Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

The article explores how television parody can function as a form of media literacy education. It argues that parody, by using humor and entertainment, can help audiences understand how television works—particularly the techniques, conventions, and persuasive strategies used in media texts. The paper focuses on the animated sitcom The Simpsons, which is widely known for its satirical and parodic style. The author suggests that the show acts as an informal media educator by humorously exposing and critiquing the structures and practices of television itself. Through parody, the program highlights how television narratives, advertising strategies, and promotional messages are constructed.

The book examines how different media technologies influence children’s cognitive development, learning, and social behavior. Patricia Greenfield argues that media—such as television, video games, and computers—play an important role in shaping how children think, learn, and interact with the world.

The article investigates the relationship between media and television literacy and critical thinking among prospective teachers. It emphasizes that teachers play an important role in helping students develop media literacy and critical thinking skills, so it is essential that these competencies be cultivated during pre-service teacher education.

The book explores how children understand, interpret, and talk about television, and how these abilities form what the author calls “television literacy.” Rather than viewing children as passive viewers who are simply influenced by television, the book argues that children actively interpret, evaluate, and discuss TV content in sophisticated ways.

The article examines the growing presence of mobile phones in everyday life and debates their role in formal education, particularly in classroom learning. It challenges the traditional view that mobile phones should be excluded from educational spaces and instead argues for a more balanced and nuanced understanding of their educational potential. The author explains that smartphones have become deeply embedded in daily social practices. They function not only as communication devices but also as symbols of social identity and capital, connecting users to the mobile internet and various digital applications. As smartphone ownership has increasingly spread among teenagers, schools have struggled to determine how these devices should be managed within educational settings.

This book explores the use of mobile devices for teaching and learning language and literacies, investigating the ways in which these technologies open up new educational opportunities. It provides a comprehensive exploration of mobile learning (m-learning) and how portable digital technologies can support learning anytime and anywhere, beyond the traditional classroom. It focuses especially on how mobile devices can help develop language skills, digital literacies, and cross-cultural communication in the modern digital society.

The study evaluates the effectiveness of GraphoGame™, a computer-based literacy game, in improving early literacy skills among first-grade students in an African city. Using a randomized intervention design with 573 government school students, the research compares control groups with students who used the game on mobile phones under supervision. Literacy outcomes were assessed through tests measuring orthography, spelling (decoding), vocabulary, and arithmetic. The results show that the game significantly improved spelling skills, which directly relate to the abilities the game is designed to develop. The study also finds that the intervention was most effective when both teachers and students were exposed to the game, and that students’ initial letter knowledge strongly predicted their later progress.

The article examines how vulnerable patients participate in the design of a mobile text-messaging health app using user-centered design methods. It focuses on how limited health literacy, limited English proficiency, and limited digital literacy influence patients’ engagement in the app development process. Through interviews and card-sorting activities with primary care patients, the study identifies barriers that affect their ability to provide feedback on app content. Although many participants owned smartphones and used text messaging, difficulties with reading, typing, and understanding tasks reduced their engagement. The findings highlight the need to adapt design methods when working with populations facing communication and digital literacy barriers, suggesting more supportive approaches.

Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is one of the most important topics in today’s mediatized world. Under the leadership of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), many international organizations in the world, as foreign donors, annually announce many projects and grants for the promotion and development of the field of MIL in the countries of the world. One of the main actors of this movement is DW Akademie with different media and MIL projects several countries of the world. This research paper delves into the role of DW Akademie’s MIL model in shaping a media-savvy generation. The study explores the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of Deutsche Welle (DW) Akademie’s MIL model, analysing its effectiveness in fostering media literacy skills. The research employs a multi-faceted approach, incorporating case studies to assess the model’s impact across diverse demographics. The paper also considers the model’s alignment with global educational policies and proposes recommendations for its integration into broader frameworks. By investigating DW Akademie’s MIL model, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on media literacy education, providing valuable insights for educators, policymakers, and researchers. The findings offer a nuanced understanding of the model’s position in cultivating a media-savvy generation poised to navigate the complexities of the information age.

It examine relationship between MIL, Intercultural Dialogue, and Global Citizenship

The ongoing digitalization poses new challenges for schools concerning students’ digital skills. In this context, the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (IEA-ICILS 2018) has identified substantial social disparities concerning computer and information literacy of grade 8 students. Furthermore, it has been observed that many schools, especially those located in socioeconomically challenged areas, are particularly engaged in supporting students’ digital literacy and innovatively designing learning processes with information and communications technology (ICT). Empirical studies have made it apparent that some schools have high average achievements concerning domains such as reading literacy and mathematics in spite of socioeconomically challenged student bodies. These schools are regarded as being organizationally resilient. This contribution focusses on these organizationally resilient schools with regard to the domain of computer and information literacy. It aims to investigate how these schools can be classified as a typology according to selected school and/or teacher characteristics.

This chapter discusses the digital divide from the perspective of education and culture and highlights the forms in which the problem is presented in Brazil, understanding that it is not exclusive to this context. Given the complex challenges to digital inclusion in the context of globalization, the chapter emphasizes that for children and young people to be able to appropriate new technologies and languages in a significant manner, the promotion of digital literacy should be realized with respect to the concept of multiliteracies. Digital inclusion means much more than access to technologies and is understood as one of the fronts in the struggle against poverty and inequality. The authors propose that the understanding of the digital divide be enriched with the valorization of cultural mediations in the construction of digital literacy. In this sense, a culturalist perspective of media education can promote digital inclusion that is an experience of citizenship, belonging, and critical and creative participation of children and young people in the culture.

Harnessing scholarship focused on literacy and poverty, in this article we aim to complicate the common understanding of the digital divide. First, we argue that the dominant literature on the digital divide misses broader connections between technological exclusion and broader forms of economic and social exclusion. Accordingly, and following recent qualitative research on the digital divide, we believe future scholarship must examine the complicated relationships between poverty, inequality, and the digital divide and we look to poverty scholarship to understand the complicated and shifting nature of poverty. Finally, we make the case that scholars and practitioners focused on digital literacy programs should pay attention to historical and critical scholarship on education and its role in mediating poverty and fostering social mobility, as it serves digital divide and broadband adoption scholars to understand the ways education processes can either reproduce or set the stage to alter entrenched social realities

World communication media is now increasingly diversified and widespread, especially communication media connected to the internet such as social media. This phenomenon also occurs in Indonesia. Indonesia, as a developing country, is reported to have the majority of teenagers using social media. Teenagers will quickly be affected by negative impacts if they are not equipped with media literacy skills, especially considering the rapid flow of information circulating on social media. This research looks at the condition of digital literacy in rural Indonesia, namely Banyumas Regency, Sumbang District, and Gandatapa Village in Central Java Province. The Gandatapa Youth Village teenagers who took part in this research came from a variety of different backgrounds, both in their educational and economic levels. This research data was collected through focus group discussions (FGD) and in-depth interviews with key informants in Gandatapa Village, Sumbang District, Banyumas. Based on the findings, the young generation in Gandatapa Village has a high level of digital literacy. This is demonstrated by their ability to search for information according to what they want, the ability to analyze reference sources, and being able to evaluate whether the information is true or a hoax, as well as distributing content that suits their needs on social media.

The „digital divide‟ refers to the difference between those with access to new technologies and those without. The digital divide concerns a fear that, along with new opportunities, digital technology brings with it new forms of social exclusion. As is all too predictable, digital exclusion correlates with other forms of social exclusion. However, as well as potentially ushering in new forms of social exclusion, there is the hope that digital technologies may also act as a bridge, extending information and communications to people who traditionally find them difficult to access. In this way, digital technologies are seen as creating a „gap‟ while at the same time holding the potential to bridge that gap; a warning as well as a promise. The „digital divide‟ may be a useful term for mobilising political resources, attention and funding, but simplifies reality, suggesting superficial solutions to complex social problems. Instead, we need a more sophisticated framework for understanding what such a divide entails, what factors mediate which side of the divide someone falls on, the consequences of being on one side or the other of such a divide, and the opportunities for education to include Rather than exclude people in a digital society. If using information and communications technologies (ICTs) is important for full participation in society, then we need to develop approaches to education that will enable people to benefit from using ICTs. Going further, it may be that ICTs can extend educational opportunities to those for whom formal schooling has not been effective, if they are able to bridge the digital divide in the first place.

It examines civic Engangments, information poverty, and the internet worldwide.

It examines the Political economy, power, and new media

In this paper, we address the increasingly complex constructs between power and the practices of seeing, looking, and watching/sensing in a networked culture mediated by mobile/portable/wearable computing devices and technologies. We develop and explore a nuanced understanding and ontology that examines ‘veillance’ (‘watching’) in both directions: surveillance (oversight), as well as sousveillance (‘undersight’). In this context, we look at some new possibilities for computationally mediated veillances. In particular, we unpack the new relationships of power and democracy facilitated by mobile and pervasive computing. We differentiate between the power relationships in the generalized practices of looking or gazing, which we place under the broad term ‘veillance’. Then we address the more subtle distinctions between different forms of veillance that we classify as surveillance and sousveillance, as well as McVeillance (the ratio of actual or permitted surveillance to sousveillance). We start by unpacking this understanding to develop a more specialized vocabulary to talk not just about oversight but also to about the implications of mobile technologies on ‘undersight’ (e.g. who watches the watchers, who watches the watchers of the watchers…ultimately the people at the bottom of the hierarchy). We argue that the time for sousveillance as a social tool for political action is reaching a critical mass, facilitated by a convergence of transmission, mobility and media channels for content distribution and engagement. Mobile ubiquitous computing, image capture, processing, distribution, and seamless connectivity of devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android devices, wearable computers, Digital Eye Glass, etc., allow for unprecedented ‘on the ground’ watching of everyday life. The critical mass of these ‘sousveillant’ capable devices in everyday life may make the practice of sousveillance a potentially effective political force that can now challenge and balance the hypocrisy and corruption that is otherwise inherent in a surveillance-only society (i.e. a society that has only oversight without undersight).

In this article, I compare the assumptions, concepts, andpropositions of media system dependency (MSD) theory anduses andgratifications (U&G) theory at themicrolevel of analysis. The epistemological origins of these theories are situated within the direring social and personal contexts that affected their development. Those MSD assumptions that serve as background to this comparison are specified, and major hypotheses concerning the social ecology of microeffects processes are discussed, particularly as they pertain to public opinion concerns. Following this elaboration of MSD theory, basic direrences bemeen MSD and U&C conceptions of the audience, interperso~l networks, the media system, and the nature of media power are dressed. I conclude with a brief comment on the implications of the Internet for theorizing micro media efects

There are a lot of claims about social and other media’s power today: Some say that we have experienced Twitter and Facebook revolutions. Others claim that social media democratise the economy or bring about a participatory culture. Other observers are more sceptical and stress social media’s realities as tools of control. Understanding social media requires a critical theory of society that uses a dialectical concept of power. A critical theory of society can then act as framework for understanding power in the age of social media. This chapter is a contribution to critically theorising media power in the age of social media. It categorises different notions of power, introduces a dialectical notion of media power discusses the dialectics of social media power, and draws some conclusions about the need for a dialectical and critical theory of the media and society.

In early 2007, Barack Obama was a little-known senator running for president against Democratic nominee and household name, Hilary Clinton. But on November 4, 2008, Obama made history as the first African American to win the election against Republican candidate, John McCain, thus becoming the 44th president of the United States. Obama won by a margin of nearly 200 electoral votes and 8.5 million popular votes. Many factors contributed to his success, but a major one was the way Obama and his Chicago-based campaign team used social media and technology as an integral part of their campaign strategy, not only to raise money, but also, more importantly, to develop a groundswell of empowered volunteers who felt that they could make a difference. Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute said: “No other candidate has ever integrated the full picture the way he [Obama] has, that’s what’s really new about his campaign.”1 Edelman Research analysts said that Obama won by“…converting everyday people into engaged and empowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online video. The campaign’s proclivity to online advocacy is a major reason for his victory

In the early stages of the pandemic, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world was not only fighting coronavirus “but our enemy is also the growing surge of misinformation”. (Associated Press, 28.3.20). Media literacy in the time of Covid is situated at an intersection between its value as an educational inoculation against misinformation in general and the urgency of a rapid response to misinformation about the virus. Media literacy in this context takes on a role in public health. This article reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of media literacy in both contexts, collating findings from reviews conducted for the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), European Commisssion, US Embassy and UK Office of Communications (OFCOM), together with a rapid evidence analysis of media literacy with an applied, specific focus on ‘Covid fake news’.

This paper analyzes the use of the terms ‘information resilience’ and ‘social resilience’ in the context of national resilience strategies. It is shown that information resilience reflects transformations in the system of international relations and the domestic policies of different countries, as well as prospects for the development of information-and communications technology and its impact on social processes. Based on the results of a research project implemented as part of this study, a hypothesis was formulated which stated that the majority of the Ukrainian people are not aware of the reality of information threats at this time. This hypothesis was supported based on an analysis of empirical data collected for the study. The study helped identify gaps between government and society in Ukraine in the following five key areas: values, goals, capabilities, motivation, and communication. It is shown that these gaps have had a significant impact on the overall level of information and national resilience in Ukraine. The information resilience of Ukrainian society was analyzed at the local level (through the example of Ukraine’s eastern and southeastern regions). It is suggested that the issue of social and information resilience is of particular relevance in the context of information and media literacy amongst the population, especially within small communities. In this context, an analysis was conducted of the information space of Ukraine’s eastern and southeastern regions. The resulting conclusion was that the level of media culture in Ukraine, determined by a number of both subjective and objective factors, is relatively low at this time.

This article explores what critical thinking might mean in a media and information literacy (MIL) context by investigating how critical thinking is expressed in three reports that relate MIL to radicalization awareness and counter extremism. The purpose is to engage with recent debates about MIL and research on critical thinking and contribute to a grounded and theoretically informed foundation for discussing MIL competence. Findings indicate a primitive use of the term critical thinking, often bundled up with concepts such as democracy, creativity, and citizenship. More detailed and concrete descriptions about what to expect from critical thinking in a MIL framework display what can be described as a Gnostic impulse: critical thinking as a skill to reveal hidden meanings, to see through propaganda and flawed arguments. In other words, a critical thinking that asks people to doubt what they see. This notion is problematized in relation to writings on media literacy and critical thinking, focusing on the importance of acknowledging reflexivity and identity in the definition of critical thinking.

Concerns about the spread of disinformation, information disorder, and fake news have grown to unprecedented proportions in recent years. This study aimed to explore how to mitigate this communication disorder and achieve a balance in the relationship among the public, the media, the dominant institutions, and the digital influencers in society. This study used the grounded meta-synthesis method, which relies on induction, to arrive at a new model according to the objective of the study. The process of open, axial, and selective coding included 101 studies, books, reports, and guides, starting with the Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, issued in 1922, and ending with the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer. The results led to the proposal of a new model to reduce communication dysfunction, in which media and information literacy (MIL) plays a crucial role in increasing an individual’s ability to resist disinformation and enhancing their ability to monitor the performance of institutions, as well as expanding the circle of influencers in social media. To fulfil the three goals and contribute to achieving a degree of functional balance in communication within societies, the model recommends enhancing MIL. Other intervening variables, such as the fragility of political, cultural, and legal structures, should not be disregarded.