Media literacy: the UK’s undead cultural policy

Abstract

This article examines media literacy in the UK: a policy that emerged within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the late 1990s, was adopted by the New Labour administration, and enshrined in the Communications Act 2003. That legislation gave the new media regulator, Ofcom, a duty to 'promote' media literacy, although it left the term undefined. The article describes how Ofcom managed this regulatory duty. It argues that over time, media literacy was progressively reduced in scope, focusing on two policy priorities related to the growth of the internet. In the process, media literacy's broader educative purpose, so clearly articulated in much of the early policy rhetoric, was effectively marginalized. From the Coalition government onwards, the promotion of media literacy was reduced further to a matter of market research. Today, if not altogether dead, the policy is governed by entirely different priorities to those imagined at its birth.

Peranan Guru Dalam Memberikan Literasi Hoaks

“…Literasi media, termasuk literasi hoaks, telah menjadi bidang yang berkembang yang mengundang guru, orang tua, pembuat kebijakan, dan peneliti sama-sama memikirkan hal tersebut. Beberapa negara (Hobbs & Frost, 1998;Wallis & Buckingham, 2019;Fedorov, 2014;Cheung & Wen, 2016;Lin, Mokhtar, & Wang, 2015), telah menerapkan pendidikan literasi ke dalam berbagai program berbasis sekolah untuk menekankan keterampilan menganalisis, mengevaluasi, dan menciptakan pesan media dan teknologi. Indonesia masih tertinggal dalam menerapkan literasi media, termasuk literasi hoaks, karena program dan metode yang belum jelas.…”

Media literacy as a cross-sectoral phenomenon: Media education in Finnish ministerial-level policies

“…In the current study, the policies are examined from a supplementary perspective. Rather than focusing on specific document types, such as central media literacy policies, or specific administrative sectors (Kotilainen & Kupiainen, 2014;Pääjärvi & Palsa, 2015;Uusitalo, 2015), the work of organizations implementing media literacy policy (Wallis & Buckingham, 2019), or the relationship between public discussion and policy formulation (Van Audenhove et al, 2018), our aim is to include nationally all ministerial-level policy documents in which media education or media literacy are addressed. This provides a broader approach to understanding the different ways in which media education is framed in the Finnish policy framework.…”

“…The prevalence of the protectionist perspective on media education in the ministerial-level policy framework is understandable, since the protectionist tradition in media education has been well recognized and discussed in the academic literature, but it has also been debated (see, for example, Hobbs, 2011;Potter, 2010). A protectionist perspective is also acknowledged within the media literacy policy in the UK (Wallis & Buckingham, 2019). Public discussion concerning the negative features of media does not inevitably result in similar policy development.…”

“…As the importance of media literacy is more and more recognized by various international actors and policymakers, more contextual research is needed on situating media literacy in different policy areas. In addition, as the conceptual diversity of media literacy is recognized (see, for example, Palsa & Ruokamo, 2015;Potter, 2013), conceptions of media literacy in policies cannot be taken for granted (see also Wallis & Buckingham, 2019). Study of the national policy framework offers an excellent opportunity to understand better from an empirically grounded perspective the role of media education among the different policy areas, along with the different ways the concept has been framed.…”

No More Hoax (Model of media literacy education for maintaining ‘unity in diversity’ in Indonesia)

“…Risen to its prominence in the 1990s, media literacy education was implemented through various school-based programs in the US to emphasize the skills of analyzing, evaluating and creating media and technology messages [1]. In the UK, policy on media literacy in the late 1990s was unburied with the enactment of the Communications Act 2003 requiring the UK's communications regulator, Ofcom, to promote media literacy [2]. Meanwhile, recognizing the growing presence of media in modern societies as well as the need for school teachers and university educators to be media competent, a Russian researcher proposes media literacy education models to help teachers and educators train students to develop their critical thinking and abilities to analyze media texts and to experiment with the media [3].…”