Ofcom unveils new strategy to boost media literacy

Ofcom has published a new three-year media literacy strategy in a bid to help people stay safe online.

The new plan aims to “empower everyone to flourish online and navigate content safely”, the regulator said, spans a range of areas including digital inclusion to research.

The strategy comes after a report by Audit Scotland revealed a significant digital divide north of the border, with one in six lacking the digital skills needed for everyday life.  

The communications watchdog has also announced four major online services have backed its best practice principles for media literacy by design, which it published earlier this year.

Google Search, The LEGO Group, Pinterest and online game platform Roblox have all pledged to improve and adapt their approach to media literacy, the regulator said.

The four companies have committed to becoming accountable for prioritising media literacy on-platform, and increasing transparency surrounding what works; developing user-centric design and timely ways to put user needs at the centre of the design process; as well as evaluating media literacy activities regularly.

“While Ofcom has an important role to play, media literacy must be the responsibility of everyone – online platforms in particular, but also parents, educators, third-sector organisations, providers of health and social care, professionals working with children, and others,” the regulator said.

As part of their pledge, the four firms have also submitted examples of how they are implementing media literacy by design on their services, and areas they would like to focus on in the future. These examples will serve as a benchmark against which future progress can be kept under review.

The LEGO Group, for instance, has developed a digital empowerment portfolio which offers children and families free online activities for them to build digital literacy skills together. The portfolio includes story-style ‘Build & Talk’ activities, created for children aged six to nine years old to support families to discuss digital safety in a playful way.

Since 2021, its digital empowerment campaigns have reached more than 250 million adultscross the world. And, within the coming year, the toy production firm looks to expand integrating its media literacy skill-building elements into its commercial products.

Meanwhile Google Search, currently offers both off-platform training such as its ‘Super Searchers’ initiative, which educates users on how to examine and analyse the content they find online, as well as in-product features, known as advanced technology tools (ATX), like ‘About this image’ or ‘About this page’, which provide on-demand contextual information about content that appears in the platform.

The online tool now aims to expand its “ATX” product portfolio to more markets and languages and scale up its Super Searchers initiative, so it reaches more than one million users.