Media literacy for all? On the intellectual and political challenges of implementing media literacy policy

Livingstone, S. (2011). Media literacy for all? On the intellectual and political challenges of implementing media literacy policy . Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.

Abstract: The media, and therefore media literacy, are no longer to be relegated to the domain of leisure and entertainment. Rather, they have become infrastructural, underpinning our work as well as family, public as well as private life, civic as well as personal domains. However, the complexity of technological change raises some distinctive challenges of its own, and evidence suggests that as media literacy spreads through society, it does so in a way that is uneven, unequal and insufficient. Can Europe, then, aspire to providing media literacy for all? In policy terms, new intermediaries are vital, since consumer organisations, most notably, can combine the necessary legal and technical expertise with a vigorous defence of ordinary people’s interests. To a significant degree they may provide a trusted source for media literacy advice and guidance, and often they also campaign for digital environments that are sufficiently interpretable, navigable, transparent and fair. This paper reviews the evidence on growing media literacy across the audience before concluding that media literacy provided by schools could reach children if the political will existed, and media literacy promoted by the media themselves could reach most adults if the commercial will existed. In both cases, it is likely that state action will be required to ensure that the means matched up to society’s aims for media literacy – first, in terms of regulation and enforcement (of schools, of industry) and second, in terms of compensatory provision so that positive policies to promote media literacy do not end up as negative policies that further disadvantage the already disadvantaged.