Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

Amid growing concerns over digital misinformation and the evolving role of education in fostering media resilience, this study explores the effects of an online training program designed to enhance 159 Vietnamese K–12 teachers’ competencies in Media and Information Literacy. The program consisted of interactive modules covering MIL concepts, fact-checking strategies, digital ethics, and classroom integration techniques, delivered over six weeks. Participants engaged in collaborative tasks, practice-based reflection, and peer feedback. Results indicate significant gains in MIL knowledge, teaching self-efficacy, and classroom implementation among trained teachers, with the strongest improvements observed in their confidence to address misinformation and facilitate critical digital engagement. Effectiveness was amplified by sustained participation, prior digital experience, and urban school contexts. By equipping teachers with both conceptual and practical MIL tools, the program positioned them as informed digital mentors, capable of cultivating students’ critical media use. The findings underscore the importance of structured, context-sensitive training in fostering resilient digital citizenship in rapidly evolving educational landscapes.

Media and information literacy (MIL) education is seen to be one of the solutions in dealing with concerns regarding information disorder. While there exists an MIL course in the Philippine senior high school curriculum, it is undeniable that strengthening peoples’ knowledge on the topic is essential. As such, the inclusion of a course on information literacy to the undergraduate curriculum in the School of Library and Information Studies of the University of the Philippines Diliman is a step in the right direction in ensuring that students consciously and continuously practice ethical engagements with information. Officially included in the curriculum in 2018, a year later, research focused on the course’s development was conducted. This research builds upon the researcher’s earlier work on course development. This time, the researcher who is also the one teaching the course, examines the teaching and learning practices employed in the delivery of the course, through an autoethnographic approach. Reflections were thematically analyzed and mapped against the Media and Information Literacy Core Educator’s Competencies released by UNESCO in 2021. The goal of this research is to serve as reference allowing MIL educators to reflect on and have an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in terms of content and pedagogy. Findings could also contribute to the development of course materials related to the teaching of MIL.

This paper presents findings from a study into children’s media and information literacy (MIL). The purpose of the study was to understand English primary school children’s (ages 8–11) attitude toward the internet as well as their ability to find, use and evaluate information. This then informed the development of a MIL programme of learning for primary schools. Data analysis showed that the children demonstrated low levels of MIL, for example, when identifying bias and distinguishing between fact and opinion. In addition, working in a group did not lead to better MIL. There were limited strategies for successful co-operation and often the dominant group members’ views were prioritised over evidence from the text. Therefore, working with the Digital Education Futures Initiative (DEFI) at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, we propose a MIL curriculum that focuses both on content but also collaborative dialogic skills such as listening to others and changing one’s own point of view.

This paper explores the teachers’ collective constructions of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) and examines several gaps and ways forward in implementing the curriculum. Consistent with the participatory and self-reflexive framework of Socially Shared Inquiry, the researcher conducted focus group workshops with seven MIL teachers from select public senior high schools in the Philippines. The findings provide insights into the teachers’ media experiences that correspond to their view of essential components and competencies of MIL. Institutional issues and challenges were elicited and analyzed, enabling the teachers to propose several solutions to these salient issues. These recommendations offer practical implications for the enhancement of MIL education, including the curricular reform that lends itself more to learning about media, and a needs-based professional development of MIL teachers. It is hoped that the findings would resonate with MIL researchers and practitioners in terms of examining how MIL is operationalized in various contexts.

Media and information literacy (MIL) is one of the crucial factors to sustain in the age of information explosion. Particularly, LIS students need to be literate regarding media and information around them to provide authentic information in their future workplaces. The study aims to identify the MIL self-efficacy level of LIS students and the influence of demographics on this. The study adopted a quantitative approach to identify the MIL level of LIS students using a structured questionnaire. The data was collected from 337 LIS students from different public and private universities in Bangladesh using a convenience sampling technique. The study reveals that LIS students in Bangladesh rated their level of MIL as moderate, but at the same time, they are confident regarding their competence in accessing relevant resources using different media. It is also observed that LIS students’ MIL level is comparatively less in creation than other dimensions like access, evaluation, use, and understanding. The research also found significant differences between the students’ demographics and their MIL level. This is one of the first attempts in Bangladesh to analyze LIS students’ MIL self-efficacy level. The study can be broadened in the future to understand the factors affecting the MIL level of LIS students in Banglaesh by adopting a qualitative research strategy. In addition, the problems can also be identified from future studies which will provide a guideline to the respective LIS departments on how to improve the MIL level of the students.

Information literacy is an essential skill for biologists; however, most biology curricula do not intentionally integrate information literacy into classroom and laboratory exercises. There is evidence that developing information literacy skills in undergraduates improves their research skills, writing, and GPAs. Our objective was to integrate information literacy skills into a first semester introductory biology laboratory with a multi-week, inquiry-based module that leverages primary literature. Here we describe the module, which challenges students to develop and test a hypothesis related to parental care behaviour in birds. Students form hypotheses based on literature searching done during librarian-led information literacy sessions, produce an annotated bibliography, collect and analyse video data of barn swallows feeding their offspring, and present their findings. Analysis of students’ annotated bibliographies indicates that 83% of the referenced papers were appropriate for developing their specific hypotheses. The key elements ofa successful information literacy training plan include faculty-librarian collaboration, multiple classroom or laboratory sessions that introduce or utilize information literacy, and relevance ofthe information literacy training to an assignment. By introducing information literacy early inbiology curricula, departments can develop tiered information literacy plans that incorporate opportunities for students to use and refine these skills throughout their studies.

Internet and media use can provide accessible, diverse, and timely opportunities for civic engagement. However, to use media and the internet to interact and collaborate, citizens need to be equipped with particular skills and knowledge. This study draws on a national survey of Australian adults (N = 3,510) to examine how media abilities and online interaction activities are related to their civic engagement. The findings suggest that the more active people are online, interacting with content or other people, the more likely they are to be engaged in civic activities. The data also shows that those with a higher level of confidence in their media abilities are more likely to engage in more civic activities. A broader understanding of the multidimensional characteristics of media literacy is needed to consider the role online interaction activities and media literacy abilities play in contributing to civic engagement. At the same time, the research suggests that equipping citizens with media literacy as well as enabling them to use the interactive functions of digital media can increase citizens’ civic engagement.

The existing literature highlights social network sites (SNS) as important channels for consuming news and receiving misinformation. However, people surf multiple SNS daily, such as Facebook, Twitter, Line, etc. People also connect and interact with each other, given the characteristics of specific SNS. Driven by partisan bias, partisan supporters may be driven to converge on a specific SNS due to a political echo chamber that exists there. In such a partisan convergence scenario, politicized SNS usage may lead to bias to color the spread of fact-checking and, therefore, politically bias SNS users’ level of media literacy. We examine this hypothesis in a pre-registered national survey (n = 1060) in the 2020 Taiwan Presidential Election. Results show that (1), in general, the usage of the private messaging app Line is related to a lower level of media literacy. The effect holds across political and non-political misinformation items. (2) DPP supporters are much more likely to use Facebook than other supporters, while their political opponents are alienated from Facebook. Therefore, (3) Facebook usage is related to a higher media literacy discerning DPP-related fake news but not others, and the effect exists beyond DPP supporters.

This article is the result of work carried out within the scope of Erasmus+ project Kit@: Media competency training for professionals in day-care centres and comparable institutions in rural areas of Europe. Its main objective is to describe ECE systems, curriculum guidelines, pre-service teacher training curricula and teacher profiles related to media education and ICT use in ECE across the Europe project partners from Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Slovakia. Data collection was carried out by documentary consultation of the curriculum guidelines of each country involved and a questionnaire on ICT use and media education in ECE, specifically developed for this purpose, answered by partners participating in the Kit@ project, and through consultation of official international reports (e.g., OECD, EURYDICE), who collected the data between January and July, 2018. Findings indicate there is a pedagogical area in all countries where the use of ICT and media education is referred to directly or indirectly in the ECE curriculum. However, in most countries, there are no guidelines for media education in initial education. Furthermore, the training of professionals and costs in ECE are quite different. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for media literacy practices in kindergarten across Europe.

This paper discusses the fragmented nature of media literacy and its relationship with technology. It highlights the need for standardised media literacy strategies, particularly the strand that deal with evaluation, which can help address the challenges of the current media landscape (e.g. the fake news phenomenon). Subsequently, we introduce early work towards developing a new evaluative media literacy tool that can empower media consumers to think strategically about the information they are exposed to. This tool, called Fallasigns, is based primarily on research that suggests news topics can attract specific logical flaws. Fallasigns cultivates the ability to anticipate the most likely logical and rhetorical pitfalls to emerge in a news story before being exposed to it. We argue that this strategy may work to effectively inoculate media consumers and provide a more systematic approachwhen evaluating information.

Information literacy focuses on knowing how to use information for work and civic duties, however, critical information literacy goes a step further to recognize that a source’s good reputation does not mean that the source is accurate or unbiased. Critical information literacy questions the motives of the systems that produce the information and includes the knowledge of students so that they influence the lesson as well. Librarians have made critical information literacy a part of their lessons in a variety of ways, and teaching critical information literacy is rooted in critical pedagogy. A review of the literature on critical information literacy and a discussion of the American Association of College and Research Libraries’ framework “Authority Is Constructed and Contextual” in a critical information literacy lesson in an advanced legal research class is considered.

Studies on information and media literacy focus on describing activities and frameworks individually, and most of the time, connect within the field of library science. However, other frameworks and practices can be used. This case study presents the application of Behrman’s Critical Literacy Practices to information and media literacy to engage students to think critically about information within their field of study. The purpose of this research is to model the information behavior of education students through the perspective of constructivist learning. The study used a qualitative method with six upper-level undergraduate education majors. Activities that comprise practices and theories in both education and library sciences are presented to form a continuous exposure to critical thinking. Factors that influenced how students perceived the validity of information came from personal, educational, and societal factors. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion about critical thinking skills in undergraduate students, presenting a model that describes how practices from other fields can be used and incorporated with information and media literacy.

Engaging with digital media is part of everyday living for the majority of children, yet opportunities to learn about, through and with media are denied many pupils in compulsory schooling. Whilst Media Studies in the UK is internationally reputed to be well established, changes made to the primary and secondary national curriculum in 2014 included removal of existing media study elements. We demonstrate what is lost by these actions in relation to the United Nations Rights of the Child and, in particular, the right of the child to express identity. We demonstrate how media literacy had previously been included in curriculum, enabling opportunities to address children’s rights, and propose that the absence of media education is part of an overall trend of the non-prioritisation of children’s rights in England and Northern Ireland. The paper calls for media literacy to be reintroduced into primary and secondary curriculum.

Young people need strong digital information literacy (DIL) skills to effectively source, interpret and evaluate the credibility of online information. As DIL educators and advocates within contemporary schools, school library professionals can provide cross-contextual insights into their students’ DIL knowledge, skills and learning opportunities. Data from the 2024 International School Library Workforce Survey suggest that developing DIL may not be a typical priority in all schools and countries. Students’ DIL was felt to be low. School library professionals may be underutilized for supporting DIL learning in 35% of contexts, highlighting the need for greater understanding of this professional role.

Background: The assessment of cross-curricular skills is gaining attention in many countries. In Japan, the ‘Information Literacy Survey for Upper Secondary Students’ (the ILSUS) was designed to measure information literacy through Computer-Based Testing (CBT). It was the first large-scale survey based on Item Response Theory (IRT) implemented by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Purpose: This paper reports on the history and development of the survey and discusses its findings. As ‘information literacy’ is a generic and cross-curricular ability, we measured cognitive ability relating to how information can be utilised for problem-solving. Main argument: We present some released survey items that were actually used in the ILSUS, to explain how the items covered three aspects of ‘information literacy’. Using proficiency levels, we discuss what the findings indicated about the features of the students’ ‘information literacy’: it was evident that, whilst many had the ability to deal with complex and large amounts of information, few were able to address unfamiliar contexts. Then, using questionnaire items from the ILSUS, we report how we determined that ‘information literacy’ was strongly associated with ‘student-teacher relationships’ and ‘meta-cognition’. Conclusion: This account of the ILSUS offers insight into how we measured information literacy and, more widely, the kinds of skills that Japanese education policy is trying to develop. In planning a new Information Literacy Survey (ILS), we will try to capture what has not been clarified yet, such as the trends in information literacy and differences between educational stages. It may ultimately become possible to specify, more clearly, the goals and teaching methods that should be aimed at in the acquisition and teaching of information literacy.

The study investigates the effect of gender-integrated media literacy and media literacy training in terms of pre-service teachers’ noticing and analysing gendered messages in the media, and developing attitudes and consciousness towards these messages. The experimental design was used to examine whether the training sessions resulted in a change in the traits that were used to measure in pre-service teachers. The research data were collected through the Gender Equality-Conscious Media Literacy Scale, and the pre-test-post-test scores were analysed. Furthermore, the perspectives of pre-service teachers who participated in the training sessions were investigated using content analysis after the training sessions. Gender-integrated media literacy training was found to be a highly effective method of noticing and analysing gendered elements in the media.

Online environments are now central to political life, especially for youngpeople. They are prominent contexts for activities that include: fundraising,political debate, sharing political perspectives, mobilizing individuals andgroups to act, and applying pressure to governments, corporations, andnonprofits. Much of this online politically focused activity occurs within abroader media ecology that can be characterized as a participatoryculture (Jenkins, H., R. Purushotma, K. Clinton, M. Weigel, andA. J. Robison. [2009]. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:Media Education for the 21st Century. Occasional Paper on Digital Mediaand Learning. Chicago: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation).Many have argued that media literacy efforts are needed for youth tofully leverage these digital opportunities, but rigorous studies of sucheducational efforts are just beginning to emerge. Drawing on an originalpanel survey, this paper examines whether efforts to promote digitalengagement literacies increase youth online engagement in politics. Wefind that they do. Educators’ efforts to foster digital engagement literacies increase youth engagement in participatory politics and inapplying targeted political pressure to government, corporations, and nonprofits.

This article explores issues of critical media literacy with middle school students in an urban setting in the United States. The author focuses on data from a qualitative study engaging students in the reading and writing of video texts. The article examines intersections of issues relating to the “crisis of representation” in social science research and critical media literacy pedagogy. The middle school participants involved in this media literacy project proved to be quite articulate in regard to their critique of mainstream media. In addition, the students resisted teacher-centered approaches to critical media literacy that would have them creating counternarratives based on the “politics of the mundane.” The author argues for the importance of a critical media literacy pedagogy that is careful to make curricular space for students' discussions and explorations of issues of representation in media texts.

With the advent of new media technologies, the role of media in a society has been changed that leads researchers to re-construct the meaning of literacy from classic literacy to new media literacy. There have been continuing efforts to understand new media and promote the importance of becoming new media literate among researchers, educators, and policy makers. Fundamental understanding to what is new media literacy still remains unclear. There is only one paper providing the preliminary work in unpacking the framework of new media literacy. Although the developed framework has its merit, more details and information need to further elaborate and refine. In this paper, we acknowledge the two continua framework and endorse four types of literacy comprising of this two-continua. Moreover, we provide ten fine-grained indicators to reflect these four types of literacy. We also propose another new divide that distinguishes Web1.0 from Web2.0.

Every five years since 1995, the GMMP has documented trends in the portrayal and representation of women and men in news media discourse and imagery. The qualitative and quantitative evidence gathered has revealed that women are grossly underrepresented in news coverage in contrast to men. The outcome of underrepresentation is an imbalanced picture of the world, one in which women are largely absent. Further, the studies have shown a paucity of women’s voices in news media content in contrast to men’s perspectives, resulting in news that presents a male-centred view of the world

This handbook is intended for teachers and teacher trainers in formal school settings at the secondary school level. It aims to provide teachers with relevant and accessible educational resources that aim to support the development of youth who are critically informed, socially connected, and ethically responsible and engaged. It may also be of interest to professionals working in non-formal education settings or other sectors – namely the justice, social and health sectors – working with secondary level students

The flagship IWMD report offers data on women's participation in news-making operations, decision-making hierarchy and ownership structure of media companies across the world. It aims to promote women's voices in news gathering and their participation in news dissemination processes. The data was gathered by a team of over 150 researchers who interviewed executive-level staff in over 500 news companies in more than 59 countries.

The information explosion has increased accessibility and relevance problems. Misinformation and disinformation accentuate problems for scholarly users in differentiating between genuine and fake information. The negative impact of this factor is worsened when there is also a lack of information literacy. This research aims to identify information literacy models that can minimize or, preferably, overcome this problem. A comprehensive literature review of 175 scholarly articles and other relevant online sources was undertaken. The literature exploration meticulously employed strategically chosen key terms, delving exclusively into a curated selection of preeminent and trustworthy sources for a comprehensive and impactful review. The review systematically deliberated on integrating misinformation and disinformation issues into the information literacy framework, probing the prospect of substantially alleviating the challenges. This study aimed to understand whether current information literacy models can appropriately identify misinformation and disinformation. The information gleaned indicated that existing information literacy models could not correctly identify misinformation and disinformation. Accordingly, there is a need to improve strategies and methods for identifying misinformation and disinformation. The study proposed an information literacy model to identify misinformation and disinformation, benefiting library professionals, patrons, academicians, IT professionals involved in library services, library and information service policymakers, and authors.

Even though media literacy education has grown in the United States and around the world, policymakers still lack knowledge about the scope and depth of implementation of media literacy learning activities in the elementary and secondary grades. This study reports how the Media Literacy Implementation Index (MLI) was developed and validated using a quota sample of stakeholders from across all school districts and local communities in Rhode Island. Using an established theoretical framework for media literacy, we first constructed a scale to examine the likelihood that learners may encounter a set of media literacy learning activities. Multiple methods were then used to assess reliability and validity of the instrument including cognitive pretesting, think aloud protocols, a content validation of MLI learning activities in relation to national education standards documents, and statistical validation including principal components analysis to assess internal consistency, reliability, and validity. An easy-to-implement measure of the scope and depth of media literacy education in elementary and secondary schools will be useful to diverse stakeholders including educators, school leaders, librarians, parents, community members, and elected public officials.

Almost one in two women journalists have suffered sexual harassment, psychological abuse, online trolling and others forms of gender-based violence (GBV) while working.