ABC Education and the Australian Media Literacy Alliance partnered recently, to present a very informative and engaging Media Literacy Summit. The program brought together academics, journalists, educators, and media literacy experts to share research, and discuss media literacy, in both education and the wider community.

In her opening address, Her Excellency, the Honourable Sam Mostyn, The Governor General advocated for the importance of media literacy. She noted that we must be surrounded by people we disagree with, but attack their narrative, and not them as a person. In promoting civics education, she said active citizens discern facts, are prepared for misinformation, disagree with respect, wrestle with ideas and listen deeply.

Kim Williams, Chair of the ABC spoke of media literacy being an intergenerational responsibility, and that the ABC had developed programs for different audiences around media literacy and civics education, such as, Media Explained. He noted that Behind the News and BTN High had been providing quality explainers of the news for 59 years.

Professor Tanya Notley, Western Sydney University presented her research project, Addressing Misinformation with Media Literacy through Cultural Institutions. The project surveyed 4,000 adults. Key findings were that people were struggling with social media overload; exposure to misinformation was high; people were challenged by misinformation and were becoming wary, mistrusting and cynical. Many were calling out factual information and most didn’t recognise sponsored clickbait.

Three vibrant and stimulating Panel sessions covered Media Literacy in Schools; RN’s Big Ideas -Challenges and opportunities for building media literacy in Australia; and Hamish Mc Donald in conversation with Geraldine Doogue, about his outstanding program The Matter of Facts which is currently on ABC and Iview.

The conversations about various programs, such as Squiz-E the Newshound, community education initiatives in libraries with multicultural communities, the impact of AI on digital media literacy, and the extent to which other countries are going to educate their citizens in digital media literacy to protect their democracy from disinformation, were extremely interesting. Media literacy is essential in combating misinformation and disinformation, which threatens democratic processes, and we learnt that some European countries and governments have been heavily invested in this for over twenty years. Disinformation and deepfake attacks are now a major national security threat.

Annabel Astbury, Head of ABC Education, closed the summit with questions about the challenges ahead.

ABC Education has made the recordings of all the sessions available on their website.

Watch the recordings