Australian adults have a low level of confidence in their media literacy abilities. What can we do about it? By Natalie Hambly.
I was recently volunteering at a trade show where I had an encounter with a man and his young son that has stayed with me, and that I want to share with you now.
I was there ostensibly to promote a series of short courses, but as luck would have it, my stall was located next to the last stop on a children’s treasure hunt.
The kids had faithfully toured the expo, collecting clues, and before they could hand in their sheets for a prize they had to answer one last question: What did you enjoy most about the show?
Because of this, my neighbouring stall quickly became the table of choice to fill in that final answer, and as the morning progressed I soon had a queue of families hovering nearby.
To be honest, I didn’t mind. My son is a too-cool-for-school teenager now, and it isn’t often I have opportunities to interact with eight-year-olds – an age where they are bursting with energy and curiosity. Their parents also looked like they could use some adult interaction.
By mid-afternoon there was a lull in the crowd, and that was when a father and his son stopped by my table. The son was six or seven, and therefore not quite old enough to write his own answers.
“I’m not that good at spelling”
As the dad was filling in that all-important final answer he looked at me and said sheepishly: “I’m not very good at spelling.” And sure enough, when I checked their sheet, he did have some errors. I pointed out where he needed to swap out a couple of letters, and then they shuffled off and collected the son’s prize.
Long after they left centre and stepped back into the sunshine of Sydney’s western suburbs, I was still sitting at the stall, thinking about them.
I first was struck by the man’s willingness to share that vulnerability, which can’t have been easy, and noted that it was driven by an admirable desire to support his child. (We really all do want to do the best by our kids, and there is nothing like parenting to force us to come face to face with our limitations, whatever they may be.) But more than that, it served as a reminder that there are people – adults and children – slipping through the cracks when it comes to literacy.
I am sharing this story with you because last month a client of ours published a report that we had a hand in copyediting. It is the Adult Media Literacy Survey Report, published by Western Sydney University. The researchers surveyed nearly 4000 Australian adults and found that respondents overall had a low level of confidence in their media literacy abilities.
Australians are worried about misinformation
When faced with 11 potential tasks, such as finding information online, changing a privacy setting, and checking if a website can be trusted, the adults surveyed only felt confident in performing four of those tasks. They also reported concern about falling prey to misinformation, particularly on social media.
The conclusion of the report – a piece of work that we are proud to have supported – is that both children and adults need access to media literacy programs, ideally in the form of easily accessible online tutorials.
That need was brought home to me during my time at that expo. Erin, myself and the rest of the Good Prose Studios team have built our careers on specialist literacy and media literacy skills. Any skill requires constant practice. It’s easy to see how, with the rapid pace of technology, that people can get left behind when it comes to media literacy, or fail to ever launch. Anyone who struggles with basic reading and writing is at a distinct disadvantage.
At the bottom of our emails you will see the tagline “we work with words”. In fact, “we work with words” across a vast range of storytelling platforms – books, magazines, podcasts, training courses, film and video. We can take these skills for granted, but we shouldn’t. Together we have decades of experience in understanding and navigating the world of words and media, both online and offline. Expertise that we now offer our clients.
I don’t know if I convinced any of the adults to enrol in one of the short courses that day, but I really liked the son’s answer to that final question. When asked what he most enjoyed about the show, he responded (with the help of his father), “Learning new things”. And those are words to live by.
