Denise Callan, from Irish Partner Momentum, recently attended the Media Literacy Ireland conference in Dublin, where she shared information about the ARENAS project with attendees. Media Literacy Ireland is an informal alliance of individuals and organisations who work together on a mainly voluntary basis to promote media literacy in Ireland. The organisation invited ARENAS to display a poster at the event, and ARENAS promotional flyers were also distributed at each table.
The theme of this year’s conference was Media Literacy – Supporting communities, fostering citizenship, promoting democracy. The conference was opened by Aoife MacEvilly, Broadcasting and Video on Demand Commissioner at Coimisiún na Meán, Ireland’s media regulator. The keynote speaker at the conference was Roslyn Kratochvil Moore from Deutsche Welle Akademie, who addressed the topic of Democracy’s Missing Infrastructure: Why Community-based Media Literacy Matters.
Following the Keynote address, the conference continued with a series of excellent panel discussions:
- Fostering Media Freedom and Media Pluralism Through Media Literacy -convened in collaboration with Coimisiún na Meán
- Promoting Information Integrity: Rising to the Challenge convened in collaboration with the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport
- Making Sense of AI: Building Literacy for a New Media Landscape convened in collaboration with ADAPT (the world-leading Research Ireland Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology)
The conference was attended by academics, government officials, leaders in adult education, the library services, leading international digital platforms, civil society organisations and members of the media. Each panel discussion closed by posting two questions; attendees were seated at tables and collaborated to address the two questions posed, with responses returned by a facilitator at each table.
This activity sparked huge engagement and lively discussions about the issues under consideration. It provided a wonderful opportunity to introduce the work of ARENAS to key figures in the media, media literacy, education, and government departments in Ireland, many of whom are part of wider European networks.
