The project Media Literacy is a project for educating young people in Macedonia on the importance of media literacy, developing critical thinking, and empowering young people to raise their voices about trending topics in the life of every young individual. This project addresses the lack of knowledge and the necessity of young people to be media literate to be able to separate information from misinformation, which increases their abilities for critical thinking, assessment, and making independent and well-informed decisions.

Our target group is high school students.

The proposed solution is to organize workshops about the topic of media literacy with high school students and discuss it with experts, who can give the students a better view of receiving and analyzing the news.

 

These are the implemented activities:

• A conducted survey among students in high schools (14 – 18 age), 600+ responses from the survey;


• 2 workshops of  20 participants in two high schools; (expert Monika Aksentievska from the Institute for Communication Studies, and facilitators Kristina Stankovska, Gjorgji Hadji Vasilev and Damjan Slatanovski)


• Discussion between experts in the field of media literacy (Bojan Kordalov and Jasna Bachovska Nedikj) and high school students;

Within a few months, the hub has conducted a survey among high school students and has received 600+ responses and gathered information on the level of knowledge and awareness of Macedonian youth regarding media literacy.

 

Facts from the survey:

• 80 % of the participants knew about media literacy;


• 45 % of the participants knew how to notice fake news;


• 43 % of the participants didn’t know the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and malformation.


• Instagram is the most used social media among youth in Macedonia. The other social media are Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter.

Accordingly, the hub has organized one discussion facilitated by two professional specialists in public relations and new media, which was attended by 15 participants. The experts directly and very efficiently helped young people to develop their critical thinking and be involved in interactive tasks, to make them feel like they are part of the solution and active decision-makers in society.

Our collaborator is the Institute for Communication Studies.

 

Short-term measurable goals:

• At least 70% of the participants have demonstrated increased levels of media literacy (measured through a test or a survey sent out in two waves – one before the activities of the project and one after the activities);

 

Long-term goals:

• Social media campaign about the dissemination of the results;


• Organizing a webinar on this topic in collaboration with the other hubs;


• Likes and shares of engagements on the social media campaign.

 

This project is still ongoing.