The Workshop
Join us for a free workshop on Media Freedoms and Media Literacies, to be led by Janette Ballard. Just sign up on this page!
Join us for a free workshop on Media Freedoms and Media Literacies, to be led by Janette Ballard. Just sign up on this page!
Janette is an award winning journalist and documentary film director with a 20 year career at the BBC.
Janette supported ‘Reality Check’ – the BBC’s fact checking service – in establishing a broad, global agenda, marking the start of her journey into tackling ‘fake news’. She went on to launch all the BBC’s audience-facing media/news literacy programmes including for Young Reporter (UK) and Beyond Fake News (Kenya, Nigeria, India, Brazil, Serbia).
Leading the BBC into their first external partnerships in media literacy she has collaborated with the British Council, Guiding Association and Internews among others. Now, as consultant and trainer, Janette spends her time and energy on projects which best reflect her values and interests, supporting people to seek and speak ‘truth’ – for want of a better word!
What does it mean for you, me, everyone and anyone to have a smart device in our hands? What does it give? And what does it take away?
GenZ – what’s in your hands? is a two hour, in-person workshop designed to think, explore and discuss the digital world and our relationship with it. Following three themes of usability, responsibility and reliability, participants will be challenged to think deeply, laterally, forward and backwards about the media, news media and social media.
It’s all about the questions – since without questions there are no answers. Here are some questions we can tackle during the workshop: What is the media? Who is the media? What value does social media bring? What do I add to it? Who can I trust? Why do I do about what I don’t trust? Who trusts me?
Group exercises, case studies, breakouts and brain storms, scenarios and a working journalist take us through a story they produced and engage participants to explore and develop their own abilities, responsibilities and reliabilities.
For those who like a shopping list, here’s what you could walk away with; practical tools to assess and verify information, ways of framing and managing your participation, increased knowledge of how media and social media works, understanding of a range of issues for GenZ and info tech, familiarity with some of the ethical and values questions that social media poses, ideas to tackle the challenges and embrace the utility of the smart mobile device. And confidence to keep asking uncomfortable questions.
That is certainly our shopping list – since we hope to learn as much as everyone else.
Date: 15th January, 2022, starting at 10.00 CET
Venue: Valletta Design Cluster, Friggieri Hall
Programme: GenZ – What’s in your hands?
Media, news and digital literacy are not magic wands, but part of a set of tools available to us to manage the baffling media landscape of today, where the line has blurred between content consumer and producer. I operate in this space to give people the confidence to navigate and thrive in an increasingly hybrid media landscape. After 20 years as a journalist and film director at the BBC, I am still sometimes persuaded to re-enter the media environment and direct a documentary. And yet, the ‘traditional media’, as we knew it, is constantly under pressure to change and adapt to the needs of the people formerly known as the audience, if it wishes to remain relevant. Particularly if it wishes to operate as a public good.