Welcome to the MLI Monthly Update!
Have something you want to share with the membership? Tell us about it by emailing us at info@medialiteracyireland.ie. We are particularly interested in including your resources in our new resources section of the MLI website.
The content in this newsletter is a collection of media literacy related news and information from a wide range of sources and inclusion does not imply the endorsement of Media Literacy Ireland.
This Month in Media Literacy
The big news this month is that the MLI Awards are now open for entries. There are six categories this year. Closing date for entries is 4 September, but don’t leave it until the last minute to enter. Journalists feature heavily in this month’s edition. There is a national survey to assess the mental health of Irish journalists; the publication of the Media Pluralism Monitor; and a call for participants for the Youth Facing Disinformation – Why Journalists Matter event in Strasbourg. There is also a feature on empowering disabled people through AI, and a five-part series focussed on the need for better representation of disabled people in media. For readers who are trying balance screen time and hands-on family fun, Google provides some helpful tips. Read on for lots more media literacy related news, events and information.
Announcements
The 2026 MLI Awards are open
This year’s Media Literacy Ireland Awards are now open for entries. Submissions are invited in six categories, with the aim of recognising the great work that is being undertaken across Ireland to help people, especially within communities, develop the media literacy skills they need to make the best use of media. The deadline for entries is Friday, 4 September. Don’t leave it until the last minute!
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National survey to explore the mental health of Irish journalists
Shine’s Media Programme and Maynooth University are inviting journalists and media workers from across Ireland to participate in a new national survey examining mental health, wellbeing and the realities of reporting on mental illness in today’s media landscape. The study seeks to better understand the challenges facing journalists and identify practical actions that can strengthen supports, training and workplace wellbeing across the sector.
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Mapping risks for the safety of journalists across Europe
The Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) is a comprehensive tool that analyses more than 200 variables per country to assess media conditions across Europe. It takes into account not just press freedom and the safety of journalists – which remain essential – but also the financial health of the media sector, patterns of media ownership and their influence on editorial independence, inclusivity within the media, and much more. You can view the 2026 results for Ireland here.
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Empowering disabled people through AI literacy: Introducing AILiFE+
AILiFE+ (Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Inclusion, Futures and Employment) is a project that combines academic expertise with lived experience of disability to bridge research and reality. The project aims to co-design practical workshops and rights-based, accessible digital education grounded in disabled people’s perspectives, priorities, and needs, with a focus on enhancing workforce readiness through AI literacy.
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Access Media Series asks who gets to tell disabled people’s stories
Access Media is a five-part online series, running from July to November, that explores how disabled people are represented in Irish media and what needs to change. Funded by Coimisiún na Meán under its Media Skills and Development Programme, the sessions have been created by Disabled Women Ireland and the Disability Participation News Hub and will feature webinars and panels on the challenges and opportunities for disabled people in accessing and working in media spaces, and what can be done to further inclusion and representation.
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Balancing screen time and hands-on family fun
Summer holidays bring a familiar seasonal challenge for parents and carers: managing digital screen time. Rather than treating device usage purely as a distraction, digital tools can be a launchpad for curiosity, hands-on learning, and real-world play. Google and YouTube have highlighted three practical approaches to help families establish healthy digital habits while keeping children active and engaged all summer long.
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SharedTime Newsletter Project for families
SharedTime is an EU-funded project built around a newsletter for families, designed to help them explore and better understand the digital world. It encourages children aged 8–12 years to develop critical and safe online habits, while bringing adults and young people together to navigate the digital environment and build media literacy and critical thinking skills. The platform is free to sign up and the newsletter is delivered to your inbox monthly.
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Survey to help combat disinformation and deepfakes
Cheap, fast, and highly sophisticated, AI tools are reshaping how disinformation and deepfakes spread. To assess the real-world impact of AI-generated disinformation and find out if people can spot fakes, Cantivia, an Irish research group founded by three secondary-school students, has created an anonymous three-minute survey, the results of which will help inform ways to build better defences.
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Financial literacy update
The intersection between media and information literacy and financial literacy is closer than you might think, especially in areas such as the impact of AI and the critical need to develop digital knowledge and resilience. For more information about what is happening in the financial literacy space, take a look at the What’s News in Financial Literacy newsletter which is hosted on the recently updated National Financial Literacy Strategy website.
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Choosing digital tools in the age of AI
When choosing which digital tools we want to use, there are economic, labour, cultural/social, political and ecological issues that we should consider. Tactical Tech has created a comprehensive set of questions to help guide that decision-making process.
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Calls to the Media Literacy Community
Call for papers: 3rd FuJo PhD Conference 2026
The Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society (FuJo) at Dublin City University is inviting submissions for the 3rd FuJo PhD Conference 2026, which will take place on Friday, 4 September. The conference provides a platform for PhD researchers from across the island of Ireland to present their research, exchange ideas, and engage in interdisciplinary discussions on the evolving relationship between media, democracy, and society. The deadline for submissions is 2 August.
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Applications open: Grants for the Journalism Trust Initiative certification audit
The Collaborative and Investigative Journalism Initiative, co-funded by the European Union, invites media outlets to apply for grants towards their Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) certification audit. JTI is an international ISO-type standard that promotes good governance, self-regulation, and independence in journalism and six grants are available with amounts ranging between €1,500 and €5,000. Applications are open until 11 August.
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Call for participants: Youth Facing Disinformation – Why Journalists Matter
The call is now open for young participants, project leaders, journalists, creators and experts for a high-level conference and interactive workshops exploring disinformation, media literacy, journalists’ safety and youth storytelling. This Strasbourg-based event combines dialogue, practical exercises and exchanges with leading professionals. Applications close on 1 September.
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Research and Reports
Successes and challenges from the EDMO Hub Network (2023–2025)
Between April 2023 and April 2025, the 14 national and regional hubs of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) implemented hundreds of media literacy activities across Europe. The bi-monthly reporting collected throughout this period provides a unique snapshot of how media literacy is evolving across Europe, with the findings revealing growing demand, innovative practices, and persistent structural challenges related to funding, engagement, evaluation and sustainability.
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UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI
The Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI: Evidence-based assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts of AI is a first-of-its-kind independent scientific assessment of the capabilities, emerging opportunities and risks of AI. The panel, composed of independent scientists and experts from all five UN regions, outlined trends in AI and warned that current safeguards cannot keep pace with the growth of AI’s capabilities.
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European Parliament resolution on media literacy and digital learning
On 7 July, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on a strategy for media literacy and digital learning. The text highlights the fundamental importance of media literacy and digital learning as core competences in modern society and as cornerstones of resilient democracies. It makes a comprehensive series of recommendations for Member States to strengthen the pillars of the modern media ecosystem and promote a holistic and future-oriented education system.
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Ofcom Report: Media Nations 2026
Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report aims to capture evolving consumer behaviours and key trends in the media sector and to set out how audiences are served in the UK. The 2026 report shows that broadcaster content still accounts for the majority of video watched in UK homes, despite the continued rise of streaming and video-sharing platforms.
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Key Partner Updates
EDMO is an EU-wide network of factcheckers, media literacy practitioners and researchers seeking to build resilience to disinformation. EDMO Ireland developed the Be Media Smart ‘Workshop in a Box’, works on media literacy research and standards, and co-hosts the annual Disinformation Forum with MLI. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland’s agency for developing and regulating a thriving, diverse, creative, safe and trusted media landscape. Coimisiún na Meán funds and facilitates MLI, and promotes media literacy initiatives for individuals, communities, policymakers and institutions.
EDMO Ireland Updates
EDMO Ireland partners at TheJournal FactCheck have been writing about controversial plans for ‘chat control’ and viral misinformation about the hot weather. EDMO Ireland is promoting a survey on deepfake detection by students who won the Engineers Ireland STEPS Award. EDMO researchers were at the IAMCR conference to present work on the impact of disinformation and media literacy needs. Finally, DCU FuJo’s Media Literacy Incubator event took place in DCU on 30 July.
Coimisiún na Meán Updates
Coimisiún na Meán opened applications this month for its Community Media Scheme, which invites submissions from existing licenced community television and radio broadcasters and aims to support a sustainable, inclusive and participative community media sector that delivers social benefit for communities across Ireland.
In the guides and resources section of its website, Coimisiún na Meán continues to update its step-by-step ‘How to Report’ guides to help users navigate the reporting mechanisms for harmful and illegal content on a number of major online platforms. In addition, new Student FAQs have just been published, aimed in particular at Leaving Certificate Politics and Society students but also useful for students of CSPE, SPHE and Digital Media Literacy.
Events
Webinar: Financial Manipulation: How money, markets and misinformation intersect online – 23 September
Financial markets have become increasingly intertwined with social media, AI, and digital platforms, creating new opportunities for participation but also new risks for manipulation and misinformation. A Media & Learning Association webinar on 23 September will explore how financial manipulation operates in today’s digital ecosystem and examine the tactics used to influence investment behaviour.
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Save the date: Disinfo2026 – 7–8 October
The counter-disinformation community will meet for #Disinfo2026 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The main conference days on 7–8 October will feature a full programme of sessions in a variety of formats, and pre-conference workshops will be organised on 6 October. Registration for the event is now open.
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Save the Date: MLA4MedLit online conference – 23 October
In 2026, Meda & Learning Association’s annual conference – MLA4MedLit 2026: Whose Literacy? Whose Rights? Interrogating Digital and Media Literacy for Everyone – turns a critical eye on the media literacy field itself. As media literacy becomes an ever more central pillar of digital citizenship and societal resilience, the conference will invite participants to question some of the field’s own assumptions about who is being reached, who is being left out, and who gets to decide what ‘literacy for everyone’ really means.
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In Case You Missed It
Webinar: China’s AI strategy and its impact on the global information space – 2 July
An EU Disinfo Lab webinar on 2 July explored the question of whether European software built on cheap Chinese AI models can be trusted. The session outlined how state-approved narratives are encoded into large language models and examined practical steps that European policymakers, developers, and other stakeholders can take to mitigate FIMI-related risks associated with Chinese AI models and to safeguard information integrity.
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Policing of social media algorithms – 3 July
Following the European Court of Justice ruling that an online platform can be held responsible for content it stores and shares if it has control over it, Newstalk Breakfast discussed the policing of social media algorithms with Dr. Tyler West, Communications and Media Lecturer at Dublin City University.
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Protecting young people from online harm in an open and safe public sphere – 10 June
Children and young people are increasingly exposed to a wide range of online harms. Digital platforms remain essential spaces for learning, culture, democratic participation and freedom of expression. Balancing protection from harm with the safeguarding of fundamental rights is therefore a central policy challenge. The European Audiovisual Observatory explored this and other questions at their Oslo conference.
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2025 MLA4MedLit conference – 17 October 2025
The 2025 MLA4MedLit conference – the Media & Learning Association’s annual online event – examined how digital and media literacy can strengthen democracy, foster civic participation, and empower people of all ages to navigate today’s increasingly complex information landscape. The conference theme Building Societal Resilience through Digital and Media Literacy for Everyone was inspired by a growing recognition that the health of our democracies depends on an informed and engaged citizenry. Recordings of conference sessions are now available to view here.
Resource of the Month
Hi Digital: Building confidence and connection for older people
As more everyday services move online, digital confidence has become central to participation in society but, for many older people, the pace of change can feel overwhelming. To help address the challenge of digital exclusion, Hi Digital – Vodafone Foundation’s national digital skills programme – combines online learning with trusted, face-to-face community support. The free HiDigital e-learning platform offers bite-sized lessons including information on how to use smartphones and apps, staying secure online, creating an email and other essential everyday skills.
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Looking for media literacy resources?
The resources section of the MLI website provides easy access to a variety of resources on a wide range of media literacy topics. You can now filter by topic, target audience and resource type. If you would like to submit a resource for inclusion in this library, please complete this form.
Thanks for reading!
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Kind regards,
The MLI Team
