Analyse and think critically: media literacy for youth

Background In the last years, in the context of Europe and the global political background of Europe, people living in Europe are faced with information analyzes of the difficulties that come from the media or from the Internet, and problems with the formation and perception of their personal opinion. Through the formation of a person and a potential citizen, young people come across and suffer under the influence of mass media manipulation, which directly affects the development of the society's opinion on important issues of life for young people. Against the backdrop of topical issues and comprehensive propaganda, extremism, discrimination, intolerance, xenophobia, radicalism, aggressions are spreading among young people. Media has an important role here, which unilaterally reveals political events and processes in today's world, and this one-sidedness is often associated with a semblance of rebroadcasting and the position of special political or ideological forces. Different methods of manipulation are used in media and in the Internet: visual, linguistic, stereotyping and demagogy methods. These manipulations are particularly dangerous in explaining the more acute issues that have emerged in recent years, such as defining common European values, objectively identifying military conflicts, clarifying political and social events, and the problem of migration. The idea of the project comes from the fact that today's young people are not so well-educated in this field and they need additional knowledge and additional experience. It affects both young people and youth workers. We considered it important to organize this project in an international level, because the problem that the project concerned has a widespread dissemination: the problems are not local but international. Objectives The aim of the project was to foster youth participation and develop youth citizenship, the formation of its active life and civil position through the exchange of positive experience and information in the field of media literacy and Internet competence, exhannge of experience and the ability to defend their point of view and resist propaganda and manipulation. Implementation This project consisted of 8 stages: • 1st stage - First Transnational Working Meeting. Preparation meeting in Poland with the coordinators of partner organisations. • 2nd stage - Transnational Learning Training. International training for youth workers and organisation's staff in Poland. Participants were trained on the topic of the project; received the necessary skills and information for the following stages of the project, discussed the realities of young people's participation in their countries, elaborated program of local seminars to discuss ways of involving young people. • 3rd stage - Transnational Advance Planning Working Meeting. Meeting of all project coordinators from 6 countries to discuss all questions about organisation of the following stages of the project. • 4th stage - Transnational Learning Training for participants from Poland, Germany, and Slovakia (was held in Poland, Warsaw). • 5th stage - Transnational Learning Training for participants from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (was held in Lithuania, Druskininkai). • 6th stage - Follow up activities in 5 countries - events for youth on the local level. Local activities are conducted by the participants of the Transnational training and seminars. Achievements Qualitative: • level of qualification of the participants on the project topics (skills) - in the opinion of the participants and the heads of the organization, the more competent and educated youth workers on the project topics are now engaged in the development of critical thinking and media literacy at the local and international level; • participants' critical thinking skills, ability to orient themselves in information flows - more competent and educated youth workers enable local youth to develop in this direction; • participants' ability to independently create personal mass media information - more competent and educated youth workers themselves create activities with a positive impact for the purpose of involving young people and organize youth-oriented training activities at the local level, as a result of which young people aged 13-30 can create information with the necessary impact; • compliance of the achieved goals with the expectations of the participants - the participants were informed about the content of the project and their participation in the events was conscious; project implementers and event organizers considered the expectations and needs of the participants. Quantitative: • number of young people who participated in the project - about 80 participants from the direct target group • a number of practical activities, projects initiated and implemented by the participants - local events took place in five of the six partner countries; after the completion of the project, the participants of the project have initiated 3 international Erasmus+ projects in the field of media • a number of young people who indirectly took part in the practical activities - in total, nearly 350 young people in 6 countries and around 500 users of the online handbook; • media coverage of the project - https://www.racyja.com/sumezhzha/mizhnarodny-adukatsyjny-trening-analyse-and-think-critical/, • posts on social media; • the goals were achieved (assessed on the basis of the price of the work team, on the basis of the opinion of the participants (survey)). • Compliance of the planned events (programs) with the implementation. (The assessment was carried out by comparing planned and realized). • Participants' activity, their motivation and contribution to the program. • Correspondence of planned and actual results. (assessed during the implementation of project stages, because each subsequent stage is a continuation of the previous stage, and the results of the previous stage are the necessary foundations for the implementation of the next stage). • Ongoing control was carried out by team members throughout the duration of the project. We evaluated the achievement of the goals and the results of the project with the help of the participants and coordinators, including the feedback we received for each event and at the meeting at the end of the project. We rate the project management at 4, the benefits and results of the entire project at 5.