23 Feb. (Portaltic/EP) –
The media literacy It is perceived as a fundamental tool to learn to distinguish information from opinion and generate critical thinkinga training that increases its success when it involves teachers and journalists, but that in Spain does not seem to receive all the attention it should from the Public Administrations.
Spain is one of the countries in which there is the greatest demand for media literacy for learn to spot misinformation and that it receives less response from the Public Administrations, according to the report ‘Media Literacy: current context, legislation, success stories, tools and resources, and perception and proposals of specialists and teachers’.
The country does not comply with some of the European Union’s recommendations, such as supporting the establishment and development of media literacy networks, developing a lifelong learning approach to media literacy, or improving existing training models and designing new ones.
This is one of the conclusions of the report commissioned by the Luca de Tena Foundation Journalism Laboratory, which was presented this Thursday in the Zona Meta space (Madrid), and which also states that, compared to other European countries, Spain is in a very backward position, especially with regard to the development of public initiatives.
Finland, one of the most advanced countries on this issue, incorporated media literacy into the 2014 curriculum and students, from the age of six, learn to read news sources critically. Countries like Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Germany and France have also developed their own initiatives, with Portugal being the last to announce measures in this regard.
This situation contrasts with the latest Eurobarometer, which shows that 69% of Spaniards want to receive media educationa figure higher than the European average (58%), which banishes the lack of interest of the population as the cause of the lack of response from the Administrations.
Going deeper into the interest, the report underlines that Spain is the second country in Europe, only surpassed by Malta, where there is more concern about disinformation (82%). And even 72.1% of Spaniards acknowledge that they have ever believed a message or video that turned out to be false.
Media Literacy”It is the vaccine that can help citizens to have mechanisms against misinformation and to trust the media,” and also to demand quality information from the media, as pointed out by the editorial director of the Journalism Laboratory of the Luca de Tena Foundation, Lluís Cucarella, responsible for the report.
It is also “relevant since it was recognized the influence that the media have on the formation of public opinion“, as pointed out by the dean of the Faculty of Journalism at the University of Navarra and Defender of the ABC Reader, Charo Sádaba, who has stressed that “now it is urgent” due to the penetration of the digital in daily life and due to the climate existing polarization in societies; disinformation appears as a phenomenon that poses dangers such as “the erosion of trust in public institutions, but also in each other, among ourselves“, has added.
The Associations of Journalists have started their own projects and initiatives of media literacy in the classroom. This is the case of ‘Desenreda’, from the Andalusian press associations and the Andalusian Professional College of Journalists; ‘The master key’, by the Association of Journalists of Jerez; ‘La Prensa en mi mochila’, from the Malaga Press Association; or ‘Educac’, in Catalonia.
LACK OF INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRAINING
Spain has made little (47%) or no progress (13%) in media literacy in the last five years, according to the perception that primary and secondary teachers from Spanish schools have expressed in a survey for this report.
Despite the fact that the majority (66%) of the teachers consider that media literacy is a clear solution to the problem of disinformation, and that 74% indicate that students are highly affected by disinformation, they also believe the necessary investments are not being made to deliver it.
In this sense, 40% of those surveyed consider that nothing has been invested, and 27% that little has been invested in the resources and infrastructure necessary to teach media literacy. Likewise, 47% consider that little or nothing has been invested (33%) in their training school to teach media literacy.
On the other hand, the survey of teachers has not reached an agreement on the best way to address this problem in the classroom: some defend that the training be carried out in specific units within each subject, against those who believe that it should be dealt with in a separate subject.
The Community of Madrid is committed to an approach in which both positions have a place, as stated by the Deputy Minister for Educational Policy, Rocío Albert, during her participation in the subsequent colloquium. The Deputy Minister of Educational Development and Vocational Training of the Junta de Andalucía, Macarena O’Neill, has defended that it has to be transversal to all subjects and include digital literacy, and that it must “make progress in adult education as well, that cannot be left out of the system, digitization and communication within the networks”.
Both have agreed on the role of teachers in the literacy of their students, and for this reason both Autonomous Communities have developed various training programs for them.
TRAINING FOR EVERYONE AND WITH THE INVOLVEMENT OF JOURNALISTS
Albert has also defended that “it is very important to encourage students from a very young age to search for information through the press”. It is another idea present in the report. As Cucarella has pointed out, it can be deduced from the cases analyzed that The sooner you start with this training, the more successful your media literacy will be.. But he has qualified that there is no specific age to which to start.
Yes you have underlined the involvement of journalists in said formation. “The greatest success stories occur when journalists participate in media literacy processes, when they explain how they make the news,” he added.
The general secretary of the Madrid Press Association, Mónica Tourón, has gone further and has even assured that “media literacy is necessary for the survival of good journalism.” “We live in a click war; journalism has been carried away by that war and literacy makes it easier for us to know how to dodge those bullets,” he explained.
“It must be an effort in which we must all take part,” has completed the director of Public Affairs of Meta for Spain and Portugal, José Luis Zimmermann. During his speech, he explained that Meta has spent years developing programs aimed at combating misinformation through media literacywhich connect people with reliable information and are aimed above all at vulnerable groups such as adolescents, but also the elderly in relation to digital environments.
Zimmermann has highlighted the program of training for people over 50 developed in collaboration with Poynter MediaWise, Newtral and the University of Navarra, which provides the necessary tools so that they can detect reliable and erroneous information, “so that they can base their decisions more on facts than on fiction”, he pointed out. . In addition to the ‘GeneraZión’ program aimed at adolescents, and whose objective is to provide them with greater critical thinking.
