Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 12:09PM Blog post from SCVO talking about the report which gives an overview of the digital inclusion landscape in the UK.
Friday, September 20, 2019 at 9:05AM Shared from the Information Literacy Blog
Dr. Julian McDougall is the Head of the Centre for Media Practice (CEMP) at the University of Bournemouth. He runs a doctoral programme for teachers, edits a journal – Media Practice and Education, and convenes an international conference each year called the Media Education Summit. In this post he talks about fake news and disinformation, discussing a CEMP project addressing this and highlighting the project toolkit that was developed to deal with it.
As many as possible of the citizens of a democracy must be not only literate but critically literate if they are to behave as full citizens. (Hoggart, 2004: 189)
I run a research centre at Bournemouth University (CEMP) and teach and write about media education and media literacy. I also run a doctoral programme for teachers, edit a journal and convene an international conference each year (The Media Education Summit). More on all this is on the CEMP site.
Recently, CEMP have published the outcomes of an ethnography funded by the United States Embassy in London, consisting of a field review, 25 interviews and four multi-stakeholder workshops, bringing together and capturing dialogue between media educators, journalists, students and information professionals, to address the educational response to ‘fake news’ and disinformation.
25 interviews with media educators and journalists were transcribed and analysed for key discursive patterns. Participative workshops were held at the Media Education Summit in Hong Kong, the English and Media Centre in London, the National Higher Research University in Moscow and Loughborough University’s campus at Olympic Park, London. The total sample, including the interviews and participants in the workshops, is 88, across the four stakeholder groups.
See the project site for the field review, workshop videos, presentations, participant blog, report, recommendations and the ‘top ten’ toolkit of media literacy resources selected by the stakeholders for dealing with fake news. In the Autumn, I have a book on all this coming out, published by Palgrave MacMillan, and at the end of the year, another project, on the Uses of Media Literacy, going back to Richard Hoggart’s work to think about class, culture, literacy and media in 2019, will be ready for circulation. I’ll be sharing that work at the JCS Conference in Birmingham in November.
CEMP Project image – ‘Educators’. Reproduced with permission from CEMP
At the major event in London, with additional sponsorship from the Media Education Association, two days of activities in London at the Olympic Park on 15th and 16th March 2019 brought together the four stakeholder groups for a public event consisting of keynote presentations and a panel comprised of the US and UK academics involved in the project – Professor David Buckingham, Professor Monica Bulger, Professor Paul Mihaildis, Dr Karen Fowler-Watt and Dr Roman Gerodimos.
The workshop was designed to generate dialogue on four issues: (1) clarifying the problem (the apparent ‘information disorder’) from lived experience of the stakeholders; (2) identifying any competing or partly integrated discourses around the concept of trust in media and information; (3) evaluating a range of educational resources already in the world – we called this ‘testing the wheel’ and (4) agreeing on what media education can realistically do, to move beyond ‘solutionism’ (Buckingham, 2019) towards a more viable, modest proposal for Fake News vs Media Studies. Where do / can we have agency?
The link between media literacy, information literacy and the campaign to defend libraries in the UK context has been hitherto somewhat tangential, but this changed with this recent inclusion in the GSL campaign’s list of key library functions: Deliver and teach essential Information/critical literacy skills to combat fake news and engender independent learning. The Library and Information Association (2018) offer their own definition of ‘information literacy’ which includes digital and media literacies and aligned knowledge and understanding. This definition is articulated in five contexts, everyday life; citizenship; education; the workplace and health and it also signposts inter-professional collaboration, between information professionals and teachers, academic advisers and educational technologists. I am struck by the alignment of the definition with the specification objectives of Media Studies:
Information literacy can be seen as the critical capacity to read between the lines. It enables learners to engage in deep learning – perceiving relationships between important ideas, asking novel questions and pursuing innovative lines of thought. This active and critical way of learning encourages students to quickly master factual and descriptive elements of content (‘What’ and ‘How’) and then move on to investigate higher-level aspects such as source, degree of authority, possibility of bias, and what it means in the wider context. It is in line, for example, with the English National Curriculum aim to equip students, “to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgement. (CILIP, 2018: 5)
At this point it looks pretty clear that there’s a healthy situation already set out in UK schools. We have Media Studies, which does critical capacity, with an explicit focus on mediated information. And we have information professionals working on the same project. And it maps across well to the English National Curriculum. So, if we made Media Studies mandatory and brought in school librarians to support the underpinning information literacy, we’d be in a good place to tackle fake news. But the opposite is the case. Media Studies is taken by a small minority of students, seen as a ‘lightweight’ subject by politicians and the top Universities and often ridiculed by the media it is aiming to both critique and supply with a workforce.
CEMP project image ‘students’. Reproduced with permission from CEMP
Teaching to Fish
Our project started out from the Data Research Institute’s 2018 report, that Media literacy has become a center of gravity for countering “fake news. (Bulger and Davison, 2018:3). The report concluded with a set of open questions (2018: 21). Here, they are followed by our findings:
From these findings, we make the argument that critical media literacy, if adopted as a mandatory subject in schools and taught as a dynamic literacy education, would better equip young citizens with resilience to ‘information disorder’ (Wardle and Derekhshan, 2017) than reactive resources (such as fact-checking and verification tools) and small-scale projects which focus primarily on competences. The latter are described, metaphorically, as ‘giving a fish’, the former are described as ‘teaching to fish’. To use an alternative analogy, the former boosts the immune system, the latter treat the infection (see Rushkoff, 2018).
Both are needed, but ‘teaching to fish’ is the key recommendation, and, in the UK schools’ context, making Media Studies a mandatory subject would be the obvious starting point.
The workshop identified a ‘top ten’ of media literacy resources for dealing with information disorder. These include more holistic, critical media literacy activities (Teaching to Fish) – a more effective and sustainable approach than ‘giving a fish’ through fact-checking tools or surface level media / information literacy competences.
The data generated from the field review, interviews and workshops, taken together, lead us to the following three recommendations:
(1) Rather than producing competence frameworks for media literacy, as though it is a neutral set of skills for citizens, media education needs to enable students to apply the critical legacies of both Media Studies and literacy education on the contemporary media ecosystem;
(2) Media education must adopt a dynamic approach to media literacy and increase the experiential, reflexive aspects of media practice in the curriculum, with reciprocal transfer between the critical rhetorics above and creative media practice in order to respond, academically, to media as primarily a question of representation. In other words, resilience to representation is enhanced by expertise in representing.
(3) We need to add the critical exploration of social media, algorithms and big data to the media education curriculum, accompanied by applied practical learning in the uses of them for social justice, as opposed to training the next generation in the use of these for even further commercial and political exploitation of one another.
The Times Education Supplement picked up the recommendations and on social media, a bit of a campaign – Make Media Studies mandatory – is developing, which we’ll return to in September for the new school year.
I encourage readers of this post to visit the toolkit we developed from this research, use the ‘top ten’ resources in your work and then think about the distinction we are drawing between giving a fish and teaching to fish. And if you agree that fact-checking tools and online media literacy resources can help young people to become more resilient to fake news, but in the long-term a better approach, he said, would be sustained media literacy provision in schools, then doesn’t it make sense to use Media Studies, linked to information literacy and the work of school librarians, to ‘get it done’?
References
Buckingham, D. (2019) ‘Teaching Media in a ‘Post-Truth’ Age: Fake News, Media Bias and the Challenge for Media / Digital Literacy Education’. Cultura y Educación, 31/2: 213-231.
Bulger, M. and Davison, P. (2018) The Promises, Challenges and Futures of Media Literacy. New York: Data and Society Research Institute.
CILIP (2018) Definition of Information Literacy 2018.
Hoggart, R. (2004) Mass Media in a Mass Society: myth and Reality. London: Continuum.
Wardle, C. and Derakhshan, H. (2017) Information Disorder Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
For more information on the project and the toolkit, please contact Dr. Julian McDougall
Friday, July 19, 2019 at 10:27AM This article first appeared in K&IM Refer 35(2), Spring 2019 and is written by Ruth Hayes, SCOOP, (Standing Committee on Official Publications)
On 9 April 2019, Steven Hartshorne, Secretary of SCOOP sent members an email with the subject, “New information-related subcommittee launched”, in which he said ‘This may be of interest to you (it seemed to sneak under the radar of press coverage last week): Report: The launch of the Sub-Committee on Disinformation ‘. This is the title of the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s tenth report of session 2017-19, published on 2 April 2019 (HC 2090): https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/2090/2090.pdf
Among the Sub-Committee’s aims is that it “will become Parliament’s ‘institutional home’ for matters concerning disinformation and data privacy; a focal point that will bring together those seeking to scrutinise and examine this threat to democracy.” The plan is also to “make use of the new Standing Order [137A(e), Select committees: power to work with other committees] enabling us to invite members of any other select committee to attend any meeting of the Sub-Committee to ask questions of witnesses.” A week or so later, (16 April), I replied to Steven, thanking him for the link, and telling him that I too had found “very little press coverage other than in the likes of Press Gazette”. Maybe, though, he would already be aware of the website, Parallel Parliament; and this is the link I found during my searching which includes mention of the report, among other things: https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/dept/DepartmentforDigital_Culture_Media_Sport My initial thought was that that the “current” page relating to each department changes with time, but that you can specify that you want to look at less recent information as well. And the links given take you very nicely either to the relevant bit of the Parliament website, or else Parallel Parliament brings information together, as in the case of recent Written Answers.
Another result of my search for press coverage of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report was this page on the BBC News website by Mark D’Arcy, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-parliaments-47747986 The Week ahead in Parliament, 29 March, which includes mention of the debate in Westminster Hall on 4 April announcing launch of the report.
After the seeming initial lack of interest and/or coverage, more results were found in early May. For thorough coverage, this contribution by Michela Palese of the Electoral Reform Society to UCL’s Constitution Unit has an air of authority: https://constitution-unit.com/2019/05/01/how-the-new-sub-committee-on-disinformation-can-help-strengthen-democracy-in-the-digital-age/
She outlines the main findings from the major inquiry and report by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on fake news, and discusses what the Sub-Committee’s priorities should be. James Warrington of the free newspaper CityA.M. reported the report’s publication on 2 April; his coverage was linked to news about Facebook. See: http://www.cityam.com/275601/dcms-committee-launches-new-body-fight-fake-news-pressure The Committee’s Twitter has received some reaction. See: https://twitter.com/CommonsCMS/status/1113019182197719041
The They Work For You website has coverage of the debate in Westminster Hall on 4 April, which followed publication of the Committee’s report: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2019-04-04a.459.2 Although this debate is in Hansard, the contributions in this version include links to Wikipedia or elsewhere on They Work for You, to inform the layperson.
The BBC News website, 2 April at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47792349 adopts a similar approach to that of CityA.M., though the explanation seems clearer, even if mention of the Sub-Committee is confined only to the last two sentences.
Finding information about the Parallel Parliament website was initially elusive. A Google search found https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/ on page 3 on 24 April 2019; by 5 May, it had climbed to number 4. High on the list are two reports from the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmmodern/194/19404.htm Second report, session 1998/99, in which paragraphs 4-13 come under the heading, “The arguments for a parallel Chamber”; and a section from that Committee’s first report, with 4 mentions of the word “parallel”; See: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmmodern/60/6003.htm
Initially at number 3 doing this search (but now further down the first page) is a House of Commons Library Research briefing, ‘Social care forthcoming Green Paper (England)’ published on 10 April 2019, in which the word “parallel” appears 13 times! https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8002
Thereafter, the parallel parliament search threw up references to Venezuela, Moldova, Afghanistan, Libya, European Parliament, Egypt, India, until at the top of page 3 (on 1 May 2019), we came to ‘I wanted a better way of finding information than Parliament’s clunky website, so I built my own to share: http://www.parallelparliament.com ‘ The weblink for this is: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/b796d9/i_wanted_a_better_way_of_finding_information_than/ On 5 May 2019, it had reached page 2 (last but one item); in my first search for something about this website on 24 April 2019, it was on page 4, or page 5 if in quotes. The link given opens a new window and will take you to https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/
So now for a look at what you can expect to find on this page, based mainly on results on 9 and 11 May 2019. “Parallel Parliament is constantly updated to keep you informed of the latest legislative and departmental news, providing a single source for the latest developments on Government and legislative issues.” A link to House of Commons Twitter feed gives latest news according to that site, which included on 9 May: “The best Prime Minister this country has never had.” 25 years on from the sad death of then-@UKLabour leader John Smith, we asked @IanMurrayMP to explain why he applied for a @CommonsBBCom debate on this anniversary. https://twitter.com/HouseofCommons/status/1126485570732081152
Then, looking at Parallel Parliament home page on Saturday 11 May, clicking on Business today in the box, Future Parliament schedules, takes you to Business for Monday 13 May 2019 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmagenda/ob190513.htm Here, you see everything on that day’s House of Commons order paper (including oral and topical questions, in this instance, to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; and Select Committees’ subjects and names of witnesses appearing at oral evidence sessions). A final section lists Committee reports being published on that date. I don’t think I’d ever come across a presentation such as this, not even on the Getting the best out of the Parliament website course six years ago (see my articles: Refer, vol. 29, no 3, Autumn 2013, pp 21-27; or, with correction, ISG (L&SE) News, issue 53, October 2013, pp 5-8).
Especially useful is Parallel Parliament’s section on Bills. Whether you select All Bills, Government Bills, Private Member’s Bills, or Royal Assent (i.e. that have become Acts), you are presented with a list in reverse date order of last update, and with a brief explanation of the legislation’s intention. Clicking on the title of an Act or Bill gives you anything and everything you need to trace and go to each of the links to that Bill’s progress through Commons and Lords. For example, https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/bills/2017-19/europeanunionwithdrawalno5 European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019, which was presented by Yvette Cooper and supported by Sir Oliver Letwin [and 10 other MPs]. Returning to https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/ we come to Government Departments. On a smart grey background are buttons for links to each of the departments listed. Next, a section headed Latest Department Information provides Department news (from Departmental twitter feeds). For example: 11 May 2019, 11:06 a.m. DCMS WATCH: 60 seconds with new Poet Laureate Simon Armitage https://t.co/rdNHqizEPl – Link: https://twitter.com/DCMS/status/1127153095321038859/video/1
The View Recent Tweets, takes you to list of All Tweets made during the week for all Government departments. Examples I’ve found range from the seemingly frivolous to the more serious:
11 May 2019, 11 a.m. Department for International Trade
???? It’s #NationalDoughnutWeek ???? Do you prefer jam or custard? ????????????????????????????’s @Mackays_jams ???? are the top UK jam brand in ????????. And #DidYouKnow in 2018, ???????? jam exports increased by 9% to £145m ????#ExportingisGREAT https://t.co/0nsafH2ItB
10 May 2019, 8 p.m. Home Office
We’re establishing a new statutory duty of care to make companies take more responsibility for the safety of users online. Compliance will be overseen and enforced by an independent regulator. #OnlineSafety Find out more: https://t.co/VGH7tnKZv6 https://t.co/YGmLdcc5gf
Back at https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/ the Parallel Parliament website very nicely brings together answers to Written Questions. You can choose one of the headings given, but more useful is to View Recent Written Questions (taking you to https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/WrittenQuestionsAll). Here, you can see either the day’s, week’s, month’s or year’s Written Questions, which can also be filtered by name(s) of Government Department(s). Up to 10 May, there had been 2867 Written Questions made in the past year!
The page https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/ focuses on two sorts of Departmental publications: Consultations seeking feedback; and Latest publications, in each case listing (with links), the three most recent, to give you an idea, so that if you opt to View all …, it will generally just give the most recent week. And while there is the option to filter/expand both to include all in the last month or the last year, it does tell you that “This database is maintained primarily to create live updates, and is not a comprehensive record …”, and suggests you use the search features on the Official Government publications site.
The final sections on the page https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/ focus on the most recent day in the Commons displayed in two columns. On the left, are the subjects of debates or other business in the Commons (and how many speeches), with a link for each to the entire Hansard debate. On the right, are Written statements, debates in Westminster Hall and Ministerial corrections (linked in likewise fashion). Until today (Saturday 11 May 2019), I had not previously managed to find direct links to Hansard using the What’s on section of the Parliament website; but at last, there is now such a facility.
The overall (more aesthetic) impression of this website is its very nice use of colours which do not jar or detract from the content. If we want to keep up to date with the work of Select Committees in general, this link on the Parliament website is the most useful, authoritative and comprehensive: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/ It gives links to all such Committees, and lists subjects/titles of new inquiries. (Lords and Joint Committees not currently covered on Parallel Parliament.)
In its Eighth Report, Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Final Report (HC 1791), the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee stated upon publication on 18 February that “this is the Final Report in our inquiry, but it will not be the final word”. See: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/fake-news-17-19/ You will notice that the Committee had started this inquiry (and took written evidence) in the previous Parliament; and in the box, Scope of the inquiry, that the Government responded to the Committee’s final report on 9 May 2019.
On the same date, Steven Hartshorne circulated information about the Parallel Parliament website to the wider SCOOP membership as a useful and potentially timesaving resource for tracking progress of current legislation, departmental information, and government or Parliament activity. He notes that it seems to be independently produced (using the Open Parliament Licence), and that the domain was only registered in March 2019. If you’ve not already done so, do give this website a try.
Monday, July 8, 2019 at 9:02AM Dr Konstantina (Dina) Martzoukou is an academic at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, researching information and digital literacy. She has been working on a cartoon video series for school children (9-12 years old) to illustrate the dangers of online bullying and teach through animation online information evaluation.
‘Maddie is Online’ #maddiesonline is a free educational resource which narrates the everyday life story of Maddie, a fictitious 10-year-old girl, who goes through some troubles while connected online.
Dina is looking to partner with schools and libraries to pilot the cartoon videos. Please get in touch with Dina directly if you are interested to test them out in your school with a brief evaluation questionnaire that can be done online.
Series 2: Misinformation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUx8jQ1MCcQTOHIGwzFHWFi8fF67oUtf (11 episodes)
Series 1: Online Resilience: https://youtu.be/nK_wHBlzyLA?list=PLlUx8jQ1MCcSdsaCHy05u1WCpht6Ky95Q (8 episodes) (You can use the attached activity together with the videos).
Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 12:23PM Following on from the DCMS Committee enquiry into Disinformation and Fake News a new sub-committee has been formed to create a standing programme of works.
There are useful links at the end of this publication to related reports during this Parliament.