The Politics of Educatio: the Challenge of Media Literacy in the Information Society.

Introduction : Media Literacy on the Agenda

For the first time ever in UK broadcasting regulation, The Communications Act 2003 gave the Office of Communications (Ofcom) a duty to promote media literacy.1 Meanwhile, at the European Union level, governments, broadcasters, Internet providers, viewers and listeners’ groups, and others, have been discussing how the new Audio Visual Services Directive and the associated Recommendation on the Protection of Minors and Human Dignity can be shaped to take this new environment into account.2

Jim McDonnell

Media literacy has been placed firmly on the regulatory agenda, as the media environment has undergone a range of fundamental changes. The public is now faced with navigating an increasing proliferation of television channels, Internet and new interactive, on-demand media; changing standards of ‘taste and decency’ and ‘harm and offence’; and different standards in cinema, video, television, computer games and Internet content. The Internet, especially, seems to have almost replaced television as the primary source of society's fears and apprehensions about the negative effects of the media.

But media literacy should not be seen simply as a strategy to protect people, especially the young, from the presumed “harmful” or “negative” aspects of the media. What is needed is a more lasting form of “protection” through providing both children and adults with the skills and understanding to interact confidently and critically with the media. In the digital age self-regulation will be much more important and more onus will be on the public to be active and literate citizens and consumers. Media literacy is also a lifelong process. It is therefore essential to promote it at the different stages of adult life.

There are many competing definitions of media literacy. Ofcom uses the definition, “Media literacy is the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts”. The terms ‘understanding’ encompasses the need for ensuring that people are informed about the media, understand how different media work and can make critical judgements about media content. The public themselves have expressed a desire to be better informed and equipped to deal with these challenges: “There are clear indications that the public is highly motivated to acquire media literacy skills, however, at present, formal provision is lagging behind demand.” 3

The Churches and Media Literacy

There are very many Church related media literacy projects underway across the world, pioneers like the Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles and the Jesuit Communication Project in Toronto. In Europe there is the work of Fr Joseph Borg in Malta who has been producing media literacy materials for primary and secondary schools for many years. In Italy the Med Association for Media Education based at the Salesian University in Rome has been active since 1996. In Britain the Media Awareness Project of the Mothers’ Union provided stimulation and resources to people in local parishes to feel more confident in engaging with the media. And internationally organizations like SIGNIS (The World Catholic Association for Communication) and WACC (World Association for Christian Communication) are committed to promoting critical media literacy at all levels. 4

(A glimpse of the range of European media literacy projects in general can be found by seeing who has signed the European Charter on Media Literacy http://www.euromedialiteracy.eu/index.php .)

However, in spite of all the initiatives from so many different institutions, secular and religious, the delivery of practical programmes in schools, colleges or to the general public is still rather fragmented. It is also true to say that, today in Europe a huge amount of efforts is being directed in particular at the rather narrower topic of internet literacy (see for example the range of projects associated with the European Commission backed programme, Insafe. http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/index.htm ).

The Christian Churches too have made a variety of statements about the importance of media literacy and, more recently about internet literacy. To take only one example, in 2001, the Catholic Bishops of the European Union issued a statement on media literacy in which they said:

“Special attention must be given to Internet literacy. In this context, we welcome the e-Learning Action Plan adopted by the European Commission on 28 March 2001, in particular Commissioner Reding’s intention to work on an initiative on education in the visual image and the new media. Nevertheless, we wish to underline that measures designed to train people in the use of information technology – such as the targets set by the Lisbon process and confirmed by the European Council in Stockholm on 23-24 March – are not enough. Provisions must be made at all levels and in all sectors of education and learning to equip people with the skills to use and evaluate the content of the Internet as well as its technical apparatus.” 5

And just a year earlier the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued a statement Your Family and Cyberspace which ended with a list of practical tips for parents to supervise their children’s internet use.6

Social and Political Implications

Internet literacy and ‘safer surfing’ are of course, important and practical pastoral issues that need support, but there are other dimensions of media literacy in relation to the new media that also need to be explored and discussed. The Church should be in the forefront of those who are demanding that people be alerted to the social, cultural, political and ethical implications of the Internet and information technologies generally. The growth and development of Internet and associated technologies is only part of the much broader movement we call, sometimes misleadingly, the ‘Information Society’.

Media literacy is part of a more general education for citizenship and democracy. It should contribute to the formation of well-informed citizens who can “take control”, become effective agents for change, make rational decisions (often on the basis of media evidence), and fully participate in public life.

The Churches have been, at least in principle, strong supporters of media literacy, however, if this 'citizenship' dimension is to be taken seriously promoters of media literacy also have to engage with the political dimension. It is this political dimension with which the Churches have been slow to engage. Churches, and Christian experts active in the field of the Internet and new technologies, for example, the members of the ECIC, should not only do more to promote media literacy as a set of skills and but must do more to help themselves, and others, become 'literate' about, and therefore active in, policy debates and actions concerned with the development of the Information Society.

There has been, for example, relatively little engagement by Churches or Christian NGOs in the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which was concerned with the global problem of the digital divide and the way in which the Internet is actually governed at a global level. Among those which participate were the Holy See, the Lutheran World Federation, SIGNIS and WACC. The reasons for non-participation were many, but it is true that the WSIS was not well publicized and also that the issues being discussed were relatively unfamiliar to many people. Nevertheless, during the WSIS civil society organizations came together to produce a declaration on the Information Society that was influenced by some basic Christian principles.

The first few lines read:

At the heart of our vision of information and communications societies is the human being. The dignity and rights of all peoples and each person must be promoted, respected, protected and affirmed. Redressing the inexcusable gulf between levels of development and between opulence and extreme poverty must therefore be our prime concern. We are committed to building information and communication societies that are people-centred, inclusive and equitable.7

The challenge is to become more informed about and involved in this political arena and to contribute to the more active involvement of the Church in shaping the debate and practice about how new technologies are used and regulated in the interest of the common good. This is a particular challenge for groups like the ECIC, precisely because as a group it brings together some of the most knowledgeable and active specialists in the Churches in the field of the Internet. Back in 1999, a call to engage more fully in these debates was raised in the book, Cybernauts Awake!. That call has still to be heeded. As the Internet becomes even more pervasive and dominant that call to wake up needs to be heard more than ever.

There are a number of basic issues that any media literacy programme that claims to be ‘critical’ needs to bring to people’s attention:

Social Inclusion, Access and the Digital Divide

The danger of a “digital divide” between the “information rich” and the “information poor” has been recognized for a considerable time. Will poorer sectors of society and even whole societies, in the South, be seriously disadvantaged as the Internet becomes more and more important as an instrument for delivery of educational, commercial and government services? The Church has insisted that “the right to communicate is the right of all”; “it is the task of communication to bring people together and enrich their lives, not to isolate and exploit them”. 8

Christians has an important role to play in helping to ensure that poorer communities and individuals in the “real world” are not further disadvantaged by exclusion from or limited access to the “virtual world” of the Internet. As Pope John Paul II has said, “We must hope that the gap between the beneficiaries of the new means of information and expression and those who as yet do not have access to them will not become another intractable source of inequity and discrimination”.9 In Britain, in 2005, a survey of broadband usage indicated that the net was actually accentuating broader socio-economic differences.10

Christian groups have joined with many other groups in emphasizing the wider issue of global inequalities in access to, ownership of and use of information technologies.

In addition, there are also dangers of a “gender divide” as the worlds of computing and the Internet are dominated by men and tend to reflect male interests and priorities. There are concerns that many women (particularly those who are full-time carers or mothers) may find it particularly difficult to gain access to the computer literacy skills they need to make use of the opportunities opened up by new technologies. However, recent UK research seems to indicate that girls may be becoming more internet literate in some ways than boys!11
People with disabilities too, are often hampered in their access to on-line information. A British report in 2004 found, for example, that more than 80% of websites posed barriers to people with disabilities.12

In spite of the many guides for constructing websites, for example, that set out the needs of the visually impaired how many Church related websites take such recommendations into account?

An important part of overcoming the information gap is ensuring that there is adequate public provision of information and education on the new media platforms. Moreover, how much will people have to pay to access useful information when they manage to get online? The commercial exploitation of the Internet may lead to a situation in which valuable information is only available to those who can pay a premium. (Just as many sports events formerly available on free to air television channels are now only available on premium cable or satellite television channels.)

Commercial broadcasters and new media firms in Europe have been critical of public service providers like the BBC, for example, because they are making a wide range of material freely available on-line. But in an age where information is increasingly a commodity to be bought and sold there are serious questions to be asked about what kinds of information should remain freely available to the widest possible public. Just as there needs to be provision for access to the Internet, there also needs to be provision for public sites on the Internet, such as those offered by public broadcasters such as the BBC, that make good quality information freely available to the widest range of users.. In this area the Church can find many natural allies among those groups, like Citizens Online, which are working to create an Internet in which all communities and sections of the community (not just the educated urban middle-classes) can find a way to share in the benefits of information technology. 13

These are issues where Christians with expertise in the new technologies can work to raise awareness and collaborate with a range of partners working to overcome the inequalities in provision. The Christian voice too needs to heard on these matters at the international level in organizations like UNESCO, for example, which has devoted some time to the related topic of providing access to internet resources in different world languages. 14

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And finally there is the importance of informing people that there are alternatives to Microsoft or Google. Users need to know more about the possibilities of obtaining and using different providers and the availability of open source software and other non-commercial alternatives. This can be particularly important for people working on limited budgets. Some Christiands have even begun to consider the ethical and theological implications of using open source and non-proprietary formats.15

Civil Rights and Liberties on the Internet

An increasing number of citizens are becoming concerned by the range of challenges to traditional notions of civil liberties which are being posed by the way in which the internet is developing and the responses to that development by governments and corporations as well as by criminals and terrorists. Concerns about privacy and data protection have been growing over the past three decades. Today those concerns have been accentuated as governments have spoken of the need to combat terrorism and sought legal powers to increase surveillance of telecommunications and Internet records.

More broadly, many Internet users are unaware of the extent to which they are providing sensitive personal information in their use of websites or services such as Google. As Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center has said "if you step back and look at the suite of products and how they are used, you realize Google can have a lot of personal information about individuals' Internet habits--e-mail, saving search history, images, personal information from (social network site) Orkut--it represents a significant threat to privacy."16

How far this is a real threat is a matter of debate but citizens and consumers need to be better informed about such issues so that they can choose, for example, whether or not to accept ‘cookies’ or to sign up for Google desktop search or gmail.

A group like ECIC could play a valuable role in helping to alert the Church generally to thes kind of concerns and ensure that Christians are involved in these debates.

Freedom of Expression and Censorship on the Internet

Closely related to concerns about privacy are increasing worries about the extent to which freedom of speech is being eroded on the internet. These are not in essence new debates, the argument about censorship and freedom of speech is a perennial one, but the ubiquity and global reach of the internet raises some particular problems.

At present, governments and international bodies like the European Union and the Council of Europe are discussing how to reconcile the public interest in freedom of expression with the wish to protect children and vulnerable adults from exploitation or harm and to counter the dissemination of hate speech. Apart from the continuing discussions in the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers around the provisions for the protection of minors in the EU Audio Visual Media Services Directive, the Council of Europe has commissioned an independent study to “elaborate the meaning of 'harmful content’ in order to promote coherence in the protection of minors in all media in the Information Society.” The Council of Europe is asking for the opinions and views of the public.17

On a wider stage Amnesty International has recently set up its new campaign, irrespressible.info to protect freedom of expression and fight censorship on the internet. 18According to Amnesty; “efforts to try and control the Internet are growing. Internet repression is reported in countries like China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. People are persecuted and imprisoned simply for criticizing their government, calling for democracy and greater press freedom or exposing human rights abuses, online”. Amnesty also criticizes businesses like those IT companies which “have helped build the systems that enable surveillance and censorship to take place”. They point out that Yahoo has supplied email users’ private data to the Chinese authorities, and Microsoft and Google have both agreed to censor Chinese users of their services.

These debates and activities raise some fundamental ethical principles and the Churches and Christian groups, as well as individuals, should be both involved in those discussions and active in combating injustice. (Amnesty is asking for supporters to publishing censored material from their database directly onto websites and blogs.)

Regulating and Self-Regulating the Internet

The Amnesty campaign is a practical follow up to many of the concerns expressed about freedom of expression at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). These concerns were closely linked to other discussions about how the internet should be governed.

In the end the WSIS agreed to leave control of the Internet in the hands of the US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). But WSIS also agreed to set up a new consultative Internet Governance Forum, involving governments, business and civil society, which will meet for the first time in Athens in November 2006.

Ahead of that meeting Amnesty International and other human rights organizations are highlighting issues of freedom of expression and the protection of privacy. They want all internet policies to take account of human rights protection. They are calling for the establishment of an Independent Commission on the Information Society and Human Rights to “monitor and assess relevant legislation and policies to ensure that these are compliant with international human rights standards”.19

There is a growing consensus that the global nature of the Internet and the nature of the technology itself make extensive public regulation very difficult if not impossible. The onus is then placed on developing self-regulatory regimes that will have some chance of working. Self-regulation depends upon the willingness of the ISPs (the Information Service Providers) that provide the technological access to the Internet, to adopt and enforce codes of conduct and to remove from their computers or block access to websites that fail to comply with such codes. The dark side of self-regulation is the willingness of companies to engage in self-censorship under political pressure.

It is vitally important therefore that the often technical debates about Internet governance and regulation are opened up to wider scrutiny and that the implications of these discussions are conveyed to the a wider public. Once again this is an are in which groups like the ECIC can perform the essential role of mediators—making the issues understandable and accessible t6o the wider Christian community.

Navigating the Information Highways

One of the basic difficulties with attempting to regulate the internet is the sheer volume of information available. A crucial question for internet literacy is how users can find their ways through so much information and which information can they rely upon.

There is nothing new about the problem of helping users to discriminate among the sources of information they access and to learn how to evaluate what is being presented as “fact”. However, the Internet often makes it harder than before for the information seeker to get a good sense of the standing of the provider of information. On the screen all information sources and groups appear to have equal weight and standing. The highly selective nature of the information retrieval process (a few Web pages displayed at a time and often independent of their context) means that an individual’s web pages can compete with those of much larger organizations. Received opinion and the most maverick of ideas can share the same “virtual space”.

This informational equality of standing on the Internet has obvious benefits in terms of freedom of information but has the drawback of making it more difficult for users to judge the accuracy, currency or completeness of the information on offer or the standing or credibility of the source of information. It is easy for a group or an individual to create a website using the designation ‘Catholic’, for example, that purports to give the ‘official’ view even if the views expressed are extreme or misleading. Even more worrying are those websites that peddle racism or pornography or other extreme views under innocuous sounding names. There are obvious dangers here for the inexperienced or vulnerable user.

In addition the structure of the Internet is crucially determined by the extent to which particular Web sites are linked to other sites. Users can use a variety of ‘search engines’ to help them find the information they seek but increasingly they seem to be opting for just one, Google. How comprehensive and impartial that ‘engine’ is becomes increasingly important. And as the Web becomes more and more dominated by a few huge commercial organisations there are serious questions to be asked about how people can be guided through the wealth of information available in a competent and disinterested manner. There is a great need for “trusted intermediaries” (distinct from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL etc) on the Internet and there is a strong public interest in the encouragement of such bodies (once again this is a role aspired to by some public service broadcasters).

This is one area in which many media literacy programmes devote a good deal of time to helping people acquire the requisite skills to search, compare and evaluate different information sources. However, they also need to spend time helping people understand on the socio-economic and technological conditions that are shaping the global structure of the data banks they access.

Environmental and other concerns

Finally, there are issues which bring the ‘virtual’ world of the internet into the ‘real’ world of technological development and the exploitation of resources, including the people who make and recycle computer equipment. In this area media literacy can involve alerting users to the work done by organizations like Cafod (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), for example, which set up its Clean up your computer campaign to draw attention to the unjust working conditions of those people in developing countries who actually make the computers that all of us use.20 And recently Greenpeace drew attention to the hazards of toxic waste found in the hundreds of thousands of old computers and mobile phones dumped or burned as well as the thousands more exported, often illegally, from the Europe, US, Japan to Asia, particularly China.21 Part of critical media literacy is being aware of which computer and new media companies have good records on issues like employing workers and dealing with toxic products.

The Future of Media Literacy in the Information Society

There are more and more people, at all levels, in all the Churches, who are trying to exploit the Internet in imaginative ways. They need to be encouraged and emulated. Above all, the aim should be to strengthen the possibilities for real communication and interaction between people. Only in so far as the Internet is a true medium of communications will it be a true medium for the building of communities.22

But in pursuing these goals the Churches have a duty to inform themselves and others about the wider implications of the information society. SIGNIS, for example, as a worldwide organization of Catholic communicators has committed itself both to developing and promoting media literacy and to having a strong commitment to advocacy as part of its overall mission to build a culture of peace through the media.

Many supporters of media literacy whose focus has been on the more traditional media of press, film, radio and television, are far less knowledgeable about the world of the new media and the internet. And even if they have grasped the technologies they are not yet sufficiently sensitive to the background economic, social and political issues in this area. Knowledge and awareness of the conditions under which the new technologies are created and recycled, the effects on the physical and social environment, the issues of freedom of expression, civil liberties and the digital divide all form part of a critical media literacy. These are complex and sometimes highly technical issues but those in the Churches who are most familiar with the new technologies can do a great deal to alert their fellow Christians to the issues at stake and to work with others in and outside the Churches to bring to cyberspace: “a vision of human persons and their incomparable dignity and inviolable human rights, and a vision of human community whose members are joined by the virtue of solidarity in pursuit of the common good of all”. 23

1. See Ofcom, Media Literacy. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/
2. European Commission. Audio Visual and Media Policy. http://ec.europa.eu/comm/avpolicy/index_en.htm
3. Agyeman, Leila End of Year Review: BSC and ITC Research 2003
4. SIGNIS. Media Education http://www.signis.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=46 See also Global media Education - a Proposal by Augy Loorthusamy Available from: http://www.signis.net/IMG/pdf/EduCom-En.pdf
5. COMECE (Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community). A Call for Media Education. 2001.
6. USCCB. Your Family and Cyberspace. 2000 http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2000/00-151.shtml
7. See Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs. A good introduction to WSIS can be found at http://www.worldsummit2003.org/ and the official WSIS site for the follow-up to the Summit is at http://www.itu.int/wsis/
8. Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Pastoral Instruction on Social Communications, Aetatis Novae, 1992, n. 15: Pope John Paul II, Message for World Communications Day 1998, n. 4: www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/communications/index.htm;, April 1998.
9. Message for World Communications Day 1997; February 1997.
10. Broadband reveals digital divide. BBC News Online, April 26, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4483065.stm
11. More likely to have a mobile, use the net, listen to radio and read papers: it's the girl Guardian Unlimited,May 3, 2006.
    
12. New Standards for Website Access BBC News Online, March 8, 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4783686.stm
13. Citizens Online. http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/
14. UNESCO. Towards real linguistic and cultural diversity in cyberspace.
    
15. See , for example, Augustine's Penguin, or Open Source and the Church
16. http://www.davidopderbeck.com/archives/2005/11/augustines_peng.html
17. Google balances privacy, reach CNET News.com July 14 2005 See for example, the UK Government’s current public consultation on the Directive, and the Council of Europe’s proposals at http://www.coe.int/T/E/human_rights/media/
18. http://irrepressible.info/
19. The Internet and Freedom of Expression: A New Frontier for Human Rights?
    
20. Cafod. Clean up your computer.
    
21. Greenpeace. Hi-tech. Highly toxic.
    
22. For a discussion of communityh as it applies to the internet see: Jim McDonnell. Casting the Net: Virtual and real in Simmons, M (ed) Street Credo: Churches in the Community. London: Lemos and Crane, 2000, pp. 49-63
23. Pontifical Council for Social Communication. Ethics in Communications, 2000. n. 30.

First published on the ECIC website

Dr Jim McDonnell can be contacted by email