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30 Aug 2015
Photo by: MDLAB<br />
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30 August 2015<br />
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Four Jordan Media Institute (JMI) students and a faculty member were in Beirut for two weeks of workshops and lectures on media literacy by international and Arab experts.<br />
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The team was part of more than 40 participants from eight Arab countries attending the sessions at the Media and Digital Literacy Academy of Beirut (MDLAB) from 9-23 August. The annual program at the American University of Beirut aims to advance digital and media literacy education in the Arab region by training a generation of teachers and scholars and developing locally-rooted curricula. <br />
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JMI students Ahmad Shahin, Abdallah Al Kafaween, Baker Abdalhaq and Mohammad Massad attended the sessions which tackled relevant issues such as media and terrorism, news framing, political economy of news, media and civic activism, digital media storytelling, media, gender and body image and Arab media literacy and sectarianism, extremism, war and terrorism. Speakers also highlighted the importance of media literacy in helping individuals access, analyze, decode and produce messages.<br />
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On the sidelines of the sessions, faculty members discussed ways to promote media literacy in their respective countries. They also stressed the importance of developing curricula in Arabic in order to introduce media literacy education into schools and universities. <br />
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The academy was founded by Dr. Jad Melki who is also a frequent lecturer at JMI and winner of the 2015 UNESCO Global Media and Information Literacy Award. He described media literacy as a brand of media education for all members of society that focuses on critical thinking and empowering citizens in a digital era. "Our goal is to get each Arab country by the end of this decade to have at least one school and one university that offers media literacy as a core curriculum," he added. <br />
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Abdalhaq said the sessions were extremely useful and his participation gave him the opportunity to meet journalists and academics from different parts of the Arab world.<br />
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While Massad described his experience as exemplary and helped him expand his academic and practical knowledge to new levels. At the end of the program the students presented their graduation projects that focused on creative ways to use digital media to counter terrorists’ media messages.<br />
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This is the third successive participation by JMI students in the MDLAB which also teaches digital media skills, such as blogging, podcasting, audio and photo editing, comparative news analysis, social network analysis and data visualization. <br />
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Another JMI student had also participated in a three-week program at the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change which focused on how digital media can tackle issues of both local and global concern. <br />