Critical Thinking and Media Literacy Online Seminars

A Series of Online seminars

• January 12, 2021: Introduction to Media and Information Literacy: Promotion of critical thinking and democracy in youth work
  • Suvi Tuominen, Manager, Center of Expertise for Digital Youth Work in Finland
  • Evaldas Rupkus, Project Manager and Trainer, Deutsche Welle Akademie, Germany/Lithuania
• January 19, 2021: Talking about inclusion: Access and digital divide in youth work
  • Veronica Stefan, Digital Advocate, Public Policy Expert, Founder & Coordinator, Digital Citizens, Romania
  • Katariina Ainamo, Project team leader, Work with immigrants, Plan International Finland 
  • Irena Bakic, Innovation and Digital Development Programme manager, Plan International Finland
• January 26, 2021: Evils of online: Cyber bullying, hate speech and cybercrime
  • Suvi Uski, PhD, Social Media Researcher, Co-Founder & CEO at SomeBuddy, Finland
  • Riikka Lehtinen, Project Designer, Non-toxic gaming culture, Helsinki Youth Services, Finland
• February 2, 2021: Era of disinformation: Fake news, internet trolls and photo manipulation impacting youth
  • Marju Himma-Kadakas, Research Fellow, University of Tartu & Postdoctoral Researcher, Karlstad University, Sweden/Estonia
  • Mila Corlateanu, Journalist, Co-Project Manager Moldova, DW Akademie 
• February 9, 2021: The role of media and information literacy in preventing youth radicalization and extremism
  • Sèraphin Alava, Professor of Educational Sciences, University of Toulouse II,  France
  • Onni Sarvela, Training Consultant and Professional Youth Worker in the EXIT project of Helsinki Deaconess Institute, Finland
  • Virginie Andre, Senior Research Fellow, Victoria University, Australia
• February 16, 2021: Changing media landscapes and young people as content creators
  • Alessandro Tommasi, CEO, Co-Founder, Will Media Italia
  • Aram Aflatuni, CEO, Founder, Gutsy Go – Make Peace Visible, Finland

The seminars are thematically independent, and it is possible to follow either the whole series or alternatively pick a single seminar to attend. 

The seminars will be organised on Tuesdays, at 14-16.30 o’clock CET time.

Each of the seminars consist of short theoretical lectures and/or practice-oriented interventions by experts and a participatory working session for the participants for discussion, sharing and mapping lessons learnt for one’s own work back home.

The Objectives of the Online Series

The objective is to build youth information workers’ capacity

• to provide young people with skills to critically explore media and information available to them
• to help them gain resilience in the face of the ambiguous and changing media landscapes of the current era
• to support young people in practicing their active citizenship, participate in democratic processes and make decisions even in ambivalent media and information contexts.  

More specifically, the online seminars aim at:

• Giving insights on the growing importance of critical thinking as well as information and media literacy of the people who work with youth information, guidance and counselling.
• Providing youth workers and information workers with relevant theoretical background to understand the current youth work context of media and information literacy.
• Providing youth workers and youth information workers with skills and concrete tools needed to foster media literacy and critical thinking and resilience among young people.
• Building a network of youth information workers interested in media literacy and providing a forum for sharing ideas, learning from each other and building relationships for future collaboration.

Context

Media and Information Literacy is defined by UNESCO as a “set of competencies that empowers citizens to access, retrieve, understand, evaluate and use, to create as well as share information and media content in all formats, using various tools, in a critical, ethical and effective way, in order to participate and engage in personal, professional and societal activities”. The goal of MIL is to empower people to exercise their universal rights and fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of opinion and expression, and taking advantage of emerging opportunities in the most effective, inclusive, ethical and efficient manner for the benefit of all individuals. This media and information literacy online series is positioned in a complex context of today’s media landscape in which the internet and media provide immense opportunities for young people but also require new sets of skills to take advantage of them. The advancement in media development and the flow of information demand new competencies from the youth, like safely accessing, critically analysing as well as consciously evaluating the sources, in order to effectively process the information. Youth work and youth information work has a more important role than ever to provide young people with these competences. At the same time, youth workers and youth information workers themselves need more awareness and capacity on issues related to media landscapes, media usage and information flows. All in all, both young people and youth workers have a need to enhance their capacity in media and information literacy. In this framework, the online seminars will give the participants both theoretical background and practical skills, methods and tools to work on the issues of media and information literacy with young people. 

The target group of the activity is youth information workers and youth work professionals in Europe who can benefit from the understanding of the topic and who can transfer the information to the young people they meet through their work.

Registration

No application is required for attending this online series, but a registration is mandatory as the maximum number of participants is limited. Please register for the whole series or a single seminar by clicking the Apply Now! button on the top right of the page. You will get into a Surveymonkey form.

Deadline for the registration is 8.1.2021.

Registered participants will receive all practical information on the seminars, content, platforms, meeting links etc. after the registration deadline.

NB! Due to the short length and the online format of this seminar session, we do not issue Youthpasses or certificates for attending this event.