Abstract:

Mediatisation is a process whereby the mass media influence other sectors of society, including politics, business, culture etc., a term that invokes both the ubiquity and pervasiveness of media in the contemporary world. From the macro-institutions that structure society to the nooks and crannies of our everyday lives, media have become an omnipresent element. As our lives go online and screen time increases, there is no doubt that the information society is changing the way we live and interact and, consequently challenge our core values. Thus, New media are driving new practices that are profoundly affecting almost any aspect of the social, economic, cultural and political life and learning.

The more pervasive the role of the new media in modern society, the more it is imperative to identify and manage the development of the skills and the abilities to use them. Thus, media literacy is a field that has grown rapidly in recent years, both in the academic and the policy discourses, and which will become even more important in the future, as “new” media – notably digital communications, the internet and mobile devices – become almost universal.

In this paper we present the results of an international Erasmus+ Project, „European SafeOnline Initiative”, ESOI in short (https://europeansafeonline.eu/). The aim of the ESOI project is the improvement of media literacy levels among children and young people through the extensive media literacy education of their parents. Instead of attempting the development of a pilot experimentation project, ESOI project proposes the scaling up of a recognized and proven innovation in the field of media literacy, namely the Flemish SafeOnline Initiative.

The Flemish SafeOnline Training Initiative was replicated in five national contexts the French-speaking part of Belgium - the Walloon Region, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus), and covered the following thematic areas: social media, online relations and sexuality, internet and privacy, gaming and cyberbullying. More than 2500 parents and teachers participated in the project trainings.

The ESOI project results shown us that the participants updated their knowledge on contemporary media used by children and adolescents and their role in their lives; changed their attitudes towards the role, importance and future implications of contemporary media and undertake a series of actions in order to promote media literacy among the population of young children and adolescents.

Keywords:

Safeonline, European project, parents, children.