Media Literacy in Palestine

Promoting Media literacy in Palestine (2015-2026)

The Kvs Foundation has run MFA-funded media literacy projects in Palestine since 2015. This media literacy programme supports the building of Palestinian civil society by strengthening media literacy and its training. The target audiences and structures have varied, but the core objective remains consistent. We aim to strengthen the conditions for civil societ, democracy and sustainability, and our tool for this is media literacy.

In the courses organized across the West Bank and Gaza, over 500 media students, journalists and communication experts have been trained by Finnish and local trainers. The first project in the area offered media education workshops for media students and professionals and the second extended media literacy education to citizens living in vulnerable areas and refugee camps. In the third project, the target group were NGO workers and in the ongoing project we aim to support the Bethlehem university in including Media Literacy as part of the compulsory curriculum for all the students.

In the courses targeting the future media literacy trainers and other target groups we cover topics such as fact-checking, the ethics of journalism and the basics of the self-regulatory system, citizen journalism and online safety.  Finnish media professionals and students have worked as volunteer trainers alongside the local trainers trained during the projects.

In 2015-2016, a total of 272 media professionals and communicators working in organizations and public administration participated in 15 training modules, with some participants taking part in more than one module. Between 2019 and 2020, a total of 80 active citizens were trained. All in all, over 30 Palestinians and 18 Finns have received Training of Trainers (ToT) and some of them have worked as volunteer trainers in the media literacy courses of the project.

The local partners are the Media Development Center from the University of Birzeit and the Institute for Community Partnership from the University of Bethlehem.

Current

In the ongoing project our target group are the teachers and journalism students at Bethlehem University. As a part of the courses, the students will run a Media LIteracy workshop or other project with a selected NGOs. The bigger wheel we have turning is that we aim to implement MIL in the curriculum of the university.

Publications

The following publications have been produced under the program:

Media Literacy for Adults (edited by Karoliina Knuuti, 2020), an adult media literacy guide, published in English (ISBN 978-951-9140-74-2) and in Arabic electronically and in print. The book can be read and downloaded in pdf format at mediaguide.fi.

Media Literacy Course Curriculum (edited by Anne Tastula, 2020), a guide for organizing an adult media literacy course. The guide can be downloaded in pdf format from mediaguide.fi.

Trainers’ Guide – How to help others to learn (editor Anne Tastula, 2022), a guide for starting trainers. The guide can be downloaded in pdf format from mediaguide.fi.