MIL – an obscure youth slang term or a topical issue these days?
Every day, we are bombarded with an immeasurable amount of information: articles on various news portals, advertisements on social networks, flyers on the street, stories told by friends—all of this conveys various messages to us. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to distinguish information that is relevant to us and not get lost in the constant flow of news, i.e., to be literate in the field of media and information.
What is media and information literacy and why is it important to talk about it?
Everything you see on the internet, on television, in the press, or hear on the radio can be defined in one word: media. These main channels bring us huge flows of information that need to be properly managed. This is where the concept of media and information literacy (MIL) comes in. What does it mean? In short, it is the ability to obtain, evaluate, select, and use the necessary information from various sources in an ethical and responsible manner. Obtaining information is not difficult, but there are challenges in understanding it properly – distinguishing between truth and falsehood, selecting relevant and reliable sources, interpreting them, and asking the right questions when trying to comprehend the information.
Why is it important to be media literate?
As the nature of information and how it is obtained changes, the importance of media and information literacy increases. Our social, cultural, economic, and political lives have become inseparable from information and communication technologies. Young people are most exposed to the media and learn to use it easily, so this topic should be particularly relevant to us, young people. Every time we prepare a presentation at school or university, we have to think about whether the information on Wikipedia is reliable, ask ourselves whether we are doing the right thing by copying and pasting someone else’s text or choosing any photo from the internet. Various rules also apply on the internet, and failure to comply with them can have serious consequences. We must also consider that the information we publish ourselves may fall into the wrong hands or be plagiarized. In order to be safe on the internet, we must ensure this safety ourselves – by constantly developing our critical thinking and improving our media literacy. This is a challenge for us and our teachers, and today it is more important than ever to accept and overcome this challenge.