Emma Sheppard is a journalist specialising in business, technology, family and social affairs. As well as Canvas8, her work has appeared in The Guardian, Wired, BBC Worldwide, The Independent and more.

Aware of hidden agendas, people no longer believe in the possibility of absolute truth or complete transparency from institutions, public figures, and individuals. Yet they are still drawn to honesty, integrity, and – at times – even vulnerability, which they expect from peers and brands alike.

Radical Transparency 

When Labour won the Australian election in late May 2022, it ended nine years of conservative rule in the country. “During this campaign I have put forward a positive, clear plan for a better future for our country,” said Australia’s 31st prime minister, Anthony Albanese, in his victory speech. “No one left behind because we should always look after the disadvantaged and vulnerable. But also no one held back, because we should always support aspiration and opportunity.” 

ABC News

One of those campaign commitments was to champion media literacy by teaching school-aged children the skills to use the internet safely. Two digital skills programmes developed by the 

 (AMF), supported by $6 million over three years, will now be rolled out, including a Smart Digital Licence for 10- to 14-year-olds and an eSmart Media Literacy Lab for secondary school students. 

Innovation Aus

Only one in five students are given lessons on determining the trustworthiness of news and teachers are unsure how news should be taught to young people. 

 “We believe that access to media literacy education is a fundamental right for all children,” says Katie Costello, program design, innovation, and advocacy projects manager at the AMF. “It’s very important that there is consistent teaching of media literacy education across Australia.” 

Interview with Katie Costello conducted by author

The AMF was established in 1997 in honour of Alannah and Madeline Mikac, who were tragically killed, aged six and three, alongside their mother and 32 other people in Port Arthur, Tasmania the year before. The non-profit organisation is committed to ensuring that all children have a safe and happy childhood free from violence. Costello has worked with the charity for the past four years but much of her recent work has involved overseeing the foundation’s 

. “I’m fascinated by how important [media literacy] is for a child’s civic engagement with society as well as help them really thrive in an online environment,” she says. 

 So what’s the importance of media literacy and how can brands help children and young people build the necessary skills?

“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge,” wrote John Naisbitt in his 1982 best seller 

Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives

. In 2020, people created 1.7MB of data every second, with 306.4 billion emails and 500 million tweets being sent every day. 

TechJury

 It’s a modern-day problem, but the earliest attempts at media literacy education are said to date back to the 1920s, when the British Film institute attempted to teach analytical skills to media users. 

Very Well Mind

 More recently, ubiquitous connectivity and technology has led to a resurgence in calls for people to be taught to be more informed, thoughtful media consumers. In fact, 45% of 15- to 24-year-olds around the world say they most often use social media to stay informed about current events (compared to 14% who rely on online news sites). 

Gallup

 Those aged 40 and older are more likely to rely on traditional media such as radio and newspapers.

Dr. Paul Mihailidis, a specialist professor at Emerson College defines media literacy as “the ability to access, analyse, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication”. Too often, students make mistakes when interpreting the news, “because they’re monitoring a lot of content at once, they’re often sharing and repurposing information without taking the time to really think through a story … Students aren’t doing deep inquiry. We see a lot of implicit assumptions being made off headlines and short videos. They’re not diving into who is sharing content.” 

New York Times

Done right, media literacy skills can help tackle fake news and disinformation, media bias, and prepare children and young people with the resilience they need to fight back against bullying and/or harassment online. In the UK, 7% of 10- to 15-year-olds feel unhappy with their lives, with social media thought to be a contributing factor. 

The Week

In England and Wales, one in five children aged 10 to 15 have experienced cyberbullying. 

Action for Children

Critical thinking skills are essential for viewing media content objectively, says Costello. “Media literacy equips children with the essential knowledge and skills to support critical thinking and civic participation in today’s digital age. Our lives are heavily mediated [by technology]… so there is a need for understanding how to navigate, reflect, and thrive with media,” she says. “Fact checking and identifying misinformation as a skillset is valuable, but media literacy goes beyond that. It’s not just being able to identify dis (or mis) information but that you as an active citizen are flagging and reporting that to an online platform. That simple action of reporting and not sharing is contributing to stopping the spread of misinformation and helping the wider civic society.” 

AMF’s Media Literacy Lab helps young people become media-savvy digital citizens

Different countries have taken a range of approaches to building media literacy among citizens. In Finland, children are taught to push back on fake news as early as primary school. 

Psychology Today

, with the UK in 10th place. Given that conspiracy theories start to take hold at 14, and the relatively young age at which users start using social media platforms (42% of those aged between five and 12), it’s imperative these conversations start early. 

The Conversation

 But despite this growing need, only 9% of Europeans across 11 countries have participated in training about how to use online tools to distinguish between true and false information (58% are interested in doing so). 

Ipsos MORI

This was particularly striking during the pandemic. In February 2020, before lockdown was called in the Western world, the WHO director-general acknowledged: “We’re not just fighting an epidemic, we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus and it is just as dangerous.” 

LA Times

 With the shift to remote school for many children, the amount of time they were spending online soared – the majority of six- to 12-year-olds in the US said they were in front of

 more than usual during lockdown. And while the majority of 12- to 17-year-olds are confident they can tell what is real and fake online, only 11% are able to identify what makes a social media post genuine. 

Ofcom

Similarly, in the UK, only 2% of children have the skills they need to identify misinformation. 

Literacy Trust

 Media literacy has become a core part of the UK government’s Online Safety Bill, although it has come under some criticism from experts such as Professor Sonia Livingstone at London School of Economics, who argues it’s not the silver bullet it’s often held up to be. 

London School of Economics

In Australia, AMF’s Media Literacy Lab launched in July 2020. It’s a first-of-its-kind education resource for students aged 12 to 16, which aims to help young people become media-savvy digital citizens, and support teachers to build their confidence in teaching the subject. Modules include topics such as what is the media, fact checking, misinformation, filter bubbles, algorithms, AI and big data, media and democracy, and hate speech. As well as being able to identify fake news, information hygiene also involves preventing the spread of disinformation, and knowing how to flag problematic content. “However media literacy is mandated at a governance level, it needs to be practical and taught in the classroom in a way that isn’t asking too much of our teachers who already do an immense amount,” says Costello. “Media Literacy Lab aligns really well with existing classes on English, media, art, science, mathematics, and digital technologies.” 

Beyond the Lab, AMF works with digitally excluded communities, such as First Nation groups in remote Australia via a partnership with the charity 

. The foundation has also developed campaigns to tackle hate speech online. 

, for example, which was released in March 2022, was designed to reduce harms of a sexualised nature towards young women. Instead of targeting young women to moderate their behaviour or be aware of dangerous behaviours by young men, AMF spent a year co-designing a campaign that would speak directly to the perpetrators. “There was very little dialogue around online rejection for young men. The more they talked about their experiences, the more it was normalised,” says Costello. “That helped them develop positive ethical behaviours and gave them a toolkit to get past those difficult moments while also respecting the other young person who has done the rejecting.” 

The pandemic saw screen time soar as the majority of children were home schooled

The AMF has worked with a number of brand partners to advance its work, not least with Google Australia, which invested $1.4 million into the Media Literacy Lab. 

YouTube

Facebook and TikTok have also become important collaborators in advancing change. AMF released a series of Get Media Smart videos on TikTok for example, for Safer Internet Day 2021. 

TikTok

 “They starred two Australian influencers and they were very fun, showing different ways of engaging with the media and how to report misinformation or manipulated media,” says Costello. “It included terminology about algorithms and how you control them by what you’re selecting and viewing. And how you can burst your own filter bubble by clicking on something new and diversifying what you watch on TikTok.” 

That year, TikTok also changed the default privacy setting for all registered accounts of those under 16 to private, and introduced fact-checking messages from the World Health Organisation to tackle COVID-19 misinformation. 

 “Major tech companies have done some good work around putting in safeguards for children and young people to protect them from online harms,” says Costello. “They’ve provided funding as part of their corporate social responsibility. They’ve created safety centres on their platforms, and published their algorithms to make it more transparent as to how the platform operates.” 

But more needs to be done around investing in fact-checking services and involving young people in co-design. Brands are already throwing money at influencers, with a TikTok $2 billion creator fund, $1 billion from Facebook, and $130 million from Snapchat, but little is being done to ensure those influencers have the necessary media literacy skills to ensure their wellbeing. 

Vogue

Break the Internet: In Pursuit of Influence

 (2021), describes spending time at an influencer training camp while researching her book. “[These kids] were very very technologically fluent, very well versed in YouTube revenue models and online advertising. But what they weren’t fluent in was media literacy. They couldn’t identify this parasocial fake relationship between themselves and their creators.” 

Brands are being challenged to help build a better digital infrastructure for young people

For Costello, it’s important that any media literacy initiative puts young people at the centre of the process. “It needs to be authentic and genuine,” she says. “Organisations that engage with young people need to demonstrate that the work cannot and should not be done without their involvement. And they need to be involved right from the conception of a piece of tech or digital product.” In creating the Crushed But Okay programme, the AMF employed six young people as creative advisers who helped to design the final video series and resource kit. “We learned a lot in the co-design process,” she says. “We engaged our youth participants for over a year. Having paid advisers was also really important as it reinforced the authenticity of the campaign and showed the young people they’re valued for their time, effort, and experiences.” 

Keep children and young people front of mind

Even if your product or service isn’t aimed at young people, brands still need to keep them in mind when developing products, services, or marketing campaigns. Because media literacy levels are low, the harm caused by something an adult would find innocuous cannot be underestimated. “Children and young people are everywhere online, you need to be cognisant of what could be harmful for them,” says Costello. “Brands have ethical obligations to not create things that are going to challenge people with lower digital literacy or that have access issues.” 

 Using designs that deliberately trick users into taking actions that are not in their best interests are known as ‘dark patterns’. In the US, TurboTax was fined for hiding a free tax-file programme for low-income users on its website, encouraging people to sign up for its paid programme instead. 

ProPublica

 Other dark matter examples include ads disguised as other content, timers for promotions that set an arbitrary deadline, and hidden costs that are added at the checkout.

Be part of the media literacy conversation

Improving media literacy involves a diverse range of stakeholders but technology companies play a pivotal role. Brands need to be proactive about the unintended consequences of their platforms and do their bit to build a better digital infrastructure for all. Features such as autoplay, algorithmic recommendations, location tracking, and encouraging sharing may all seem innocuous on the face of it, but there are real harms associated with them. As well as partnering with organisations such as the AMF, brands including the Lego Group have launched new programmes to help parents raise digitally smart families, promoting skills such as digital empathy, screen-time management, and privacy and safe sharing. 

Lego

, part of Sesame Workshop, is investing in research and support to address the digital literacies that young students need to succeed.

 of 15- to 24-year-olds around the world say they most often use social media to stay informed about current events

 of Europeans have participated in training about how to use online tools to distinguish between true and false information

 Australian students are given lessons on determining the trustworthiness of news

The Australian government has committed to rolling out a media literacy programme in secondary schools

Media literacy is defined as the ability to access, analyse, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication

The AMF’s Media Literacy Lab and other campaigns aim to teach children and young people how to use tools to flag and limit the spread of misinformation

Katie Costello works to ensure education in the digital age is inclusive and innovative on a global scale in order to add value and drive excellence in digital learning and to champion media literacy as a civic right. She is an accomplished policy advisor, advocate, project manager, educator, and consultant, with over 15 years of experience in government, non-profits, and ed-tech. She has led numerous award-winning and impactful initiatives in school education, youth voice, and global digital citizenship, collaborating and co-designing in the process with a diverse range of multidisciplinary experts and practitioners.

Media and Entertainment

The New York Times

Young people spend more time online than ever before, but do they have the tools and experience to navigate the digital media world safely? Canvas8 spoke to media literacy programme expert Katie Costello about how brands can help children and young people build the necessary skills.

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