The panel discussion “Media Literacy and Students” is the first public event that the Blaze Koneski Faculty of Philology, IKS and IREX organized within the project “Introducing Media Literacy for Future Philologists”, supported by the “Young Think” program of the American Agency for international development (USAID).
The vice dean for science and international cooperation, prof. Dr. Maja Bojadzievska, who opened the event, said that in the past “through the fundamental knowledge of languages and cultures, we all built our ethos, our conceptions of truth and lies, and conceptions of authority and responsibility. If in my time, distinguishing truth from falsehood was important for ethical reasons, now it is important, in the literal sense, for existential reasons.”
The head of the project, Assoc. Dr. Christina N. Nikolovska added that it will be useful for all students to gain knowledge about how traditional media work, how messages are created and distributed, and how to understand the narratives that come to us from all sides. She emphasized that the subject of media literacy will be useful for every student, but especially for those who, after completing their studies, will seek professional engagement in the media or in the teaching of their mother tongue.
“The contents of media literacy, in various forms of manifestation and naming, (media culture, expression and creation, media literacy) since 2000 have been represented in the mother tongue curricula for primary education. The introduction of the subject Media Literacy in the teaching directions of the study programs of the Faculty of Philology “Blaje Koneski” – Skopje, will contribute to the upgrading of studies with a new quality, which will improve the preparation of future language and literature teachers for primary and secondary education. ,” said Gordana Alexova, associate professor at the Department of Macedonian Language and participant in the panel discussion.
Blake Smith, a professor from the University of Chicago, also spoke on the panel, who addressed the problem of fake news in the United States throughout history. “No one should think that media literacy is a problem that we Americans think we have solved, or that we think we can teach people in other countries how to deal with this complex phenomenon. The political events of recent years have shown very clearly that our attitude towards the media in the USA is problematic, and that is probably why Americans are so interested in this topic, in media literacy,” he said.
Saranda Mehmedi, a student at the Faculty of Philology, a poet and a singer, referring to the misinformation that was published about refugees in the past years, pointed out that when the messages are constructed creatively (through comics as an art form), they can essentially reach the audience, especially the young people. and thus contribute to changing perceptions and stereotypes about vulnerable groups.
As the panel took place as part of Media Literacy Days 2022 (25 October – 1 November), which this year the Media Literacy Network dedicated to media literacy and diversity, several speakers discussed how to improve access to information about vulnerable groups of citizens. Kristijan Lazarev, a student from the Faculty of Philology who, together with Professor Branislav Gerazov from FEIT, works to improve access to information for visually impaired people, emphasized that the problem is not in vulnerable groups of citizens, but in the fact that society is not yet ready to accept them. follows and applies the recommendations from the EU regarding access to media content. Gerazov added that software and hardware solutions that can facilitate access to information for vulnerable groups should be used more and more and that work should be done to overcome the challenges. “The media can help with accessibility, but they themselves need to have the insight to organize their content so that everyone is as accessible as possible. We work with recordings from radio or television and there are sentences that last 40 seconds. There is no need because it can all be said more briefly and more accessible not only for people with disabilities, but for everyone. For example, texts can be made with fonts for people who have dyslexia. There are also technologies for text aversion that could provide automatic subtitling of video content,” noted Gerazov.
This discussion was followed up by Bojan Shashevski, a journalist from Radio MOF. “Our role is bigger than what the daily journalism shows. If on December 3 – the World Day of Persons with Disabilities, I publish only one news about it, am I fulfilling my duty to the public? These are questions that we constantly ask ourselves,” he said.
Victoria Volak, a sign language interpreter, indicated that the pressure on her as an interpreter from the visually impaired community at the height of the pandemic was crucial and that it was in that crisis that the public recognized the need for important news to be available to these people as well. “Before the pandemic,” said Volak, “we were not given the space to enter the frame of events where we were invited to interpret in sign language. But the public reacted positively when we started appearing in the press of the former Minister of Health, Venko Filipce.”
The Faculty of Philology “Blaze Koneski” in Skopje was chosen at the beginning of June, along with three other higher education institutions, to introduce media literacy into the curricula. Within the framework of the project, it is planned to publish a collection of works translated by students studying the English language, to prepare a manual for media literacy, and to organize a workshop and a public lecture dedicated to the mechanisms of conducting propaganda throughout history.
