The Center for Education and Community Development (CECD) recommends the authorities to design a national media concept or strategy as a separate document. The recommendation was formulated after the Center presented the results of a study to assess the media skills and media literacy level among young people in the Republic of Moldova. As an alternative, this concept can be integrated into a relevant national document, like the national concept for developing the mass media in the Republic of Moldova, CECD researcher Victoria Bevziuc, one of the authors of the study, stated in a news conference at IPN.
“A government institution should be entrusted with the task of coordinating the national strategy for improving the media skills, for example, the Ministry of Education and Research. Once in two years, media literacy should be assessed nationwide (polls, questionnaires, interviews) through a partnership of relevant players. An alternative is to include the Republic of Moldova in the group of countries that are assessed based on relevant indicators globally, such as the Media Literacy Index. As a result of this periodical assessment, the Education for Media school curriculum should be adjusted and improved so as to develop new media skills following the advancing of digital technologies,” stated Victoria Bevziuc.
The researcher recommended periodically staging social media campaigns on TV channels and social networking sites on how to obtain free media skills, on the hotline that can be used by any citizen to report fake news and cases of disinformation. A common online media literacy resources platform should be created as an online place of destination for all the legal media literacy resources, where education materials and opportunities of activities can be downloaded, archived, accumulated and promoted by all the relevant organizations.
The media skills courses should be considered a priory and should be included in the education program for kindergartens and in the school program for the first-twelfth grades. This subject should be incorporated into the plans of study of Moldovan universities. The teachers should be stimulated financially and by credit points for this curriculum. For the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, the educational activities that cover the general media literacy theme should be reduced and emphasis should be placed on personalized training, with specific themes and skills that would be developed for different target groups, depending on the profile and needs of these, like the discipline “Media Manipulation and Disinformation” or “Propaganda as an Element of Hybrid Warfare”,” said the researcher.
The study to assess the media skills and media literacy level among young people in the Republic of Moldova covered a sample of over 1,500 people older than 18. The data were collected during February 20 – March 25, 2022.
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