Media Literacy 2024: A Vibrant Summer in a Year of Excellence

The year 2024 will be remembered as a remarkable one in the field of media literacy. This is a personal perspective that I aim to substantiate in this text by presenting seven key reasons:

1. Empowering all citizens, especially the youth, in democracy, human rights, and the rule of law is essential. This aligns with the Council of Europe’s longstanding mission. This year, it has laid the groundwork for the European Year of Education for Digital Citizenship, to be celebrated in 2025, with its official launch scheduled for January in Strasbourg, France.
2. The “5th International Media Literacy Research Symposium”, held in June in the Azores, brought together over 150 researchers and practitioners from around the globe, who emphasized the critical importance of media literacy today and its role in fostering critical thinking, ethics, and deontology.
3. The “Unlocking Media Literacy: Shaping Tomorrow’s Minds” conference, organized by DCN Global in July in Helsinki, Finland, tackled the challenges and opportunities of Media Literacy across various educational contexts. It highlighted the necessity of implementing and evaluating Media Literacy initiatives tailored to these contexts, using international models to assess impact.
4. To advance sense-making practices and assess impacts, the EDMO Guidelines for Effective Media Literacy Initiatives were developed by a globally collaborative working group of over 100 members. Their public presentation on October 21st signifies the beginning of a crucial process, aimed at linking significant projects and practices that serve as templates for communities.
5. A significant contributor to this discourse is the Alfamed Network, which held its VII International Congress titled “Social Networks and Citizenship: The Challenge of Teacher Training in Media Education” in San José, Costa Rica, also in October. A key takeaway was the emphasis on human-centric discussions in an era dominated by generative AI, underscoring the urgent need to develop Prompt Literacy (Alexandre Sayad).
6. Alexandre Sayad’s proposal is particularly relevant as the rapid, unregulated development of AI erodes public trust in information. As noted by Melisa Basol during the “Media Literacy Matters conference” in Brussels in February, we are navigating a “post-trust” era—a concern wisely addressed by the Belgian Presidency of the European Union.
7. The European Youth Forum, held in Brussels in April, under the European Union’s auspices, featured a vital debate on “Digital Citizenship and Empowerment: Making Your Vote Count!” During this event, it was stressed that policymakers must not only listen to young people but also empower them to engage in political decision-making and address social challenges.

There are many more outcomes that were produced from these conference events. You will read more about them in this issue which documents the research as well as the learning obtained.