Each year millions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen are spent researching a range of media-related issues, most of which can be loosely defined as relating to media literacy. In the UK, the media and telecommunications regulator Ofcom1 alone spends almost £5M 2 and publishes 3 weighty reports on a range of subjects as diverse as ”Television Production Sector Review: A Survey of TV Programme Production in the UK,” ”Illegal Broadcasting” (in radio) and the “Media Literacy Audits.” All good stuff it is too. But what happens to it when it’s published? Does it really make any difference?
I can’t speak for all the uses made of Ofcom’s research, but I do know what happens to The Media Literacy Audits. It’s simple really; we use it inside Ofcom to set our priorities for the promotion of media literacy in the UK and to encourage all those external organizations who also have an interest in achieving a more media-literate society to do more where we’ve been able to identify skills and understanding gaps. We spread the word about our research to as many opinion formers, policy makers and stakeholders as we can. But the question remains - does all this effort really make a difference? And now there is a truly global media market, how do we share our experience with others and learn from them?
On June 25, 2007 I was jet lagged and wide awake at 5am in a hotel room overlooking the famous Gateway Arch in St Louis Missouri, USA. I was there at the very kind invitation of the Alliance for a Media Literate America (now the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE formerly AMLA) to speak at their conference on media literacy.
On the previous day I’d heard that the conference included a gathering of researchers in the field, presenting their research and sharing war stories. A good deal of the research looked like it could be of great interest to us in the UK, and I guessed that some of the things we were up to in the UK might be worth sharing with others outside the UK. But how could we find a way of sharing our findings from media literacy research across borders? Would the findings remain valid?
The promotion of media literacy across the globe shares many similarities. However there are also important, if subtle, differences that influence the activities of media literacy practitioners and researchers in each country. To share research meaningfully across cultures and countries, these differences need to be explicitly identified, agreed upon, and understood. For this reason, we propose that a framework for explaining the background and context to media literacy activity in different countries should be developed. This will allow these points of similarity and difference to be clarified, and help explain the contexts (political, social, cultural, technological, and market) in which the associated media literacy research has taken place.
Media literacy research examines how the public use, make sense of, create, interact with, and are affected by the media. With the technological ease of creating, producing and publishing media documents – people are no longer just passive consumers of media, but are also creators and publishers of media.
Media literacy intersects with broader social, commercial and political forces. Our framework has simplified this by suggesting that media literacy is influenced by (and helps inform) four key areas:
- the social (educational and cultural) context
- the policy context
- the regulatory context for media
- the market
For example, in the case of the UK, in the social context, it is influenced by issues such as cultural heritage (a tradition of public service broadcasting), changing demographics (an aging population), and the place of media education in the curriculum. In the policy context it is influenced by political priorities and interventions, such as those aimed at shaping the workforce through investing in skills development, and shaping the market through initiatives, such as the recently announced Digital Britain review 4, which aims to coordinate policy actions to promote the media and telecommunications sectors. And the drive to deliver government services online will have a significant impact on the need to promote the media literacy of those who will be affected most.
In the UK, we at the communications regulator Ofcom have a duty to promote media literacy. Whilst the duty is there, the powers to require action from those we regulate is not. Despite this, Ofcom’s activity in this area has helped put the promotion of media literacy firmly on the agenda of a wide range of agencies throughout the UK. And the ongoing debate about regulation of the internet is clearly going to impact on both society and industry. In the UK, the increasing move to ”self-regulation” pushes more responsibility onto the other players, and increases the need for more education and public information campaigns.
Trends in people’s behavior, their attitudes and preferences, are shaping the way the market develops. In the UK, the growth of on demand and time shifted media consumption and the move of advertizing revenue from broadcasting to the internet is shaping the media market. People have much greater choice but need new levels of understanding to be able to make the most of what’s on offer.
What this means in practice is that we believe professionals in the field need to work together to agree on a framework for mapping their research activity so that meaningful comparisons can be drawn, constructive partnerships can be explored and developed, data can be shared, and resources not wasted.
We are offering this framework as a starting point for discussion with the hope of generating the following outcomes:
- A better understanding of context, and how it shapes activity;
- The ability to see one’s own country’s activity and the shaping forces more clearly, in the context of others’ activity;
- Being able to identify how the contextual factors have shaped and inflected the research undertaken and the findings;
- Being able to identify overlapping research findings, and appreciate subtle differences created by different market and social contexts, political and regulatory regimes; and
- The ability to identify any gaps that exist and share potential solutions to emerging issues.
The overall aims of sharing research are to inform greater understanding by learning from the experience of others, to catalyze new approaches for research activity and, as a result, to improve the dissemination of research and the use of findings to inform practice by policy makers, regulators, and practitioners in the field.
But we need a vehicle for sharing findings, experience and expertise. That is why the International Media Literacy Research Forum (The Forum) was formed. The Forum was created by the partnership of Ofcom with the National Association for Media Literacy Education in the US, CAMEO from Canada, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority, and the Dublin Institute of Technology.
The inaugural meeting of The Forum was held at a three-day conference in London in May 2008 5. The second meeting was held at the annual International Regulators’ Forum in November 2008 in Hong Kong. Exploratory talks are now underway to bring The Forum to the next gathering of the NAMLE in Detroit in the summer of 2009, where The Forum will have come full circle around the globe.
The Forum continues to explore the most effective way of using technology to support its work between meetings in the real world.
If you would like to know more about The Forum, please email media.literacy@ofcom.org.uk.
Watch a video of Robin Blake presenting a version of this article on YouTube.6
- 1. http://www.ofcom.org.uk
- 2. Ofcom Annual Report and Accounts 2006/07 http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/accoun/reports_plans/annrep0607/
- 3. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/
- 4. http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/media_releases/5548.aspx
- 5. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/theforum/
- 6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WapFZ7O0ugA