Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship Pilot Program

The overarching purpose of the project is to develop young people’s knowledge and critical literacy skills to recognise and build resilience to manipulative online influences that encourage them to think and behave in risky ways. The project also emphasises the positive dimensions of supporting young people’s development as capable and critically literate users of digital media.

The project requires deep knowledge of the challenges presented by the use of social media and the internet on processes of radicalisation and the nature of social media and digital culture, and their place in young people’s lives. The design, which nests the pilot within rigorous research and the expertise of the assembled team with respect to teaching and learning, media education and the challenges of online radicalisation and recruitment, provides a highly focused and powerful combination of skills to achieve this.

This research takes place as a result of successful tender with the Victorian state government. The research component is designed to produce a report that will assist the Victorian government (Community Resilience & Social Inclusion Branch, Department of Premier & Cabinet) to understand the challenges presented by the use of social media and the internet on processes of online radicalisation, to develop and support strategies to enable young people to be active and agential in their social media awareness and use, and to produce and pilot year a series of classroom materials for use at year 7, together with visits to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.