Media Literacy and Human Rights: Education for Sustainable Societies

This paper builds on the collaborative work of media researchers and professionals as well as education decision makers and teachers that met in Graz, 57 December 2007, at the invitation of the Council of Europe. The purpose of the workshop was to determine the validity of media education and to verify that human rights could be an added value to such an education. Three main questions were debated, that built on each other: 1) “Which media literacy?” focused on an assessment of the various definitions of media education, trying to come to terms with the distinction between old and new media, old and new literacies. 2) “Which competences, skills, attitudes and values?” considered the core elements for developing coherent literacy training programmes and sought to identify the integration of human rights in current methods of teaching. 3) “How to develop these competences, skills, attitudes and values?” discussed concrete examples of best practice, especially those dealing with interactions between public and private sectors and old and new media. It also examined how to evaluate the efficacy of empowerment practices and policies, raising issues of awareness, self-regulation and the role of the state and of Intergovernmental Organizations such as the Council of Europe. The results emphasized priority actions for different actors in the field of media literacy, and assessed possible cooperation between actors while high-