20 Oct 2017 WACC promotes gender awareness in media and information literacy

A stunning design by Tamara Madden, a Jamaican-born visual artist, conveying her vision of creating gender equal spaces. Photo: Courtesy of WMW Jamaica.

Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week’s sixth annual global celebration takes place 25 October to 1 November 2017.

Global MIL Week 2017 highlights include the Seventh Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue Conference, and a Youth Forum, to be held in Kingston, Jamaica.

Gender advocacy specialist Hilary Nicholson will represent WACC and Women’s Media Watch Jamaica. At a panel on “MIL as a tool for gender equality and advocacy in information environments”, she will give a presentation on media monitoring as a strategy for building critical gender-aware media information literacy and advocacy skills.

“I think this is a very important event because media literacy is a fundamental competency that every citizen – child and adult – needs in the present digital era. I have the chance to highlight the relevance of WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project, and the way it has revealed hard data on issues of gender inequality in news media which need to be addressed critically as part of overall efforts towards gender equality,” said Nicholson.

The MIL conference will explore how stakeholders interpret ways of educating citizens in media and information literacy (MIL) in all types of environments.

It will focus on the global status of research and practice about the significance of MIL as a way to transform present and future information and learning environments.

The aim is to build more bridges between learning outside of the classroom and learning inside the classroom. In addition, the conference will contribute to making learning a process of social change.

The intention is to foster human rights online and offline and to construct a new citizenship identity based on critical civic participation and intercultural dialogue.

The MIL Week parallels UNESCO’s work to foster greater awareness of how free, independent and pluralistic media enhance freedom of expression and contribute to peace, sustainability, poverty eradication and human rights.

UNESCO’s approach to media development includes tailored activities that are context-sensitive, and which also take account of the challenges and opportunities created by the rapidly changing media environment.

In promoting pluralistic and diverse media, UNESCO helps to expand the range of information available to the public, and particularly to poor people, youth, women, indigenous and hard-to-reach populations.

This goal chimes with WACC’s Strategic Plan 2017-2021 which focuses on promoting, implementing, and supporting the communication rights of all, especially the poorest, most excluded and most vulnerable people and communities.