Think 2ice: training course on media literacy in youth work
‘Think 2ice: training course on media literacy in youth work was a project financed by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ program that gathered 22 youth workers, representatives, and youth leaders from 5 different countries in a training course that took place in Riga from 24th to 30th August 2020.
The false news, the manipulation of information, the mystifications have been part of every age of humanity but it is thanks to the tools of online technologies that they manage to have a very dangerous effectiveness. Because of this situation, negative phenomena such as fake news, post truth, trolls have become part of our daily lives making it difficult to discern between false information and information, often making many of us involuntary disinformation agents. Being media literate allows us to see that this is untrue and media does, in fact, have underlying messages that affect us. By understanding those messages, we can change how it affects us. Media literacy is so important to consumers because it can help us to control our actions in response to media, and allow it to have less control over our views.
The aim of the project was to raise the competences related to media literacy in youth work by training youth workers on the topics of fake news, post-truth, management of virtual identities in a fair way, the concept of entropy.
Through group work, participants learned about concept of what media literacy is, exchanged their country’s realities, took part in different workshops, simulated press conferences, analyzed case studies, discovered the key points of publicity, engaged in discussions, where different points of view were exchanged. During these activities, participants were familiarized with concepts of entropy, fake news, trolling and media ethics.
During the training course youth workers went on excursion in KGB building in Riga called “Corner house”. There they could have an insight how propaganda have been used in the past.
The Lecturer of Critical Thinking and Argumentation from an NGO “Sceptic Cafe” — Edgars Lapiņš delivered a seminar about critical thinking. The seminar involved newsroom simulation, discussion, interactive lecture on and different types of media bias, and suggested most effective methods to build individual resilience against misinformation, group work and a short tasks how to create a misinformation inoculation activity for a workshop.
After gaining new knowledge about the topic, youth workers had to their own country’s realities regarding media literacy, interview local people about their information sources and habits of gaining information, create their own workshop that the youth workers will use in their work with young people. They created campaign for involving young people to raise awareness on issues in media literacy.
At the end of the project, the partner organizations involved have gained new experience and knowledge on media literacy, critical thinking, discovered new tools that can be used in youthwork and widened their network of contacts and created brand new partnerships.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein
