Rethinking Media Literacy and Digital Skills in Europe (REMEDIS)

Over the past decade, we have witnessed major transformations in access to digital media platforms in Europe. However, navigating this digitally mediated world can be challenging as it requires operational, social, content creation, and consumption skills that many citizens lack or insufficiently possess (EC, 2010; European Training Foundation, 2018). To date, researchers and practitioners are unable to make evidence-based claims about the impact of media literacy and digital skills (ML&DS) interventions and their positive outcomes: a rapid evidence assessment by Edwards et al. (2021) of the effectiveness of intervention strategies in the field of tackling misinformation illustrates that robust evaluation of ML interventions remains uncommon. The development of a responsive, forward-looking ML&DS policy in Europe lacks up-to-date knowledge and a deeper understanding of the ML&DS needs of citizens (young and older, specific social target groups). What should a media-savvy citizen be able to do and know? How can we determine what media and digitally literate individuals are like? If we do not have adequate answers to these questions, we will not know which interventions can be used to foster ML&DS or how successful these interventions are. REMEDIS's concept is to develop evidence-based approaches to further develop and evaluate initiatives that foster ML&DS to understand what the impacts of ML&DS interventions in different life domains are in terms of positive outcomes. In accordance with this concept, REMEDIS adopts an innovative research strategy that first aims to identify and quantify the most salient driving factors for ML&DS from a lifelong perspective, and to synthesise the existing evidence concerning the perceived effectiveness of current interventions fostering ML&DS.