In today’s fast-moving digital environment, misinformation spreads rapidly while young people face increasingly complex online landscapes. Media literacy is more essential than ever. The Mobile Stories platform offers a timely response – empowering students to become not just consumers, but also responsible creators of media content.
Originally developed in Sweden, Mobile Stories was adapted for international use and piloted across schools in Finland, Romania and Ireland as part of the ProMS project. An evaluation conducted by Dr Eileen Culloty (Dublin City University) between March 2024 and January 2025 assessed its impact on students’ media literacy through a journalism-based learning approach. A total of 371 students from five schools across three countries took part in the survey.
Key findings included:
- Improved digital confidence: Students showed consistent gains, with an overall improvement of 11.4 percentage points in self-reported digital skills.
- School-specific progress in news literacy: Significant increases were seen in some schools, including a 27-point gain at a Finnish vocational school.
- Mixed results in evaluating news: While improvements were minimal overall, results varied across schools and highlighted the need for further study.
- Vocational learning benefits: Vocational healthcare students – initially thought less likely to benefit – showed notable gains in digital confidence and news literacy.
The evaluation also highlighted the challenges of assessing media literacy in real school settings and recommended streamlined questionnaires, stronger teacher engagement and the use of multiple data sources to improve future evaluations.
👉 Read more about what we learned during our international piloting HERE.
👉 Read the key findings in our research brief HERE.
