Media Literacy is broadly considered a crucial skill for citizens to critically navigate information sources , be they shared online, on social media or through other channels. Yet current initiatives to promote media literacy have not yet delivered sufficient action to bring about the systemic change necessary. Educators must be adequately equipped to teach media literacy to turn their students into conscious and critical citizens. “Watching Videos Like a Historian” will radically increase the number of well-informed, media literate young citizens. The project delivers ways of teaching history and citizenship with trustworthy audiovisual (AV) heritage resources from broadcasters and archives that engage students across the EU to critically reflect on the past.The project unites local history and citizenship educators and AV collection holders to develop, implement and evaluate tailored educational solutions that are aligned in their local educational contexts, and can be scaled up easily. This is done through: (1) research on functional and didactical requirements, (2) development of tools and integration in existing platforms (3) capacity building of educators and AV collection holders and (4) ignite an awareness campaign on the value of media literacy through historic and civics lenses. Through these actions, all educators in Europe will have free access to new research and resources that they can use to promote media literacy, and at least 1.000 educators will have gained the capacity to use AV material in a profoundly impactful way. The partners will have gained new insights which will enable them to reach and support more teachers in the future. Three European NGOs in the core consortium - EuroClio, the Europeana Foundation and the EUscreen Foundation will align their strategic planning with the outcomes of this project. This partnership represents over 40,000 educators and 50 AV collection holders and provides access to over 50 million objects.

The “innovative methodS for Media & Information Literacy Education involving schools and librarieS” (SMILES) project will address the topic of media literacy and combating fake news in Europe, with a strong focus on digital media use and COVID-19. Following the rise of fake news and disinformation, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a strong urgency for the participating organisations to develop and test new methods for media and information literacy. Representing libraries, media literacy organisations and a research institute, the consortium is determined to contribute to a safer and more responsible use of digital technology, particularly amongst young people. The SMILES project aims to test innovative educational approaches in the form of fake news workshops at secondary schools held by school teachers and librarians, and monitor their effectiveness. The project method is to deploy a 'train the trainer' approach, in which school teachers and librarians are equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills and materials to deliver workshops to secondary school pupils (age 12-15). Concretely, 60 school teachers and librarians are trained in organising ‘fake news’ workshops to young people; and they will organise the workshops at secondary schools in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands for 600 participating young people.In order to reach the overall objective to enhance the digital readiness of secondary schools and empower young people to critially use digital technology, the consortium will develop three Intellectual Outputs. A Baseline study will be conducted in the three countries to research and connect different educational approaches in Europe, enabling the development of a shared methodology on fake news workshops (intellectual output 1). Based on the results of intellectual output 1, the SMILES training programme to promote the safe and responsible use of digital media tools will be developed and deployed, including the production of a manual for trainers and a digital toolkit (intellectual output 2). Finally, the project partners will develop a report on the effectiveness of the workshops and tested methodology in the three countries (intellectual output 3). As part of the project, transnational meetings and dissemination activities will lead to a sharing of knowledge on the effectiveness of the fake news workshops between three European countries (Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands), as well as on a wider level through a dedicated dissemination plan. The ultimate goal of the project is to help create more awareness and trust of young people in the institutions that provide verified information - i.e. schools, libraries - and the essential role these institutes play in the information society.

Digitisation changed all aspects of the news media landscape, from the way content is created, to how it is distributed and interacted with. Three phenomena shape the face and fate of news media in Europe: decreasing trust and information disorder, digitisation and changing user behaviour, and dominance of global technology and AI. They rock the foundations of the journalist profession. MediaNumeric provides students and young professionals in media and communication studies the theoretical know-how and skills needed to embolden them to take on the opportunities of data-driven journalism and media production. And highlights the potential of using large multimedia databases for data-driven innovations. The Alliance captures the needs of the news and media industry and ties them to the educational offer of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It brings together leading actors in academia, industry and audiovisual archives from four EU Member States embedded in the most prominent networks.Three complementary training modules of MediaNumeric cover key subjects critical to data-driven journalism; search and exploration of multimedia data, storytelling, and tracking and debunking disinformation. Third parties are engaged in discussions related to these subjects through a Stakeholder Board, and in effect inform the programme design. The programme is co-developed and tested in three successive training courses (in NL, PL, FR), targeting international groups of students. Training materials are packaged so they can be used as online, open-access learning materials, either as comprehensive, integrated courses or as granular modules. A communication strategy is in place to maximise the uptake of the programme by HEIs across the EU and disseminate outcomes to the other Target Groups; archives, policymakers and the media industry. Sustainability is ensured by putting in place measures that keep the training material updated and support the HEI that use the learning materials.

Re-purposing and re-using digital content is of vital importance to broadcasters and other stakeholders in European media value chains. High initial production or acquisition costs need to be recouped, but the abundance of online channels creates a thin viewer market for original content, especially on niche topics. Live and on-demand viewing is now spread across Smart TVs, Web and mobile applications, social media and other emerging platforms (to be referred to as “vectors”). This introduces an important challenge: How should broadcasters decide when, in what form and on which vector(s) to deliver which content? We propose the Trans-Vector Platform (TVP) to address this challenge and help media companies gain a competitive advantage through guided content re-purposing and re-publication, on the fly and across vectors. The TVP requires novel methods to extract metadata, predict patterns in the topic-vector-audience matrix, and apply these patterns to enhance and re-purpose content - across vectors and according to predicted audience interests. Thus, ReTV will advance the state of the art in video analysis, video augmentation and annotation, content and audience metrics, prediction and recommendation models, visual analytics. The results of this extensive research will be tested and validated together with a regional public broadcaster (RBB), a national TV archive (NISV) and an OTT TV distributor operating in multiple EU markets (Zattoo). ReTV will offer them a better match between content and viewers across vectors, time and five EU languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch). Impact will be measured via cross-vector deployment and viewer engagement. Automated re-purposing and more accurate targeting in terms of relevance and appropriate representation, tailored to upcoming events and specific vector audiences, will drive growth, lower costs, and increase the competitiveness of broadcasters and other professional stakeholders in European media value chains.