66 Students, One Mission - Improve Global Media Literacy and Change the World

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Aug 28, 2013
by Louise Hallman
66 Students, One Mission - Improve Global Media Literacy and Change the World

Media Academy students aim to raise awareness on forced marriage, labor rights, attacks on journalists and more

Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, class of 2013

Sixty-six students of eighteen nationalities from fourteen colleges*, together for three weeks with one goal: to enhance the understanding of media literacy – both their own and others’ – and ultimately change their local and global communities.

Over the course of the three-week program of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, the international cohort of students listened to lectures, took part in skills workshops, discussed issues in small group sessions, and ultimately produced case studies to aid the understanding of how the world’s media cover various issues, from how social media can give voice to LGBT communities across the world – and why we should be wary of what we share online, to how media impacts men’s body image and how digital media can help raise awareness of women’s rights.

Now in its seventh year, the Salzburg Academy began in 2007 as a partnership between the Salzburg Global Seminar and the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland, but quickly attracted partner universities from across the world that are home to leading journalism and communications schools.

In previous years students have worked together to contribute to one large research project, including exploring mobile information habits of university students around world and analyzing the global media coverage of the Beijing and London Olympics.

This year students worked in smaller groups to develop in-depth case studies within the areas of media and socio-political change, media innovation, and open data.

Through their case studies, small groups of students were tasked with identifying an issue of interest; critically analyzing how the media covers that issue; compiling resources for others to understand the issue; developing lesson plans and educational exercises so that peers or younger students can learn about the issue; and presenting the case study in the form of an essay, an infographic or a video.

  • The resulting case studies covered a wide variety of topics, including:
  • The promotion of women’s rights through social media
  • Entertainment television as an agent for political change
  • The use of social media to provide a voice to LGBT communities around the world Global self-censorship in Lebanon, Mexico, China, Hong Kong and Slovakia

The students also made awareness-raising videos on:

Love as a human right

Child brides and forced marriage

Social media and privacy

Social media

Labor rights violations

Attacks on journalists

The influence of the media on men's body image

The importance of open data

Social media for change: Tweeting against online sexism

This year’s program not only covered and built on previous years’ curricula on media and visual literacy (which has been compiled in the book News Literacy: Global Perspectives for the Newsroom and the Classroom, edited by Program Director, Paul Mihailidis), but also covered the interconnected themes of reporting in the age of open data, digital media and social movements, and digital media and urban innovation.

The program was led by faculty from partner universities, as well as guest lecturers including games researcher and designer Eric Gordon, from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; Slate magazine’s foreign and politics editor, Will Dobson; and award-winning documentary maker Sanjeev Chatterjee.

Students tackled the topics of global citizenship, the myths and realities of globalization, the universality of media standards, empowerment through media, media entrepreneurship, social media and diversity networks, the media’s role in covering conflict and justice, challenges to freedom of expression, and community outreach.

Inspiring Change

Since undertaking the three-week program, in addition to improving their media literacy, many of the students felt inspired to make some sort of change.

For some it was on a personal level, like Paulina Klaucova, from the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius.

“I have to change my habits; I have to study more about what’s going on in the world, and then talk about it to other people. But first I have to change myself and my point of view, and then I can change the bigger things,” said Paulina.

University of Maryland broadcast major Samantha Medney intends to join J-Street - an organization for Jewish and Arab students to join together and talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - upon her return to the USA.

“[Salzburg] has really opened my eyes; you might think that you have a certain position on something, but if you really opened your eyes and really got to know individuals from certain countries, you’d realize that there’s really a broader context going on.”

Other students now feel inspired to try to change and raise awareness at their university, like at Bournemouth University.

“We want to set up a society which looks each week at global issues and discusses how we can make people in our country more aware of them, and create discussion about things that people might not know about,” explained second year multimedia journalism student Jessica Long.

Other students left with even bigger ambitions. International relations major Ryan Shingledecker from University of Texas at Austin, chose the Salzburg program to fill his compulsory study abroad credits because of his interest in the growing power of social media, something he hopes to now harness to help in developing countries.

“I’ve always been passionate about going and working with people in developing countries,” explained Ryan.

“And I now know different tools that I can use to go and make a change in these countries, where before one person couldn’t do a whole lot, but now somebody can.”

Maya Majzoub, one of the 25 American University in Beirut students at this year's Academy, echoed the thoughts of many of her fellow Salzburg graduates when she said she now feels inspired and empowered to make change happen.

“It’s not just the academics that stick in my mind; it’s about the social interaction, the feeling that you can do something. I’m coming back to Lebanon and all my thoughts are all on what I can do to change something about my community,” she said.

“I’m going to invest everything I learned here [in Salzburg] in my job [as a reporter]. I’ve always had this feeling that I want to change something in my community, but now I’m empowering myself with the tools, and I feel that the Salzburg media program has given me insight on what to do next – how to use media production in changing something.”

As it has been from the start, the Salzburg Academy is not just “on Media”, but also “Global Change”, and in the words of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, chair of the first ever session of Salzburg Global Seminar: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”


A selection of photographs from the 2013 Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change are available on Flickr

Winning entries from the 2013 Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change photography contest are available on Facebook

A selection of student-made videos from the 2013 Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change are available on YouTube

*Participating universities this year were: American University of Beirut, Lebanon; Bournemouth University, UK; Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China SAR; Daystar University, Kenya; Emerson College, USA; Jordan Media Institute, Jordan; Pontifica Universidad Catolica, Argentina; Southwest University of Politics and Law, China; Tsinghua University, China; Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico; University of Maryland, College Park, USA; University of Miami, USA; University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Slovakia; and University of Texas at Austin, USA.