Who teaches media literacy when institutions don’t reach people? Formal education and public services can’t be everywhere at once. In that gap, community-led media literacy initiatives have grown; not as substitutes for institutional efforts, but as something different in kind: often rooted in local, everyday trust rather than institutional authority, built through co-creation and participatory approaches, and able to reach people in ways that formal, top-down structures sometimes cannot.
This session turns to the people and initiatives that have been exploring this question in practice. We will explore what tends to make community-led, bottom-up approaches to media literacy work, grounded in real-world case studies. Practitioners will share what they are genuinely hearing on the ground: what worries people about media use, which specific incidents of misinformation, disinformation, or scams have come up in their communities, where people actually get their news and information, and which sources they trust most, and why.
At a moment when trust in institutions is under pressure in many contexts, this session asks: how might grassroots, participatory approaches help build and sustain trust where formal structures sometimes struggle to, and how can bottom-up and top-down efforts work alongside one another?
Target group: Media literacy educators, researchers, policymakers, digital inclusion practitioners, civil society organisations, journalists, human rights advocates, youth and adult education professionals, and anyone interested in media literacy education with community-led approach
More details on speakers and registration will be announced closer to the date.
