Now we have a fantastic second session about to start. It's also a look beyond the borders to Ireland. And Ireland was mentioned already yesterday by Maria Dondé. And she mentioned the media literacy. Ireland was mentioned already yesterday by Maria Donde. She mentioned the Media Literacy Network. We have three representatives of Media Literacy Ireland. This is not a local media authority like we had in the first session. It's an independent association of members, and they are committed to the promotion of media literacy across Ireland. And we have three representatives here. And we have, first of all, Martina Chapman, Isabel Courtney, and Elaine King. We're looking forward. And like we had in all the sessions before, if you have questions directed to them after the presentation, please type it in in the chat. Fragen zu dem Vortrag bitte in den Chat schreiben und dann werden wir es weiterleiten. Und dann auch, wenn Zeit bleibt, habt ihr die Möglichkeit, wenn wir auch euer Mikrofon öffnen, dann können wir direkt weiterleiten. Und dann auch, wenn Zeit bleibt, habt ihr die Möglichkeit, wenn wir auch euer Mikrofon öffnen, dann können wir direkt im Dialog sprechen. So now I switch to English again. So I just told them how to handle the questions and it worked very well so far and we have a look on the chat and so I'm looking forward to get a deep insight into Ireland and how, what happened there and what are your future plans and how do you try to promote media literacy there? Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Jeffrey. So I'm Martina Chapman. I'm delighted to be here with you this morning. What I'm going to do to start off the conversation is to present what we're doing in Ireland in relation to Media Literacy Ireland. Then I'll introduce my two colleagues, Isabel and Elaine, and we can have maybe a broader conversation about the advantages, the disadvantages, the challenges and the opportunities that we've had along the way. So I'm just going to start off with some slides, if that's okay, and I'll try and share them here. So can you see the slides now? Perfect. All good. Perfect, all good. Okay, great stuff. So yes, we're having a look at media literacy networks and how we can possibly make them work. So I want to start off with a little bit of background. So media literacy in Ireland, a little bit of context. The Broadcasting Act of 2009 requires the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, which is the broadcasting regulator here, to undertake and encourage and foster research, measures and activities which are directed towards the promotion of media literacy. And because that term media literacy is in this legislation, we continue to use the term media literacy. And I just wanted to make that clear at the start. Although a lot of the work we do is much, much broader and would probably be interpreted as media and information literacy, as well as a lot of the other literacies that Alton spoke about yesterday. But we use the term almost as shorthand because that's what's in the legislation. So in response to that duty, the Broadcasting Authority wanted to create a policy that would reflect the evolving nature of media literacy. And to do that, we undertook a wide-ranging consultation with a large number of stakeholders. And I think I should probably say at this stage, I don't work for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. I'm not a member of their staff. I'm an independent consultant in this area. I've worked with a lot of regulators and broadcasters and the European Audiovisual Observatory, the Council of Europe, and also EPRA, which Maria Donde mentioned yesterday but I'm very very proud to be the national coordinator for Media Literacy Ireland. So when I say we in terms of the broadcasting authority it's in the context of my work with them through this. So we carried out a wide-ranging consultation and the result was that in 2016 the Broadcasting Authority's media literacy policy was published and this policy had an overarching objective which was to empower Irish people with the skills and knowledge to make informed choices about the media content and services that they consume, create and disseminate. And so you'll note there's no reference to media literacy or any other kind of mill in that overarching objective. And the reason for that was because the BAI recognised that media literacy is a really dynamic concept. It changes in response to technical or social or other factors. It changes in response to technical or social or other factors. It also recognised that media literacy was a lifelong learning journey and a journey that was likely to require behaviour change at different stages. And as such, it was going to require contributions and engagement from a wide range of sectors as well. So media literacy issues affect all of us and all different walks of life. So then addressing those issues is going to involve people from all walks of life as well. And the idea behind the policy was to create a framework that would help individuals and organisations kind of cherry pick, if you like. So that's why there's an image there of, you know, the sweetie counter that you have in cinemas, so that members could come and choose the bits of media literacy that related to their world and that they were in a good position to promote. So we wanted to create something that would provide leadership and coordination because during the consultation, this was a key finding. Everybody thought media literacy was great, really important, and they wanted to do more. But nobody was leading in the area and there was a real desire for somebody to provide leadership and leadership as opposed to ownership, I think. The policy then also needed to describe media literacy in a relevant and a meaningful way. And I've touched on it being a kind of dynamic concept and it means different things to different bodies, but we needed something that would pull everybody together in the broadest to create a broad tent or broad church, if you like. And the reason for that is we needed lots of different stakeholders to participate in this. We also wanted a framework that would help foster media literacy research in the longer term and start to develop a comprehensive knowledge base around all the different aspects of media literacy, because when you map them out, there's often areas of crossover and then finally we wanted something that would help to achieve strategic alignment with other relevant frameworks and policies at home and abroad because the one thing about media literacy is from a policy perspective it's very very broad and different elements of media literacy fall into different policy areas belonging to example for different government agencies. So coordination around that can be a challenge, not specifically in Ireland, this is in general. So as I say, there's no definition of media literacy in the policy, and this is deliberate because we wanted it to be as inclusive and as future proof as possible. So we looked at the heart of the BA policy. We have a kind of a framework of competencies and you can see the three competencies here. The first one focuses on that critical understanding. that critical understanding. The second one on all of the skills and knowledge required to access and use all the different kinds of media. And then the third set of competencies is more around the skills and knowledge around creation and participation in media. And the idea here was that it's specific enough to give stakeholders clear understanding about what media literacy is, but also broad enough to give us the scope to include in the future media literacy issues that may not have yet appeared because there is one thing for sure. In six or 12 months time, we'll be talking about new issues that we think media literacy can help address. we'll be talking about new issues that we think media literacy can help address. So while developing the media literacy policy and through that consultation, it was really clear that there was a strong desire within the wider media literacy community for leadership and coordination around a topic that does not respect the boundaries of specific sectors or statutory agreements. And so the BAI committed in the policy to providing the administrative and the funding resources to develop a media literacy network. And as a result, in the summer of 2017, Media Literacy Ireland was born, and I'll probably refer to it as MLI. Media Literacy Ireland was born and I'll probably refer to it as MLI. As Geoffrey mentioned, it's an independent alliance of members. It's a voluntary network and it involves individuals and organisations who are interested in cooperating and collaborating, mostly on an informal basis, to make the best use of the existing media literacy knowledge and resources. It is its own entity with its own decision-making powers, its own organisational structure and responsibilities and the members are very much involved in the running of Media Literacy Ireland. What it is not, it is not a legal entity in its own right. So for example, we don't have a bank account, for example. In terms of the structure, we started in 2017 with 17 members, we now have over 150. Within that 150, we have about 75 members who are actively volunteering to participate in what we call the working group panel and this is a large group of people who said yes I'll get more involved and the working group panel meets about three or four times a year we discuss what the kind of key topics are we come up with ideas for projects for plans we've just had a recent meeting there when we've got plans in the future for media literacy awards and all kinds of interesting things. We also then have for specific tasks or activities, we create working groups. These working groups are generally small. There's maybe three or four people on each working group and they are specifically put together to address a task. So, for example, Isabel is on the training and development working group and I'm sure she'll talk about that later. And then right in the middle, we have a steering group with a chair and 14 members. And Elaine is a former and a founder steering group member. And this is the group that kind of sets and agrees the strategic direction for Media Literacy Ireland. for Media Literacy Ireland. So in terms of Media Literacy Ireland and our goals, it acts as an enabler for media literacy stakeholders in Ireland. And it's got four strategic goals, certainly for 2021, and that's to foster discussion, be the first point of contact for stakeholders, look at developing or fostering the development of new interventions, and also campaigns. And I'm going to go through those pretty quickly. In terms of being fostering discussion, we want to create a platform for facilitating dialogue and the exchange of ideas and encouraging the development of sustainable media literacy projects. And pre 2020, we organized lots of face to face events. We also we have our working group meetings and we have our weekly updates via email, we have our social media platforms as well. So these are some of the events that we organized previously. Then obviously in 2020 there was no face-to-face and like the rest of the world we discovered Zoom and Zoom webinars. face and like the rest of the world we discovered zoom and zoom webinars we usually have our annual conference in autumn last year we couldn't do that so what we did instead was we had a series of conferences mini conferences I guess on Mondays and looking at the subjects we covered there it'll give you an idea of just the range of topics and how broad we understand media literacy is within media literacy Ireland so it was media mail without borders social media influencing news literacy now mail evaluation AI data and ethics and previously in October we also had making sense of science and media and this was a response to what we were kind of seeing in the media in particularly in relation to climate change and to COVID that you know there was a particular challenge in terms of uh communicating scientific data in the media in ways that people could understand so some wide-ranging discussions on that um because of the success of those webinars, we decided to keep it going. So we do a webinar each month. We've already had one on young people and media literacy, on race and media. In March, just gone by, we had a, we arranged a screening of the Trust Me documentary, and we had a post screening discussion around it. And as I mentioned, for those of you who were on early, in April we had our first Irish language webinar completely through the medium of the Irish language, which was also recorded and broadcast on the National Irish Language Station then on Easter Sunday. So that was a big first for us as well. We also want to be the first point of contact and to be the acknowledged one-stop shop for anybody in Ireland or outside Ireland who wants to get in touch with other stakeholders. We have our social media platforms, which is a good way of doing this, and they are really developing now. And in particular, our Media Literacy Ireland website, we have regular news features on that. And this is where we host our database of activities as well. We also want to inspire and encourage and facilitate the development of new mill projects. And we do this not by providing funding because we don't provide funding. We don't have the capacity or the facility to do that. But we do do a lot of matchmaking behind the scenes. So, for example, recently we were able to introduce Webwise in Ireland, who are kind of the safer internet hub in Ireland, to a partner in Catalonia who's looking for an Irish partner to apply for some EU funding. And that's worked out really well. And that's just one example of how we can help to bring different organisations and people together. bring different organisations and people together. And as I mentioned, our working groups are also looking at new interventions, such as the training and development kind of opportunities, but also the potential for developing meal awards in Ireland as well. Campaigns. This is the big one for us and it's also an accidental one for us. So we want to use the strength, the reach and the expertise of MLI members to identify emerging issues that we can collectively highlight and help the public, if you like, to develop their own skills around. When MLI was set up, we never intended to be a campaigning organisation. That was the furthest thing from our minds. But in 2019, that is exactly what we did. We developed a national media literacy campaign in Ireland, calling on all people of all ages to be media smart and to stop, think and check that the information that they read, hear or see is accurate and reliable. Now, the background to this is in late kind of 2018, the European Union put a call out for support for the first European Media Literacy Week, which was to occur in March 2019. And so in January 2019, we put a call out to members to say, look, there's a Media Literacy Week coming up. Is there anything we could do? And we had about a dozen organizations who attended a meeting hosted by the National Public Service Broadcaster. We thought this will be a quick conversation, we'll agree that there's no way we'll be able to do anything significant in like 12 weeks. And by the time the meeting was finished, we had commitments from everybody in the room that yes, we can do this. Yes, it will be tight. Yes, it'll be it'll be an interesting journey. But there was an amazing commitment for collaboration from organizations that otherwise would be kind of competing with each other uh so this is a really that one of the reasons i wanted to highlight this is because it's such a good demonstration of collaboration so these logos represent just some of the MLI members who are actively involved in developing and supporting the Be Media Smart campaign in 2019. And what they did was they put their hands up and they said, okay, we're experts in this section, so we'll look after this bit for you. So for example, the BAI provided the administrative coordination and some core funding for the production of assets. RTE is the National Public Service Broadcaster. They developed the concept and they produced the TV and the radio and the social media assets, which were then made available for every single MLI member to use. There was also press ads for the local and the national radio press. Radio was hugely important, both local regional radio and community radio as well. So there was lots of support right across the board. Twitter and Facebook provided free ad credits for any non-profit members of the of the organization of ml i and the and google provided a small but essential amount of funding to help develop the micro site but ml i had full editorial control over that site so i mentioned that uh rt were responsible for the ad i'd like to play it it's only 30 seconds so i'm'd like to play it. It's only 30 seconds. So I'm just going to play it now, if that's okay. Please do let me know if you can't hear it. It's important to you to know where your food comes from. Isn't it just as important to know where your information comes from? It's not always easy to verify what you see, read or hear. But now there's help. Visit www.bemediasmart.ie Stop. Think. Check. Be Media Smart. Brought to you by Media Literacy Ireland. Now, one of the reasons I wanted to show that to you was because I showed you a slide with lots and lots of different logos and brands there. And for me, I've experienced in this area and for me, one of the biggest kind of pleasant surprises was that all of those partners, when it came to the TV ad, everybody said, our logos don't need to be on this. This is about media literacy, Ireland. about media literacy Ireland and that to me demonstrated a genuine commitment from organisations to say look we know this is important we're willing to give it a push and this ad was also reversioned into the Irish language by the Irish public service Irish language public service broadcaster. There was four different ads as well. I'll play just one of them, I think. These ads were made available to all radio stations across the country. It's important to you to know where your food comes from. Isn't it just as important to know where your information comes from? It's not always easy to verify what you see read or hear but now there's help visit www.bemediasmart.ie stop think check be media smart brought to you by media literacy ireland supported by rte so that was supported RTE, but there was different versions that each radio station could put on the end, supported by, you know, WLO or Southeast Radio or Near FM, whoever it is. The concept, I should have probably mentioned before, when we thought about the concept for this, we thought, really, people are concerned about where their eggs come from. So really, shouldn't they be more aware of where their information comes from as well? And that was the kind of concept that rolled out across the campaign. Again, it was picked up and we had free ads in all of these news publications as well. And I think it's the first time to my knowledge, certainly, that all of these different kind of platforms came together. It's the first time, to my knowledge, certainly, that all of these different kind of platforms came together. Reinforcing all of this coverage, there was a social media campaign and it included all MLI members and even non-members as well. And as I say, Facebook and Twitter provided or offered all non-profit members free ad credit. It's very difficult to quantify the reach and engagement of social media support because it's difficult to get comparable statistical information but we know from what we observed it had a significant social media presence and I remember on the day that it launched, I was in Brussels at an EU media literacy expert group meeting and I was checking Twitter and we were trending. Be Media Smart and Stop Think Check was trending back in Ireland. So I thought, OK, this is good. This is working. We also benefited from a huge amount of editorial coverage. So this is something we have no control of. We can control the ads. We know when the ads are going to play and that kind of thing. And we also benefited from a huge amount of editorial coverage. So this is something we have no control of. We can control the ads. We know when the ads are going to play and that kind of thing. We were amazed and delighted at the way this was picked up in the press. You can see there's some here are some of the clippings from it. But also in terms of editorial. And again, this is where local radio was so important for us and one of the challenges we had was finding enough interviewees to fill those slots. All of this promotion pointed to a very simple microsite where people, the public could go and they could find where they could get some tips in terms of how to be media smart and also signposted to other sources of support and there was lots of links to other resources there as well. So that was the campaign. So what were the results? Well, all the campaign ads on all of the TV networks in Ireland, in both languages, on radio and television, and print ads were carried in many of the national dailies and Sunday newspapers. We estimate that there was over 140 days of voluntary effort by over 30 MLI members on this. And we, again, a combined and conservative estimated value of the ad campaign across TV and radio, we think was about in the region of 180,000. So there was also a lot of additional resources developed for the campaign. And again, an estimated value of that that we think was about 110,000 euro so we think the estimated monetary value so if we had to build that campaign from scratch and pay for everything that we got from goodwill from members we think it would have cost us in the region of 380,000000. And the actual monetary, the capital that went into the campaign was less than €20,000. So it's a really good example just of what can be achieved when people are pulling together in the right direction. What was really satisfying, I think, for us was we had developed the resources kind of under a Creative Commons license so anybody could use them. And we offered these resources through platforms like EPRA. We offered these resources to other countries. And I'm delighted to say that they've been picked up. We've shared the resources in countries like Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and North Macedonia. So that to us is another demonstration of how something can actually be replicated in other countries as well. And in terms of replication and scaling up and reusing content and resources. Last March in 2020, it may be similar in Austria, it may be different, but certainly in Ireland, there was a wave of misinformation around COVID. And we were all getting WhatsApp messages about the army going to be on the street first thing in the morning and the airports and ports going to be shut down and all of this kind of stuff so mlm members naturally said okay this is a really good time to start running those ads again and getting the b media smart message out there and in addition we found that there were um organizations were taking the stop think check concept and using it in their own kind of materials, which is exactly what we want. We're not precious about how it's used as long as the message gets out there. So age action for older people were using it when they were helping older people learn how to use Zoom while everybody was cocooning and locked down. Webwise for the younger audience were using it as part of their module on news information and problems of false information and the government even used it in their kind of online safety campaign for people who are working from home for the first time so it was a really good example as well as how that message can can be spread through different branches. For the second phase of being mini smart smart we did actually get some evaluation and we took questions on an omnibus questionnaire that ran over three waves and these results show a very positive result and this is for unprompted recall of the campaign message and call to action and it shows that in june 2020 um a quarter, 27% of people had on. So they didn't see the Adirondack. They were just asked over the phone. They were asked, have you seen or heard the Be Me Smart campaign? And over 27% said yes, they had. And that dropped down then because the ads stopped playing. But we still, in September, with no ads playing at all at all there was still retention of 15% there. So this is where we are now obviously we're into vaccination phase in Ireland and along with vaccinations there is another wave of misinformation emerging so again MLI members said you know now more than, it's essential that people are aware of misinformation and making informed choices based on accurate and reliable information. So although this phase of the Be Me, Be Smart campaign is linked to the vaccine rollout, it is not telling people to get vaccinated. It is not telling people not to get vaccinated. It's saying to people, this is an important decision, make an informed choice and make it using accurate and reliable information. And here's tips on where to go to find that. So. Things aren't always what they seem. We may not always know where our information is coming from or who it's coming from. That's why it's more important than ever to verify what you see, read or hear. And to be media smart. Visit www.bemediasmart.ie Stop. Think. Check. Be media smart. Brought to you by Media Literacy Ireland. So you can see we have a new version of the ad. This time it's a telephone. We've moved on from the egg. And again, these ads are running at the moment. They've just started at the beginning of April. They're running across all the TV channels, all of the radio channels. And we have some new social media assets as well. We have a new press ad that we hope will be going out into the press very shortly. But most importantly, we've updated the website and on the website. Now we have a fact check section and we have a list of recently debunked stories. But we've also got a section then where people can check facts. They can we have a list of fact checking sites um a list of um databases if people want to go in and interrogate data for themselves and you know we also have help there so we have advice on for example on how to talk to friends and family if friends and family are the ones who are spreading misinformation. So there is a focus around kind of COVID vaccinations and making sure that your information, your health information, is accurate and reliable, but that's just a hook. So we do think that the Be Media Smart as a concept can actually be used more and in future. I'm very conscious I've done a lot of talking, so I think I'm going to stop there. There's our website address, the B Media Smart and our Twitter. And I think I will stop sharing now. So I just want to say thank you very much. I've been talking for a long time, but I just wanted to provide you with that context about what Media Literacy Ireland is, how it evolved and give you an idea of of some of the projects that we're working on there are other projects we're working on of course as well we might get to talk about those but the Be Media Smart one for me I think really represented the power of the collaboration and something that happened very, very quickly and something that seems to have had legs. So I am going to introduce my colleague, Elaine King now. So Elaine is she is the community television coordinator for Near TV and she coordinates the day-to-day management of NIR TV. She has extensive experience in working in community development and media literacy with different groups. She was the chair of the Community Television Association in Ireland from 2016 to 2020 and she also works on European funded media literacy projects. She teaches part of the broadcast journalism degree in Colosha Dulig in Dublin. And she was also one of the founding steering group members of Media Literacy Ireland, because we were very keen that the steering group had representatives of each of the key sectors. And obviously, community media is one of those sectors so I'll hand over to you Elaine. Thanks Amelia Martina it's great to get such an overview of the whole steering group and everything that went on and you really see it and so I'm just going to give a talk for about 10 minutes about what we do so I suppose as a organization who as Martina said, we're part of the steering group from the inception. And then just towards the end, I'll talk a little bit about our link with the steering group. And maybe when we go then to a broader discussion, we can talk about that in a bit more detail. And so I'm just going to share my screen here. So I am, as Martina mentioned, I'm the Television Coordinator with the Near Media Co-op. So we're a not-for-profit community media cooperative based in North Dublin. We're democratic, not for profit, and we're volunteer led. So we were established to offer a space for voices that are rarely, if ever, heard in the mainstream. Oh, sorry, no. So we grew out of pirate radio initially in response to the negative coverage. So in North Dublin, in Ireland, the area of North Dublin is often associated with sort of disadvantaged communities, gangsters, the accent is considered difficult and it's sort of considered a rough area. So whenever it's discussed in mainstream media, it's given a really bad connotation. And people who were in as part of this pirate radio um they really wanted to give it another a different type of voice for the area and to lift the community that people you know that to get away from those stereotypes from from the local area so we grew into um a co-op where now there's eight full-time tv staff there's three part-time staff. We work with long-term unemployed, giving training and support, and we have over 120 volunteer members within the media co-op. So in a sense that we work with adult education and community development, and we have an open access policy. So in terms of adult education, we're linked to the Coláiste Dulic, which is the College of Further Education in North Dublin. We also offer some QQI Level 3 media expression courses and we offer volunteer training as open access policy. So anybody who wants to come in, learn how to produce a radio show or get involved in television can do so. It's open to anybody. Once they take part in our initial training, and part of our initial training is always media literacy and has been since inception. We also work with community groups in a community development context through media literacy. So we get no direct state funding. So we draw monies from a variety of sources. This allows us to remain independent, but it also, of course, brings challenges with it. So it's project by project funding. And we can often fall between media, education and community development, which in a sense, I suppose, is where media literacy. And I think Martina alluded to that as well, where media literacy encompasses so much. For us, it's the piece that really links um links everything that we do and you'll see that as we go on um for me media literacy is is so inherent in in who i am i grew up in the west of ireland as a lesbian and there was very few uh representations on mainstream media there was i lived in two channel lands where we had two two television stations where you really saw any representation of gay people whatsoever. So it was inherently something that was important to me in my understanding. And so when I learned of the media co-op and there was an area, having researched and studied it as I went along, I found the media co-op, which was basically doing the work that I was discussing all the time to my friends and bars you know this was this was an area that was really important to me intrinsically. So since 1995 the Co-op offered media literacy training in North Dublin and Jack Byrne described media literacy as a first step in creating an alternative media as a way to empower citizens. So you can see right back to 1995 we were there talking about media literacy, it's always been there. And just keep going. So I know, and Martina mentioned, and Isabel will be later as well about definitions. So this is our core definition that we've used. And so it's the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media. So the create part was something that we were, I suppose, lobbying for and working around for a long time as part of the co-op because we felt it was important for people to own their own media as well. And that's part of our ethos in community media, creating your own work. So as I mentioned, media literacy anchors all of our work. In terms of adult education, When we teach part of a broadcasting journalism degree, which I teach, we include media literacy in that teaching. We host a radio student week. That's part of our media literacy work as well. And all of our volunteer training includes media literacy. We give regular feedback to our broadcasters and this is something where we see intrinsically media literacy as part of the work that we do and in upskilling and continually to talk about diversity and media literacy training and we target a diverse range of communities for broadcasting as well and encourage them to take part in giving their voice and how they're represented so we also um as i was saying around project by project funding. We have gained funding through Europe for Citizens, Essia and Erasmus Plus and these are predominantly media literacy projects. I'll just give a few examples of these and I think we've worked with Comet on a few. The first one here is Media Education Without Borders. This was an online teaching resource, it's a free resource we're just finishing up at the moment. And it was for teachers who are teaching young people and young adults. And anybody can access this portal. So you can see it's heavily layered in terms of media literacy around conscious media consumption and media ethics and media law and regulation. And so if you have a chance it's worth it's worth checking that out and our partners on this as you can see it was um also suppose being a cooperative in media it's i often find it's nice to link with different types of organizations so we linked with them a university in dresden andy johannes excuse my pronunciation, and then there was another radio station in Hungary as well. So it's great to be able to branch out and just to see what other people are working on and try and learn and develop our skills. I'll come back to that in terms of Media Literacy Ireland as well. Another project we worked on was Ethical Media and Active Citizens citizenship. I think Helmut, you might remember this one. So we're working on a follow-up for this as well. So this was a project where we compiled training activities to help journalists at different stages of qualification to report fairly about minorities. We also provided terminology sheets and it's useful in terms of not just for journalists but also there's exercises in there where you can support staff in thinking about diversity and inclusion within the workplace and it's useful as well around language which I think people can often get a little bit caught up in. You can see there the different partners that we had on the project. This is just an example of some of the training and how we structured the training throughout it. So this you can see there's things like walking in your shoes, so these are small exercises people can use in the workplace and we're currently again coming out of COVID, we're reworking this to design, at the moment they're designed so that you can use them in person, but we want to use them also online in a more COVID-friendly, I suppose, in the new world that we're facing. And so we're looking forward to starting on that project again soon. Another project we're involved in is Respect Words. So this was a project, again, about ethical journalism, and it created a code to support people write in terms of language and how they should be speaking about different minorities and dealing with different issues that come up around xenophobia and the dehumanization of migration policies. It's a very solid piece of work and I just would recommend anybody just to have a look at it. And there's an ethical code on there for journalists or anybody writing about minorities. And the SMART project, again, come at our, we're working on this also. It was another project, again, tips for trainers. You can see a lot of the work that we do is really around supporting people giving training, as well as there's been other projects as well, but predominantly our media literacy work tends to be in this field. And this particular project, again, gives tips and supports around, for example, people who are vision impaired or people who are learning difficulties. There will be a follow-up to this happening also in the coming years. So I'm the television coordinator so I do get involved in a lot and run the European projects and I also do a lot, it's quite a varied position, I do a lot of media training as well and new training and this is just an example so one of the media literacy training workshops that we do, this project was about body image, gender and relationships. So we went out to a group of young people and we worked with them for a series of weeks and we talked to them and discussed with them about different issues around representation and identity and got them to really critically analyse how young people were represented in the media. And then we worked with them around producing the content. It's wonderful in a sense that because media literacy has been in the Broadcasting Act for so long, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland fund media literacy projects. So for us, it's an area that for years we've been trying to produce television that might that integrates media literacy in that so we can again bring it into into the work we do um so this was a wonderful project because we could we could directly see the impact we were having locally the young people just their confidence developed and even again you know you learn so much from working with young people to see how they understand themselves in media, being so aware in some ways and then sort of not in others. So it was lovely to be able to give them sort of more critical analysis skills. Another project we worked on, again, this was funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, was called Equal Billing. This was back in 2014. But it was a nice project and it's one we might revisit again. It was called Equal Billing, and again, it was a media literacy series. So we got to work with a diverse group of people, and train them up around media literacy skills, really get them thinking about what it means and how representation works. And then we got them to sit around a dinner table and have a discussion about two different movies. And we centered these around the nine grounds of discrimination. So it's nine half hour programs. And they discussed each of the two movies around a different topic, so maybe disability or race. And so it was a great, it was a lovely project. And you can see that the work is quite diverse in terms of what we do. We also train mobile adults and young people in mobile phone filming um this is becoming more and more um popular um and it's great it's a great resource and it's a lovely way in lovely easy way into media literacy skills um yes and it's in people's pockets so it's nice i think people people enjoy that sort of training. So we are national and global, as I suppose I was talking about, really with everything we do. We're part of the CREAL network and the Community Television Association. We work with CMFE and with Anmarc Europe as well. As part of our work, we try to integrate these in terms of the sustainability goals. And we work in particular for quality education for equality education gender equality and reduced inequalities and again this is where media literacy comes into each of these directly these are just some photographs so you get a sense of the work that we do it's quite varied um i'll just flick through them a little bit so it's very much out in the community in the while, we've had a focus on trying to work with women in elections to support the number of women who take part in politics. So that's a bit about me. I suppose just in terms of Media Literacy Ireland, the steering group, it was wonderful. I remember getting the call to to join it and from the BAI from Stephanie there and I was just delighted coming in and meeting all these different groups and it hadn't happened before and so often where you can feel like you're working in a little bubble so we're in North Dublin we're doing all this work on the ground and you don't really have the same there's not a network as such so even in terms of commercial media there's often a lot of networking and resources and supports whereas for us I suppose working on the ground there really wasn't so it was wonderful to be able to get in and the acknowledgement that the work that we did was there and then meeting peers who are working around media literacy was really great and it also just gave us an opportunity to gain resources and use some of our resources that we have to through the website and that they that that was developed and we'll talk a bit more that's what I know as we go on about these things for us I suppose the challenge is because as I mentioned we're project by project funded so a lot of the work we do we have to unfortunately think about where is it resourced and how can we keep going and we're always chasing funding unfortunately um in an ideal world that wouldn't be the case and then we would be able to give it you know loads of time to the steering group and the work that media literally Ireland do um but for us it's sort of we're we're a small fry in in terms of something like the all Ireland campaign um but um still it's wonderful of we're a small fry in terms of something like the All Ireland campaign. But still, it's wonderful to be part of. And I know we'll discuss a bit more as we go. So, yeah, I might leave it there then and pass over to Isabel. Thanks very much for your time. My contact details are there if anybody wants to contact me. Hi, Isabel. So, Isabel, thank you very much Elaine, it's amazing to see the broad range of projects that you've talked about and I think it demonstrates really well just the reach or the breadth of media literacy but also the impact that it has in different aspects of life and I think that's something that we often don't see when we go to conferences and seminars and stuff around media literacy it can be a bit academic and we don't always get to see what the real world impacts of these kind of projects are so I think that was really important and thank you very much for doing that. Isabel we're going to hand over to you now. Isabel is a freelance journalist, a librarian and a researcher and she's a member of the Library Association of Ireland and also of Media Literacy Ireland. She sits on the Literacies Committee of the Libraries Association of Ireland and she's also one of the key people in the Media Literacy Ireland Working Group and leads on the Training and Development Working Group. She currently lectures on the Library and Information Management Master's Programme in Dublin Business School. So over to you Isabel. Hey thanks Martina, I'll just share my screen here. Can everyone see that? Yeah. Yeah great okay. Okay thanks a million and as Martina said I'm here today to talk a little bit about the story behind a collaboration, the collaboration between the Library Association of Ireland and Media Literacy Ireland. So as Martina mentioned, I'm a bit of an uncommon hybrid of journalist and librarian. And this, as I said, is a story and I suppose a bit of a personal story as well. So back in 2011, in search of a new career, I returned to education to pursue a degree in journalism. I had previously worked in two national newspapers, career I returned to education to pursue a degree in journalism I had previously worked in two national newspapers but I took an extended maternity leave of 17 years and to take a bit of a break and so anyway I went back and I did my journalism career and in 2016 I found myself working as a producer and script editor for a documentary filmmaking company. So as part of that job, I had the opportunity to take one of the films on a library tour, on a national library tour. We were a bit, just talking about voluntary work, it was very hard to get our film seen. So rather than leaving a beautiful film we'd made, I said, let's do a collaboration with the libraries are free. We're showing this free. So anyway, it sparked something in me. So the more time I spent in the libraries, the more kind of dawned on me. I really want to be a librarian. So I decided to can the films. And I went back to college again as a very mature student this time to take up a master's degree in library and information science. to take up a master's degree in Library and Information Science. So as part of the master's programme, librarians are trained to teach, to be teachers of information literacy and it was the first time I'd come across the term. So in this module I was really struck by the similarities that existed between the two disciplines of journalism and librarianship. So journalists were speaking about fact-checking and we spoke about verification of sources and media literacy, while librarians spoke about information literacy, the evaluation of information, acknowledgement of sources, citations, critical thinking. So some academics argue that media literacy is a subset of information literacy and some disagree and say that the two are completely separate entities. But either way, they're closely aligned and they have a shared mission of empowerment and empowering people, giving people the skills and knowledges to make informed choices. So what is the difference between an information literate person and immediate literate person. So the information literate person can identify that there is a gap, that there is a need for information. Then they can find that information, they can evaluate it, they can apply the information to the information gap and then acknowledge it by way of citations and sourced reference. On the other hand, the media literate person can access media, can analyse the media, again, evaluate it. They can also create it and act upon that creation. So you can see there's a lot of similarities and there's crossovers. So you can also understand why some people would say it's the same thing, but it's not really same but different. So librarians, we absolutely love definitions. So we like to define and then to redefine and to reimagine. But the concept, just to give you a bit of background, the concept of information literacy first appeared in print back in 1974 when the librarian, Sir Kowalski, wrote a report on the concept of IL. In 1989, then, it was formally defined by the Library Association, the American Library Association, the ALA, and since then has seen many redefinitions, the latest being this definition from SLIP, which is the UK Library and Information Organisation and they defined information literacy as the ability to think critically and make balanced judgments about any information we find and use. It empowers us as citizens to develop informed views and to engage fully with society. So the Centre for Media Literacy first defined media literacy in 1992 and but as any as with all definitions that evolved into this more updated version and media and information literacy so if you're i am looking yesterday you'll have heard Alton talk about the UNESCO mill. And this was first proposed back in 2007. And it covers all the competencies related to information literacy and media literacy. So again, it's a coming together of the two. I'm going to just add in another definition, i wasn't going to but i am going to throw it in anyway because it's an interesting one and i don't know whether many people have come across meta literacy but again in good librarian style to academic librarians in the states all the way back in 2011 we're looking at redefining not just the definition but redefining again information literacy and building on it so meta literacy which has its roots in information literacy it challenges the traditional skill-based approaches so what traditionally would have been doing as librarians were looking for information but rec like recognizing related literacy types and incorporating emergence emerging technologies so you were sort of adding into that, creating media. So I'm just gonna throw that in just for, to give you something to think about there. So to continue on, while I was, back to the story, I suppose of how the thesis research that led to the collaboration between the Library Association and media literacy, the collaboration between the Library Association and Media Literacy, the realization of the overlap between journalism and librarianship coincided with the US presidential election back in 2016 and not long after the outcome of the Brexit votes. So fake news, alternative facts, post-truth society were all becoming ubiquitous terms. news alternative facts post-truth society were all becoming ubiquitous terms so I was really happy when I came across this article written by journalism educator Louise Leaf and rummaging through librarians toolkits she said I found a treasure trove of resources newsrooms could use information literacy is one of them so at at last, I thought a journalist who was recognising the benefits of an alliance, and that was from Columbia Journalism Review. So with that in mind, and knowing that I had to write a thesis to get through this master's, I set out in an effort to find out if information literacy had a role to play in journalism education. I thought back to my own journalism degree, and I realised how much, how little interaction I'd had with the library and I wondered if it was the case for every other journalism course that was being offered in the country. So I focused my research on six institutions in Ireland in higher education who offered journalism, broadcasting and media studies courses and I explored to what extent information literacy was being taught on those courses and what was the interaction like between journalism faculty and academic librarians. So at the time the literature was starting to come out it was journalists and librarians have a common goal is the line between librarianship and journalism blurring journalism and libraries both exist to support strong well-informed communities so there was plenty of coming from both disciplines although I will say that this one here in American libraries they were uh they were five years ahead of the journalists they were already talking the librarians were talking about this back in 2011 so I have to have to put that in and so it was particularly topical and yeah so that was it I came across that so as one academic librarian or journalist that library librarians and journalists were information gathering cousins we had similar to tools in our toolkit. Isabel, I think you may be on mute. Can you hear me, Isabel? Sorry about that. Thanks. Sorry, go back a little bit. Sorry about that. Thanks. Sorry. Go back a little bit. Sorry about that. Apologies. So sorry. Just to talk about, we had similar tools in our toolkit. We discussed many of the same concepts, but we used different vocabulary and different tools. So librarians were taught and taught how to teach the CRAP test, which was currency, relevance, authority and accuracy. So how current is the information? How relevant is that information? Who wrote it? How accurate is it? And what was the purpose of it? I thought back again to how we how we evaluated news as journalists and we were taught the smell test where we looked at the source. What was the motivation of the story what was the evidence was it logical and what was left out so if you'll excuse the pun and to combine both notions perhaps a good question when we're evaluating information or news could be does that smell like crap to you so the other uh So the other sort of obvious thing as well that we had shared a lot of shared core values. So as you can see the core values as per the American Library Association of Librarians, you can see them listed there, are quite similar and have a lot of crossover with the core values of journalists and that source is from the ethical journalism network so as part of that research I showed both the interviewees that were librarians and the journalists each set of core values not showing which was which they struggled to pick which were theirs it was interesting to note that none of them ever considered that their information sharing cousins had actually shared the same values core values values. So on the advice of one of the journalists I had interviewed, actually she's on our steering committee, Eileen Cullity was one of my interviewees, she said you know you might be interested in this organisation that the Broadcasting Authority are talking about, Media Literacy, they're having a networking event in July so she gave me an email address to contact which I I did. And I said, gosh, I'll find more people to interview and I can talk. And I'm sure there'll be loads of librarians there. But the MLI had taken, as Martina explained, a multi-stakeholder approach to its formation, and many of the sectors were represented. And you can see a quote there from the BAI, Irish Media Literacy Network brings together experts and interested groups together we will encourage cross-sector communication collaboration knowledge sharing on media literacy topics and there's a lovely picture of Martina to prove and so I was I have to say I was surprised there was a lot of represented online platforms media producers civil society education academia and so on but to my surprise I was the only librarian at the event and I'm not even a fully qualified one at that. I was only a student member at the Library Association at the time I was a member of the Literacies Committee because that's where I knew my interest was leaning towards information literacy. So needless to say I scurried back to the Library Association, introductions were made, the gap was filled and so began the strong strategic partnership between the Library Association and Media Literacy Ireland. So just a little bit about the Library Association. We're the professional body that represents libraries and librarianship, promoting and developing high standards for librarian and information services in Ireland and what I will say is that about them as an organisation and I think Martina will now that she knows us we're a very tight we're a tight group we're very tightly knit and we communicate an awful lot even if we're in different sectors and libraries we tend to all know each other I mean that sounds very parochial not every single librarian in Ireland knows each other but we very nearly do if it's not through Twitter or social media or very strong users again something you'll notice about um social media I find particularly Twitter it's an awful lot of journalists talking an awful lot of librarians and and I love that because half my feed is is is journalism and half is librarianship so it makes for good reading so uh the official partnership with um the mli happened in 2018 philip cohen was their then president of the lai and he joined this steering committee of media literacy ireland and several more librarians and took up membership from various sectors and several more librarians took up membership from various sectors and so from public libraries school libraries academic government and specialist libraries and we're a little bit different in the library association in Ireland in that we represent all the librarians we don't just represent public libraries which I'm not sure what it's like in Austria but I think they can be quite separate and they are more sort of siloed. But so for that reason, the LAI has excellent reach. So the Be Media Smart and our involvement in the Be Media Smart campaign in 2019, the LAI put out a communication to all their members in 2019. For the Library Association of Ireland, the Be Media Smart campaign is an invaluable opportunity to work in close partnership with a range of sectors and highlight the vital role of libraries throughout Ireland, not only as providers of trustworthy information, which we were always accepted as, but as information literacy experts and educators, which often were not seen as. So the mutual benefits of this campaign, the Be Media Smart campaign. So the LAI offered, as I said, incredible reach. We were right across all the various sectors of libraries. We offer trust. We were a source of the public research has shown for years that people trust libraries and they go to libraries for trusted information and then we could also offer expertise a lot of people didn't realize that librarians are trained to be information literacy instructors so we were the perfect partners in many ways and for us media literacy Ireland gave us the resources they gave us the posters the media media packs the micro website the access to those ads that we could push out on our websites and through our social media and MLI gave us the recognition it gave us the recognition to show that libraries aren't just about books that we're we have we are an authority in information literacy and media literacy. And importantly as well, it gave us an alignment with the International Federation of Library Associations, who is like a parent organization. They were also on a mission of combating fake news. So it gave us that alignment with that campaign. And this is the IFLA, How to Spot Fake News campaign, which most of the libraries were doing. So it was a nice, a very nice kind of alignment between the BMEDIA smart this so it worked really really well so the literacies committee took an active part and the role in the in the BMEDIA smart campaign and it was supported by about 40 public libraries at the time and as Martina said it was we had a short run in time to get all this information out. But it was an incredibly successful campaign, as Martina outlined. It gained international attention. And the next iteration of it was in reaction to the spread of COVID misinformation. And that took place last spring. And again, there was strong support from libraries. But this time it was confined to online because libraries are physically closed due to the pandemic. So just to talk about one of the working groups and this is the collaboration in action on the training and development working group in which I sit we have two librarians and four professional media professionals we collaborate um using a project management tool called Trello and we have scheduled meetings and we use it to share knowledge and to contribute to some of the webinars that Martina would have mentioned to our Monday webinars so we have input into that at the moment we're doing some research on media literacy courses and education resources. And we're trying to, I suppose, pinpoint or identify any gaps that there might be with a view to filling those gaps. And also looking at the possible development of a media literacy Ireland training course that might come with. come with well it's in early stages but we are talking and thinking about it as a digital badge system where people can be recognized with micro credentials on um media literacy training just to give you that extra uh almost like the little blue tick of twitter the little uh digital badge of media literacy ireland so what can i say although it comes with its own challenges, our hope that this mutually beneficial partnership, which it is, will continue for many years, where libraries are no longer viewed as merely book lending facilities but centres of information, community learning and advocates for information and media literacy. And that's all I can say, so thank you very much. There's my contact details and I'll hand back over to Martina for any questions. Thanks very much, Isabel. I think you've drawn a really interesting picture there of the kind of the shared core values between journalism and librarians. and librarians and um you know when we when we think back to the origins of media literacy it was very much the the remit or the world of media and very traditional media then not media as we understand it now and and the education sector mostly the formal education sector but because you know as we all know the way the world has changed and the way digital digital communication technologies are just so integrated into every part of our lives now you know we're constantly needing to develop new skills so we can navigate and and function really in society. And I think what drew that so clearly for me was last year when, you know, lockdown happened and suddenly being able to use Zoom was an essential skill for everybody, whether you were going into lockdown because you were over 75 or whether you were trying to do homeschooling or work from home. And it really struck me that, you know, we can't be complacent about this at all the skills we need are constantly changing we need to keep updating them and we need different sectors are going to be involved in that and your illustration there your talk just made me wonder what other sectors or experts or knowledge bases are we missing from MLI because I'm sure we are we don't have it it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and that's something I wanted to say that in terms of Media Literacy Ireland our network has grown very very quickly and we've been very very successful but we're not for a second saying that we have it absolutely perfect and the approach we've taken very, very successful, but we're not for a second saying that we have it absolutely perfect. And the approach we've taken has been based on the kind of the situation and the environment that we were in. And for other countries setting up networks, they'll make different decisions based on, you know, what's going on for them as well. But, and I think for both you and Elaine, I have a couple of questions. One of them is around grassroots. Essentially, you're both working at a grassroots level or dealing with the public, or you've got your finger on the pulse, really, I guess. And for me, that's something that I think we need any network needs to hear much more of but I know when you're setting up a network it can be difficult to identify the right people and that's one of the challenges we we we face I think in terms of establishing a network sometimes it's easy to identify the organization that needs to be involved, but identifying the actual individual within that organization can be a real challenge as well. And I think, Elaine, you may have touched on it earlier on that, you know, certainly with a structure like MLI has, where everything is done on a voluntary basis, there is a draw on people's time and sometimes with the best will in the world there's just not enough hours in the day and I mean I don't have a I don't have a solution to this but I'm just curious as for for both of you in terms of how much of an issue you think this is and whether there might be any possible solutions to it. I think I've been I suppose giving it a bit of thought even since we spoke here and thinking about this. I have been thinking about it in terms of community development and inclusion approach. I think for when organisations, when you have big organizations who have a lot of resources and they're coming together with organizations that really don't, so not for profits, people who are struggling for finance. In terms of an inclusion approach, we recognize, let's say, even in terms of boards that inclusion, that some people need extra supports in order to be involved, in order to get the support, in order to create an equal playing ground. And I think an awareness of that as an organisation or as a steering group, as a general network, is something that might be useful, that those discussions are happening and a recognition that the organisations may not have the time to get involved, but it's not because they're not doing work on the ground. It's not because their voice isn't important or being at the table isn't important. Because I know there's a lot of groups doing a lot of work. I know the Africa Center in Dublin, they were doing a wonderful campaign called Africa Also Smiles years ago, and it was a great campaign. But I know they're just so resource limited and time limited. So I can't imagine that they would have the time to attend working groups or really have their voice heard. I'm not talking to them specifically, but, you know, that kind of organization and people who might want to be involved. I think maybe it starts with conversation. Obviously, funding would be necessary and important. But also, I think that understanding of ethics and especially given that it's um that it is a media literacy group so from the get-go to really be having those discussions of that an understanding that some people need more support in order to in order to get involved because they're coming from a different space you know uh I think that's just something that occurred to me okay thanks Elaineaine isabel have you any thoughts on that yeah well i i completely agree and i think um as regards who to contact within organizations is the top-down approach if if organizations i mean ideally if every organization could give us actual money and say here go and do it that would be great but if they can't allow some time for your staff to give to media literacy so it's about getting that message you know into at the top level so that people aren't questioned when look I have to give an hour and a half to this working group for media but it it ultimately is for the good of the company or whatever so if there's an understanding that okay they might not be able to throw a lot of resources but if they can give us that manpower and that time I think that's one way but it is basically the only challenge that I can think of is resources and that is divided into human resources and financial resources so if you can't give us financial please give us human resources so that's that will be my thoughts there yeah it's it's interesting because we have had a couple of examples of um so partners who are coming together and this is we media literacy irelander i can't claim credit that i introduced this person to that person but you hear on the grapevine afterwards that those two this individual and that organization met at one of our events and they had side conversations and now they're collaborating. And the deep pockets of the deep pockets, but maybe experience light organization has been connected with a really experienced organization or person who has limited resources. So there is the potential there for happy marriages, if you like, to come out of this. And I think in a way, because MLI is kind of set up as not as a legal entity as well, so we're not in a position to be able to fund. But I don't, you know, four years ago when this was being set up, there's no way we thought we would have 150 members. You know, this has grown so quickly and there's so much interest and so much support for media literacy Ireland. I think it really demonstrates that. And as you pointed out, Isabel, I think with the the 2016 elections, media literacy and misinformation in particular, there was a whole new focus on it. And suddenly, like Elaine's projects demonstrated, we were suddenly seeing how media literacy was relevant to everybody's life in every aspect of life. So there was a bit, okay, yeah, I can see now that media literacy is relevant and I should be involved. But again, it's so broad and because it moves so quickly. So I've been working in this area for about 15 years. And I remember back when the only media literacy topic was online safety for children because the Internet was going to eat your child. And it was a really protectionist approach. And it was about kind of stopping children going online and that's obviously evolved happily so now it's much more about empowerment and I think we can learn a lot from the early experiences we had around that I remember when you, then in some of the European countries I was working in, not specifically here in Ireland, but media literacy became about digital inclusion. The focus was on that access. You must have access to the Internet. And that's what that's where all the funding for media literacy projects went, because it was about getting grannies online to to the pressure on some face-to-face services. And again, that kind of priority shifted. Slightly after that, I recall it all being about countering radicalisation after a spate of serious terrorist bombs. I mean, all of these things are incredibly important. All of these things are incredibly important. But with media literacy, it's I sometimes feel like it's, you know, the topic of the day becomes the focus. And then from even you're looking at it from a European funding point of view, that's where the funding goes to. And I think if we think about media literacy as lifelong learning and something that we all need to be engaged with all the time I think absolutely the role of libraries is going to be crucial because we all need to know where we can go for that first point of contact same way with community radio we all need to know where we can go for our local support but stuff like that doesn't happen overnight and I think we all need to be looking at this in kind of five to 10 year strategies with the relevant coordination and funding to support the implementation of that over kind of five to 10 years. But that's a big ask. You know, there's the one thing I have been given hope by in Ireland is that there's a consult. Ireland is that there was a consultation open, the work is ongoing now, on a new strategy, they're developing a new strategy which is about the essential literacies. So reading, writing and happily, we're back to definitions, but digital literacy has been included in that and this is a 10 year strategy. And I think that's certainly a step in the right direction. And we've been we've been saying quite loudly that when you talk about digital literacy, you've got to include media and information literacy in that conversation as well. It can't be so. We have some questions here. I'm just going to have a quick look. We have some questions here. I'm just going to have a quick look. So there's a question here about did you with your campaign face difficulties of pressure from political parties or actors as they actually might not be happy about people being smarter in their media consumption and decoding communication strategies? The short answer to that is no, we didn't. And there may have been actors out there who would prefer people were not media smart, but certainly we faced no pushback at all. And I think part of the reason for that might have been that this message was being pushed across the board everywhere from libraries and community media right up to public service broadcasting and commercial media so it was it was as close to a blanket message uh i think that we could get and it's also a message that you can't really argue against you know it's about making informed choices and that's the the bedrock to to um to a good functioning society um the campaign and fact check section how does it work with ai do you engage no we don't what we do is we we are not fact checkers we make it very clear we're not fact checkers on our website so what we do is we engage with a number of partners again who are fact checkers and they send us kind of briefings and say okay this story is being debunked this story is being debunked and what we do is the fact check section on our website is a signposting section it's it's a way of raising awareness of professional fact checkers and saying look people are doing this work and if you want to know where to go is a signposting section. It's a way of raising awareness of professional fact-checkers and saying, look, people are doing this work, and if you want to know where to go, here's where to go. Because one of the things we discovered, we talk about fact-checking a lot of the time, but in actual fact, lots of the members of the public have no idea what it is and no idea where to go and find it. And really, it kind of isn't the job of the audience to fact check stories that they are hearing or seeing or reading, but giving them the skills and being able to say to them, if you do want to do it, here's where you go to do it. Elaine talked about the inclusion of strategic goals to the radio work. How did you include? So, Elaine, I think this is a question for you. I don't know if you can see it there. Yeah, yeah, I can see it there. Yeah, so we wanted to include the Sustainable Development Goals as a way, I think because maybe as I was saying, even in terms of media literacy, we're so much in a bubble and we like to try and think about where we're situated I think it's useful in in all of our work so we brought we spent a good bit of time going through the different different goals and working out where we might be best able to support that work and we brought that through our committees and we're continually actually discussing it but um gender was a particular one so as we as we move through the year we're picking on on the different areas and just just reflecting back on where we stand within it so we're um planning a focused women's training radio training coming up soon that's part of that so really it's direct to try and sort of give ourselves a space where we understand where we the type of work we're doing and where we want to be and where we want to get to um it's a useful it's useful tool i suppose that we're finding it a useful tool so far um yeah okay great thanks elaine uh and there's also a question here i think it's directed at me in the mli there's also companies like google and facebook how are you able to close the gap of interest example in the point of data protection and content influence there's there's a very simple answer to this when media literacy ireland was established it was established as a as a collective and then a kind of an open forum um and there was a very simple decision made at the start and that was that media literacy issues affect all of us and they're going to keep evolving and keep changing. It's really a multi-faceted issue and any solution to any of the problems that we face are going to be multi-faceted as well and the decision was made right at the beginning that everybody needs to be involved and that insofar as we could have a level playing field we would um obviously social media companies are part of that conversation so they need to be included there as well but that's why we we spent quite a bit of time looking at our kind of governance structure and making sure that okay if social media platforms have a voice well so too does community media have a voice around that the steering group table so to just public service broadcasting so to do libraries and civic society organizations as well and we also have a we have a co-chair system on the steering group so there's a permanent co-chair system on the steering group. So there's a permanent co-chair which is a representative of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland but we also have an independent co-chair as well and if there is a vote to be had then the independent co-chair has the casting vote. The steering group changes every year we expect three or around two or three new steering group members to join the steering group so two or three have to step down but we also have a core of protected seats they're not protected people or protected representatives but we have a situation whereby we we will make sure that we will always have public service broadcasting, we'll always have community media on the steering group. So sectors are well represented. I'm just having a quick look here. I don't think there's any other questions. We're almost at 11.15. It's 11.11. So I think we just have a couple of minutes. I wondered, I'll go back to Isabel and Elaine, just if you've any closing thoughts or closing advice or words of wisdom that you want to share with the audience now is your moment. want to share with the audience now would be now is your moment um i i think for me the the um media literacy ireland really you know it has for the amount of time it takes and the things that i was i was talking about in terms of challenges um i think it's really valuable you know um we we come a little bit um i suppose it's even challenging our own spaces when we talk about facebook or sitting in the same room as Facebook and thinking about where they're coming from versus us it's good to almost be in that critical space ourselves and to challenge our own thinking on that and thinking about how that works equally with the campaign I know with us when we brought it back to our organization the voice in the campaign is very generic man probably white middle class um all covering all Ireland so for our demographic again it wasn't really sort of what we would normally do again it's it's creating these discussions and it created it creates an interesting critical space in itself which I think is useful um I think there's a lot in it and I know in Ireland maybe even because we are a country that has organisations like Facebook and Twitter in the locality it does create a different interest but meeting other organisations like the libraries and National Youth Councils different kind of groups coming together it's a really interesting challenging space I think it's very valuable, it has more value than the challenges which are just time and resources and that would be my leading comment. So thanks Elaine. Isabel? Yeah very similar and I think that has been the biggest challenge is the funding so maybe you know for the future when we're starting looking at reorganizing working groups we should pinpoint one working group just to fill out forms for funding and just to concentrate on let's get the money honestly it's a whole it's a whole day's work because i've done it in in education sector and it takes so much time that by the time you do get funding you're exhausted you have no more energy to do the job that you applied to do so I would suggest a whole working group that will work like worker bees on on you know getting some more resources for us but other than that I think the collaborations are fantastic and I think there's something really special about non-profit and not-for-profit organizations that do come together because that it's just so much more there's no agenda and it's agenda and it's such valuable and rewarding work and I'm delighted to be part of it. So that's it. Thanks, Isabel. Well, as a coordinator from MLI, I can tell you, yes, there is a phenomenal amount of work that goes on in the background. But I can also tell you the dividends that it pays are colossal. And that's why I wanted to show the Be Media Smart campaign as an example, because that campaign could not have been delivered by one organisation. I don't care how big they are on their own. And it could not have had that reach. And that was the power of Media Literacy Ireland, being able to bring these different people together. And as Elaine pointed out, the ad wasn't perfect for anybody, but it was just about okay that everybody could could push it out and so there is a lot of um kind of balancing to be done i think it's really important not to underestimate the the kind of the stakeholder management piece or the the and that's where the networking comes in because we you really need to get to know your partners and get to know it's picking up on the the idea of you the information gathering cousins is about in a way media literacy Ireland is like this a very apt metaphor I guess to use for a media literacy Ireland because you know we all have massive families but it is like this big huge meandering family and there's distant cousins and relations and you know relations that maybe you're not so keen on but you know you have to meet up with them anyway and and then there's other ones that you're completely aligned with so yes it's it is it's been a huge success in Ireland and I think if uh if other countries want to uh learn from us we're very happy to share our experiences and our resources as well, as I say, for example, the Be Media Smart stuff. But we're still learning, we're still developing and long may it last, I guess. So thank you very much. I think Jeffrey, look at that, 11.15. Is this our time? Time. Okay. So I think I'll hand back to Jeffrey there. Thanks. Okay. It's marvelous. Thanks very much. That's on point. That's, wow, I'm impressed. Yeah, quarter past 12 here in Austria. But nevertheless, if anybody has a question, wants something to say, but first of all, I want something to say but first of all I want to thank you I was really impressed from the Irish case for me it's a best practice I would say it worked very well and I liked it very much and I think it gives a great inspiration for afternoon, for this afternoon and for tomorrow when we will work on the Austrian case. And I think it worked very well in Ireland and hopefully it will also work in Austria. So thank you very much for your network and you represented your network very well. I give you a virtual applause. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. See you soon. Perfect. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. It was so great to have you. Thanks. Bye. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. It was so great to have you. Thanks. Bye. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.