of- coms-three-year-media-literacy-strategy/associated-documents/con- sultation-ofcoms-three-year-media-literacy-strategy.pdf?v=305533
9. Media and Information Literacy Alliance, MILA response to Ofcom’s draft ML strategy, 25 June 2024 –
https://mila.org.uk/ofcom-strategy-consultation/
10. Richard Fern, Riots in the UK: online propagandists know how to work their audiences – this is what we are missing, The Conversation, 4 August 2024 – https://
theconversation.com/riots-in-the-uk-online-propagandists-know-how- to-work-their-audiences-this-is-what-we-are-missing-236084
11. Paul Reilly, Southport riots: why social media’s role in unrest is overblown, The Conversation, 1 August 2024 –
https://theconversation.com/southport-riots-why-social-medias- role-in-unrest-is-overblown-235979.
September 2024
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
