Reading the World: Journalism, Communication, and I

Abstract

Scholars and journalists have long hoped that media education could positively tackle the information challenge and enhance social goals such as political and civic engagement particularly among youngsters. This paper seeks to present the way the “Academy for Reading the World: Journalism, Communication and I” promotes an interdisciplinary approach to media literacy amongst young adults (14y-24y) through an immersive media experience for students, who are supposed to develop critical thinking, self-regulation, and communication competences. Its framework is established in a nationwide network, engages more than 300 high school students, 150 university and polytechnic communication and journalism undergraduates, more than 30 professors, journalists and media and communication studies researchers, and a wide range of partner institutions, such as media outlets (RTP- Rádio e Televisão de Portugal; Lusa; Público) and cultural organizations (News Museum). In this article, we analyze the experience of this Academy in Faro, Portalegre, Covilhã, Abrantes, Setúbal and Lisboa and assess the youngsters’ engagement in this national collaborative experience, whose media and communication agenda aims at empowering youngsters for a more conscious reading of our demanding world. 

Keywords

Communication, Media Literacy, News Literacy, Youth, World Reading

Introduction

Today, more than ever, it is important to know how to read the world. It is important to understand the central position of communication and journalism in the public space and to recognize its impact and importance in our own life in society. It is important to know how to distinguish between information and fiction. It is important to know how to participate in the construction of a rational public space, based on values of truth, equality, and democracy. It is essential that all young people recognize this importance and become participants and conscientious citizens. The perception we have of the world never stops being influenced by media discourse, broadcasted ideas, and published thoughts in a constant social, political, or economic construction of reality. The importance of media work quality is unquestionable for an informed society, and good journalism depends, not only, on the capacity of bringing citizens closer to the world as it is, or as Arthur Miller would say to the Observer newspaper, in 1961, “a good newspaper is a nation talking to itself,” but also on each citizen’s interpretive skills. Today’s media hybridization and textual intricacy frame the complexity of contemporary journalistic discourses. The need to know how to decode the myriad of stimuli available and the inevitable work of interpretation in media and digital immersion are essential for understanding reality. Being competent to see and understand the world today is a complex but critical requirement that triggers an urgency of mixed competences articulation, which will be effective only if combined.

If attention given to the subject of media literacy has grown and gained new and stimulating angles of reflection, reality seems little compatible with what might be supposed given the distance that seems to be maintained between the education system and youth, as Manuel Castells said some time ago and Sonia Livingstone reaffirmed later (Castells, 2007; Livingstone, 2016). After Livingstone’s latest study on young people’s life and education in the digital age, she concluded that the aspirations of the education system continue “at odds with how young people and families imagine what learning is good for” (Livingstone, 2016). For today’s young people, the new media are, above all, preferred meeting spaces where they learn, participate, and get deeply involved sometimes shaping pioneering communication practices. Furthermore, and according to Henry Jenkins’ thoughts, this also indicates that media acts as a powerful ground for civic and public involvement (Jenkins, 2016: 6). 

The “Reading the World Academy: Journalism, Communication and I”, selected to be part of the Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies 2019 network, aims at developing skills to deal with these changing and complex problems by contributing to the enrichment of communication and journalistic literacy among the young participants. A multidisciplinary team of professors and researchers from the School of Communication and Media Studies of the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute leads a national action network made up of partnerships with six university and polytechnic institutions, six secondary schools from their corresponding communities, the collaboration of mainstream and regional media outlets, cultural institutions, and City Councils.

The academic institutions, namely the University of Beira Interior, the Portalegre Polytechnic Institute – Higher School of Education and Social Sciences, the Tomar Polytechnic Institute – Abrantes School of Technology, Setúbal Polytechnic Institute – Setúbal College of Education, Algarve University and the promoter of the project – the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute – School of Media Studies and Communication – all have communication and journalism degrees and will contribute to the national network of the project by providing human resources and facilities to implement the Academy of Reading working agenda.

The partnerships celebrated between the six academic institutions and the high schools, and media outlets and offers a collaborative experience that promotes a set of journalistic and communication activities among young students (14-21 years old). Together with the educational project of the partner schools, the Academy provides a place where participants are invited to decode the news, question the passive consumption of information, and encourage a critical and constructive posture, which suits the challenges of contemporary information and media culture. It is expected that the planned collaborative work takes place during the school term, both in academic contexts and social contexts, for example, with workshops and seminars in newsrooms of different media outlets, news agencies Lusa, RTP TV or Público Newspaper), and cultural institutions, for example, the News Museum. The experience started in October of 2019 and permanently has been trying to develop information reading practices capable of instilling a positive change in society. The Academy follows an immersive and participant methodology based on students’ availability within their school schedule. Eight to ten working sessions are held and last 90 to 160 minutes each, distributed during one academic year.

Lisbon

The activities in the Lisbon Academy have put together more than one hundred students from the high school José Gomes Ferreira and undergraduate studies of communication and journalism of ESCS collaborating in a wide range of media and journalism activities. The agenda organized and monitored by professors, researchers and specialists in the field of communication and journalism included sessions of press reviews, analysis of the Portuguese press headlines (construction and accuracy), study of multimedia feature stories, disinformation, ethics and journalism, and a visit to the News Museum and LUSA – the Portuguese news agency. Moreover, the project working agenda (from September to June) also challenged students to participate in the construction of multimedia news stories, in the proposal of the logo for the Academy and, for example, in the design of a board game to develop media literacies. All these active actions focused on transmedia experiences, which triggered communication, self-regulation and critical thinking abilities that are key competences to understand and value the central role of journalism and media in our contemporary society. 

Faro

In the Algarve, the “Academy for Reading the World took place at João de Deus Secondary School, in Faro. The activities were aimed at the students of the 10th grade, the first year of the professional course in Communication: Marketing, Public Relations, and Advertising. Sixty-four young people, out of a universe of 100 students, aged between 15 and 18, regularly attended the sessions, and 5 teachers who had contact with the project in the Algarve region. The activities were organised by a team of 6 professors from the University of Algarve, who are also researchers from CIAC – Research Centre for Arts and Communication and involved the participation of final-year students of the Communication Sciences undergraduate studies.

Like the partner Academies, the starting point was to approach journalism, its values, and practices, seeking to develop in the students critical thinking about their own media consumption. Twenty sessions were held over the three years of the project, complemented by other forms of interaction, such as the challenge to produce an individual video record of media use, or a small digital literacy mentoring project developed by the Communication Sciences students. Faced with groups not very interested in news at the beginning of the year, the team tried to meet the interests of the participants. Thus, a session on hate speech in video games was the motto for the debate on issues related to media representations of various social groups (in 2020), especially in the digital environment. A session with a locally known Youtuber allowed an approach to the different sectors and professionals that compete in the production and dissemination of media content (2021). The conversations with journalists of different generations and fields, namely sports journalism, allowed to know routines and journalistic practices and to value local information (2021/2022). In general, students particularly valued the activities that provided a contact with journalists and other media professionals, as well as those that allowed an exploration of technical resources.

In 2022 it was possible to resume face-to-face contacts and go on a school trip to RUA FM – the University of Algarve radio station.

Portalegre

The project in Portalegre involved about 80 students during the three years, accompanied by two teachers, in addition to the research team. The activities developed addressed issues such as fake news and disinformation, the specificity of the journalist’s role in the media context, the ethics and deontology of journalism, the media public service, and the mechanisms of reproduction and reconstruction of reality through journalism.

A total of 16 sessions were developed, a lower number than expected and justified by the restrictions imposed by Covid-19, which implied on the one hand, the reduction of the number of activities and, on the other hand, the online organization of some activities. 

The themes were approached following a theoretical-practical methodology, implying the planning of some lectures and debate with students based on case studies, and others totally practical, in which students had the opportunity to do journalism work in television and radio studios and later publish their pieces in an online newspaper. In addition, the activities in Portalegre involved sessions with journalists, with whom the students were able to talk, and study visits to the News Museum and a local radio station.

Abrantes

In Abrantes the intervention was carried out by the two professors of Journalism of Communications undergraduate studies of Institute Polytechnic of Tomar (School of Technologies of Abrantes) in collaboration with Secondary School Dr. Manuel Fernandes, in Abrantes. Each year, the director indicated a group of students to participate in the project. Abrantes is a city in the centre of Portugal, with 34.000 citizens. Most of the students live in the city, but a significant number of them live in small villages around Abrantes.

The three groups from the secondary school were from the 10th grade, all of them studying Social Sciences. They were accompanied by their history teachers (a different one in each year). In total, the project was carried out with 69 students from the Secondary School, together with students from the Communications Studies (around 30), who played different roles: they organized different activities about Alternative Media, Digital Media Projects, and Regional Journalism; they helped the professors in the development of the workshops; and they participated in the visit to the quality daily newspaper Público, as well as to the Newsmuseum.

Each year the project was carried out, the team organized three expositive sessions (presented by teachers of ESTA.IPT) about the following subjects:

• Quality Journalism versus Popular Journalism
• Communicators are not all the same
• Fake news and disinformation

Also, there were five actions organized by the students of ESTA.IPT, with the orientation of the professors of Communication:

• Debate with journalists from Regional Media (2019/20)
• Online interviews with directors of journalistic projects (regional, digital, and alternative Journalism) (2020/21)
• Debate about Alternative Journalism (2020/21)
• Presentation of new projects of Digital Media (2021/22)
• Game about Journalism and Media (2021/22)

In the last year (2021/22), after the Covid pandemic, the project also included a visit to the daily quality newspaper Público, which allowed students to realise how journalists work, and why, since they had the opportunity to listen to them and to pose questions. Also, in this year it was possible to visit NewsMuseum in Sintra.

Among the three years, the team saw a huge commitment on the part of the secondary school teachers, who showed interest in addressing issues of Media Literacy at this level of education. On the other hand, it was possible to verify, through the questionnaires, that the students were more alert to issues related to the production of content, and to the question of disinformation and the ability to distinguish what they should trust.

Among the main achievements, the project allowed students from secondary school to identify the characteristics of quality Journalism. The project also allowed students to understand how news are produced by different media outlets. This goal was reached not only by all the expository sessions, but also through the workshops, which were the activities that the students most appreciated. About the alternatives to mainstream media, the activities organized gave the secondary students more options to be informed, in a way that became clear how different these new and young projects are from traditional newspapers and radios. As a result, the team believes that this project was very fruitful, giving an important contribution for these young people regarding their future lives as informed and active citizens. 

Covilhã

Youngsters’ participation within media environments: Covilhã’s Gulbenkian Knowledge Academy.

In an eminently practical and laboratory approach, in a dialogic contact with the young participants, the project was carried out, over the last three years, at Quinta das Palmeiras High School, Covilhã. The intervention classes had around 25 students, with almost always 100% attendance. Over 24 sessions (between face-to-face and online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic) students were encouraged to discuss, to develop sustained arguments, based on media content from the so-called traditional media and new media.

The themes were diverse – namely, fake news, journalism and the pursuit of the truth, politics and the media, media influence and media influencers, media and gender equality, media and diversity, media, violence, and youngsters. All the sessions were participated and monitored by different guests, accompanied by the promoter of the project in Covilhã.

Assessing the youngsters’ engagement in this national collaborative experience, the main results show the project’s impact in three main aspects: 1st) Participants showed the need to diversify sources to obtain information and build their image of the world. 2nd) The participants understood that the media should diversify the voices and positions on the different themes. 3rd) Participants understand that diversity must be an item always present in informative content, first, as in non-informative content.

Indeed, youngsters understand that these should be the main strategies to be applied – both by recipients and producers of the media – to clarify the truth and deconstruct fake news.

In the early stage, the participants said that the access to news were mostly done at home, on mobile devices, influenced by parents. However, most do not answer which channels they access, or which are their reference journalists. The majority said that most of their friends are not interested in news. The majority could not answer the last piece of news they saw.

At the end of the intervention year of the project, most participants revealed that they often think about their media actions, usually confirm the credibility of the information source before forming an opinion, consider the various arguments and opinions, and started to pay greater attention to the news media.

Ultimately, entertainment, health (Covid-19) and sports are the most searched news topics. 

“The project made me rethink before sharing something on the networks.”

Ricardo F.

“I really liked the project. Made me believe that we can do more for diversity in the media and in the world.”

Ana B.

“We, youngsters, were listened in this project. We know we are in a world of fake news, but we also know that we can choose, diversify.”

Leonor M.

“We don’t like to admit it, but we follow a lot of influencers. And what they think is relevant to us.”

Carolina A.

Leonor S.

Setúbal

The project was developed in Setúbal, a medium-sized port city 45 km from Lisbon, by a group of four professors from different areas: Journalism, History and Communication and Information Technology, of the Institute Polytechnic of Setúbal, in partnership with teachers of Sebastião da Gama High School. Each year, a different class of the 10th grade integrated the project in a total of 81 students (15 – 17 years old), who attended six sessions of 90 minutes per year. The methodology privileged a participatory approach including exercises, quizzes, and debates.

Titled ‘What is behind the news’, the first session addressed the productive routines of the journalists, the characteristics of the news discourse and quality journalism, and the relationship between journalists and news sources. Two other sessions approached different kinds of journalistic genres, the representations of social groups in the news, and how to critically analyse the images. Special attention was given to the news representation of women and how to overcome stereotypes. The information disorder was the topic of other two sessions. The book ‘Journalism, ‘Fake News’ and Disinformation: A Handbook for Journalism Education and Training’ (Unesco) was used as a theoretical framing to debate the different formats of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Those meetings also included practical training to identify fake news and to fact-check digital content.   

The final meeting was about the platformization of the Internet and the power of big tech companies in the so-called attention economy. The students debated about how the Internet business permeated by algorithms, big data, and the rising of social media and digital influencers affect journalism. The main goal was to promote a critical view about platforms such as Google and Facebook that took over the advertising market and the distribution of news without assuming the responsibilities of journalistic organizations: independence, accuracy, and veracity. 

Unfortunately, the school trip to newspapers, in Lisbon, and the News Museum, in Sintra, were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic.

Monitorization and evaluation process

The Academy was responsible for all the evaluation system and monitoring procedures considered relevant and essential elements to the project’s objectives, since it is believed that only by assessing procedures is it possible to determine whether a program works, if it is necessary to change strategies or meets its purposes (Alexandre et al, 2017). The Academy team monitored and evaluated the project starting with the constitution of two main clusters, an intervention group, and a comparison one. In the evaluation process, items such as the profile and number of participants involved in the action were patterned by analysis, the change in behaviour in the use of social networks acknowledged and change in the connection with news information identified, for example. The submission of questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of the activity’s agenda was conducted on both clusters, whilst the intervention group answered a short and customised survey – a logbook after each agenda session.

Whereas monitoring the intervention group, quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted on field, checking items such as participants’ attendance, expectations for actions, relation with the media, news consumption habits, interest in news information, usefulness of media content consumption, etc. Furthermore, the data made available by online quantitative and qualitative analysis will provide information for the research work supported by the Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies evaluation team. Since competences are not acquired by anyone automatically but instead need to be learned and developed through a constant exchange with the community around participants, the Academy offers an up-to-date engagement agenda with a mix of journalistic and media activities. These national network actions followed strict evaluation processes that were constantly monitored and customised by researchers according to major participants’ interests and needs on developing communication, critical thinking, and self-regulation competences. 

Conclusion

This article presents the way the “Academy for Reading the World: Journalism, Communication and I”, established in six Portuguese cities (Covilhã, Setúbal, Faro, Portalegre, Abrantes and Lisbon), promoted an interdisciplinary approach to media literacy amongst young students (14y-24y). Its framework established a nationwide network and engaged more than 300 high school students, 150 university and polytechnic communication and journalism undergraduates, more than 30 professors, journalists and media and communication studies researchers, and a wide range of partner institutions, such as national and regional media outlets and cultural organizations. The experience of this Academy in Faro, Portalegre, Covilhã, Abrantes, Setúbal and Lisboa planned and organized more than 60 actions with the objective of developing communication, critical thinking, and self-regulation competences, which are known to be core skills to read the world today. The overall students’ engagement in this national collaborative experience was significant and thought-provoking, with participants understanding the importance of media literacy and the importance of their role in the information ecosystem yet recognizing their lack of interest, availability to hard news and skills to deal with the quantity of stimuli available. Often identified as digital natives, contemporary teens are credited in this paradoxical status of skilled but vulnerable media users. Therefore, it was essential to hear these voices and work with distinct students’ perceptions and skills from different contexts and backgrounds. The commitment of the “Academy for Reading the World” network was to produce academic knowledge that matters, bearing in mind that knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values when together mobilized can empower anyone to deal with media and communication challenging constructions.

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