Human Rights and Media Literacy

The freedoms of expression, information, and opinion, as Rights enshrined in Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights will only be fully exercised if the citizens have high levels of media literacy, which implies:

1. being able to search, store, organise, share, quote, process, and assess pertinent information, aware of the sources’ credibility;
2. critically understanding the media and the media messages to understand who produces what, for whom and how;
3. being able to express and communicate ideas through the creative and responsible use of the media, engaging in effective civic participation..

This learning touches on matters such as information literacy, image literacy, media literacy (including social media), ethics in publishing in the public space, and the rights and duties of citizens in the digital world, which are fundamental for civic, creative and responsible interaction in the information and media ecosystem, sometimes harmful and always present in our daily life.

In this way, Media Literacy is taken on at a national and international level as a strategic factor for citizens’ training and an important challenge for public policy in the fields of educaiton, culture, media, the information society, and citizenship.

Accordingly, the Secretariat-General of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (SGPCM), via the International Relations and Communication Department (DSRIC), is on the Informal Group on Media Literacy (GILM).

This group comprises 13 public bodies with powers in education, culture, media, and technology. Its mission is to promote projects and indicatives for teaching media literacy in Portugal, of which we note the annual “7 Days with the Media” operation and the biennial hosting of the “Literacy, Media and Citizenship” congress.

In addition to the Informal Group on Media Literacy, the SGPCM/ DSRIC has two standing partnerships with the School Libraries Network (RBE), with a view to launching the (Media@ction) School Competition, and with the Portuguese National commission for UNESCO (CNU), to award on an annual basis the Journalism Prize for “Human Rights and Integration”.