Media and information literacy training for older adults in France

On 24 September, as part of the 4th objective of the E-engAGEd project, E-Seniors and Pistes Solidaires organised an intergenerational training course for adults in Paris.

The young trainers, who had been trained by Pistes Solidaires in June on the themes of the project and how to teach an older audience, came to Paris especially for the event and were able to put into practice what they had learned with an adult audience keen to learn more about media literacy, fake news and digital citizenship.

Focusing on misinformation, social networks, fake news and media literacy (with the lesson title: ‘The challenges of media and information literacy’), the adult learners were able to raise issues of concern to them in the context of the training: the role of social networks in spreading fake news, the difficulties of trusting information circulating online, the impact of AI in creating fake news that appears authentic, etc.

The trainers taught, among other things, the concepts of media literacy, post-truth, digital citizenship, good practices to adopt on the networks, how fake news, disinformation and echo chambers work, and so on. They also provided a number of tips on how to spot fake news (or web pages propagating disinformation) online.

To make the training more fun and encourage interactivity and teamwork, group exercises were also set up, one in which the learners had to determine, by discussing and using what they had learned, which of several news items were true and which were false. And another, in the form of a simulation and debate workshop, where groups of students had to take on different roles in online hate situations in order to develop good digital citizenship and management skills in the face of online hate.

This training course was greatly appreciated by the older adult learners and the young adult educators, as its intergenerational approach fostered reciprocal learning, broadening the trainers’ horizons and their thinking when faced with questions or situations that they had not necessarily envisaged at the outset and which were resolved through dialogue and exchange.