News Club Interview - The critical issue of media literacy

The critical issue of media literacy…

In my previous life as a political staffer, I was given some advice: if you’re sick of saying it, people are just starting to hear it. This is why I hope I can be forgiven for talking to you again about our media literacy program Newshounds, because if there is even a small chance you don’t know about it, this is the week to clock it. 

Newshounds is designed by our team of teachers and journalists, and with funding help from Google, it’s now being taught in 3,400 primary school classrooms around Australia. It’s the only program of its kind and is completely free. This week, we unveiled Newshounds 2.0, which includes improvements to make it much more user-friendly for teachers. There’s updated content covering artificial intelligence and a virtual gameboard to increase engagement with kids. 

It’s brilliant - 10yo me would’ve loved being a Newshound.

Which brings me to this week’s News Club interview with Associate Professor Tanya Notley. She’s a leading researcher on media literacy in Australia. In our conversation, we discuss the actual problem we’re facing, the challenges in solving it, her frustration at the slow pace of progress, and, ultimately, what’s at stake. Hint: it’s democracy-threatening stuff.

I’m confident you’ll be interested because media literacy is something you told us you really care about. In a recent survey, over 80% of you indicated the spread of misinformation and disinformation is a significant concern. On top of that, 96% said it’s important to teach younger generations to be critical consumers of media. These findings, along with others, are included in our just-released 2024 Australian News Consumers report.

Oh, and it’s also Media Literacy Week, so we’re going all in, and I’m not done yet

Listen to the full episode here, watch it on YouTube, and scroll down for 3 highlights from our chat.

Highlight #1: Media literacy is about “supporting people to make informed decisions about their media use"

Tanya Notley: At the heart of it, it's about media representations. Media literacy is concerned with getting people to think very reflexively about how people, places, and ideas are being represented in the media —not only in the media they consume but also in the content they create. It’s about getting people to think about what fair representation is, about supporting diverse media inclusion, and also about supporting people in making informed decisions about their media use.

Highlight #2: “Twitter is just a toxic cesspit”

Tanya Notley: Twitter has eliminated all of its human rights monitoring staff and removed policies related to the removal of hateful content. And so, we've seen content that abhorrently supports hate and violence. We're just not seeing the level of monitoring and takedowns that, you know, really is the very basic requirement. I think it’s horrendous, and it makes it a very unsafe place. And ultimately, we should be able to expect these spaces to be safe and not foster hate or violence. I think those are reasonable expectations.

Highlight #3:  “Our democracy is at risk”

Tanya Notley: The issue is that our democracy is founded on the idea that we can make informed decisions. If we can't do that, then our democracies are really at risk. And that's the risk here, that disinformation runs rampant. It's highly targeted— the people, the kinds of messages, the timing, all these things. And there's no control over that, so we're all just completely vulnerable.

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