Through Media and Digital Literacy Education Towards Civic Participation of Disadvantaged Youth

Abstract

Media literacy has been increasingly becoming a prerequisite of full citizen participation. The latter has been shifting, especially among youth, away from the traditional media forms and more and more towards non-conventional ones. For example see the FridaysForFuture movement . The possibility for and abilities to get involved in the public debate are, though, not distributed equally. One of the tools to narrow down the ‘participation gap’ may be in media literacy education (MLE). This chapter presents a participatory action research exploring the possibilities of the MLE for the development of citizen participation of disadvantaged youth. It draws especially on the three-month intervention at the vocational school in the Czech Republic. 17 students aged 17–19 participated in the study in 2019.

The volume of both empirical and theoretical research in this field has been growing. However, in the context of central Europe, it is a relatively under researched area. The study was empirically testing a set of characteristics of teaching methods recommended previous studies and concluded, among others, by a recommendation of the holistic approach, long-term projects, blending of the in-the-school- and out-of-the-school-life, and breaching of the school routine. The intervention developed the media competence of the students, while their citizen participation activities’ enhancement remained ambiguous.