National Plan for Media Literacy starts this year

Pedro Adão e Silva was speaking to journalists before the sixth edition of the Literacy, Media and Citizenship Congress, which started today at the Superior School of Social Communication of the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, in Benfica, whose motto was chosen by GILM – Informal Group on Literacy for Media is “Digital Transition and Public Policy”, and ends on Saturday

“We are going to start a National Plan for Media Literacy this year, 2023, it is a Government commitment”, said the Governor, noting that “there was an option to integrate the National Plan for Media Literacy into the National Reading Plan” for two reasons .

“Because, on the one hand, the duplication of structures did not seem effective and, on the other hand, it allows us to take advantage of the capillarity of the network associated with the National Reading Plan, both the network in schools and in libraries”, which “allows us to reach a vast group of the population and that is what we are going to work on, this is really a fundamental issue for the preservation of public space in liberal societies”, continued the minister.

This plan is not only aimed at the school-age population, because it takes advantage of the capillarity that exists in the structure of the National Reading Plan.

Asked when it starts, the minister only said that it will be this year and “it is a plan that will recognize a legacy of work in this area that already has many, many years”, taking advantage of this legacy.

“We shouldn’t always be starting all over again in public policies, we should take advantage of what has already been done”, defended the minister.

Media literacy, he added, “is a topic that is not new, disinformation is not an evil that has arrived in recent years with social networks and online, it has a long history, with enormous consequences for liberal democracies throughout the 20th century”, says Pedro Adão e Silva.

Currently, they have “distinctive characteristics from the past, which essentially correspond to a decline in intermediation institutions in our societies, confidence in intermediation institutions, firstly the role of the media and journalists, but also of universities. This is very important. important and implies, on the one hand, knowledge and reflection on what are the mechanisms that exist today from the point of view of disinformation and, on the other hand, capacity for action”, he concluded.

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