About

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Aim

The aim of the Forum is 'To provide a platform for professional researchers, policy-makers/regulators and practitioners from across the world to share knowledge and expertise in the field of media literacy.'

Background

As the promotion of media literacy moves up the policy agenda there is a growing need to maximise efforts to understand and share learning about emerging issues at a global level.

Researchers in the field of media literacy often receive an audience for their work only in their own country. Much could be gained by creating a route through which research findings, techniques and methodologies could be examined and shared by others. An increased awareness of approaches taken to media literacy in different cultures can only serve to refine our own techniques in this broad and everchanging field. It is also vital that there is a channel for communication between researchers, policy makers/regulators and practitioners.

This enables research to help shape developing policy and delivery while highlighting to researchers forthcoming issues and subjects requiring evaluation. The International Media Literacy Research Forum provides a platform to improve understanding of the emerging issues, promote innovative methodologies and raise media literacy up the agenda of policy making bodies across the world. It has been agreed that to facilitate the Forum’s work, and for economic reasons, most of the Forum's activity should be conducted online.
 
The Forum currently comprises of the following Founder Members:

  • the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA);
  • the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA);
  • the Canadian Association of Media Education Organisations (CAMEO);
  • the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) in Ireland;
  • the United States - National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE formerly AMLA ; and
  • the Office of Communications (Ofcom) in the UK

With a broader network of members to follow.

Framework

The promotion of media literacy across the globe shares many similarities. However there are also important, if subtle, differences which influence the activities of media literacy practitioners and researchers in each country.  Two other non-traditional ‘literacies’ are commonly featured in public policy: digital literacy (also referred to as computer or ICT literacy) and information literacy, which offer related visions of the technical and critical thinking skills required for modern living and working. Information literacy and digital literacy include within their definitions some of the competencies related to skills, knowledge and understanding included in media literacy. Some authors suggest that media literacy is simply ‘literacy’ in the context of the digital world. Others refer to it as ‘21st Century literacy’.
 
To share research meaningfully across cultures and countries these nuances and differences need to be explicitly identified, and understood.

Key contextual factors have a profound effect on the questions being asked by research and, by definition, the emphasis/interpretation that will be put on results.  To share research activity meaningfully across international contexts, it is important to be able to stand back from the minutiae of individual research projects and to locate research within a wider framework.

For this reason, we have developed as a guide a framework which can be used to explain the background and context to media literacy activity in each country. This will allow these points of similarity and difference to be clarified, and help explain the political, social/cultural, technological/market, learning and regulatory contexts in which media literacy research studies have taken place. This framework should enable Members to map research activity, allowing meaningful comparisons to be drawn, meaningful partnerships to be explored and developed, data to be shared, economies of scale to be realised. We are offering this framework as a flexible guide – as a starting point, so that each country’s research activity can be articulated within a similar framework. 

Membership

Membership is open to both individuals and organisations. Founder Members in each country act as a ‘hub’ for that territory, providing the proposed country specific framework. Founder Members are encouraged to promote the work and objectives of the Forum, during the course of their work and contacts in their own countries and abroad. We will place no barriers in the way of potential members, but members should be aware that their membership can be revoked if they breach the IMLRF website terms and conditions.