Critical Media Literacies: Collaboration and Partnership

“We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.” –Jo Cox “The BAI has chosen to publish this document in the spirit of collaboration and in the hope that the framework will help all stakeholders and recognise what role they can play and identify opportunities for collaboration” -Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Media Literacy Policy Critical Media Literacies: Collaboration and Partnership with Information Literacy Sarah-Anne Kennedy, Assistant Librarian, DIT Library Services Roisin Guilfoyle, Assistant Librarian, DIT Library Services. Both Librarians and Academics working in media disciplines are involved in teaching literacies. Collaboration and partnership are required between the professions to achieve the goal of empowering and facilitating global graduates with a new 21st Century Literacy. Academics are primarily concerned with teaching Media Literacy (ML) and Critical Media Literacy (CML). Librarians are concerned primarily with Information Literacy (IL). While they are two different fields of study with different definitions, academic traditions and roles they share a common goal of equipping students with similar core competencies and skills to find, critique, evaluate and ethically use media and information in an ever changing environment. Both professions are interested in empowering students to develop skills to find and evaluate quality information not only for academic purposes but also in their roles as citizens to create an equal and truthful society. By focusing on the different definitions, both groups of professionals are in danger of working in silos. Rather than focusing on ML and CML as a subset or separate to IL we are suggesting that we view CML and IL as essential and related literacies under the umbrella of the DIT graduate attribute, Digital Literacy. By mapping CML and IL against each other using The Seven Elements of Digital Literacies model (see figure 1) we can enable cooperation between CML and IL. In a world of fake news and alternative facts, it is imperative that Librarians and Academics partner together to deliver a blended learning environment that delivers the core competencies required by media students