Deadline: 30-Sep-2020
The European Commission has announced a call for proposals for 2020 Preparatory Action on Media literacy for All which aims at boosting media literacy in Europe through pursuing innovation and collaboration across media literacy communities within the EU, including by building on and scaling up existing solutions.
Innovative strategies are sought, to inform citizens of disinformation and to promote a responsible use of communication channels offered by social media. The tools and activities proposed should directly or indirectly benefit the target group of citizens of all ages lacking media literacy skills and in particular the skills needed to critically evaluate content accessed via social media.
The Preparatory Action Media Literacy for All (2018-20) responds to the societal challenge of improving media literacy of citizens of all ages in the Member States of the European Union. This is the last annual call for this Preparatory Action.
“Media literacy” is an umbrella expression that includes all technical, cognitive, social, civic and creative capacities that allow citizens to access the media, to have a critical understanding of it and to interact with it. All these capacities enable citizens to participate fully in the economic, social and cultural aspects of society, as well as to play an active role in the democratic processes. Media” is to be understood in a broad sense, including all kind of media such as television, radio, online and printed press, digital news outlets, search engines and social media platforms.
Objectives
The general objectives of this Call are to:
- increase the level of media literacy in Europe;
- to assess the scalability, sustainability and adaptability across linguistic, state or cultural borders of the actions developed through the earlier Calls of the Preparatory Action Media Literacy for All; and
- to pursue further methodological innovation and collaboration across media literacy communities within the European Union.
- Identify and catalogue techniques commonly used by malicious actors to create, distribute and amplify online disinformation, including the newest forms of manipulation of communication technologies;
- Catalogue and design/repurpose for wider sharing relevant educational materials in collaboration, where appropriate, with civil society and media organisations, online platforms, fact-checkers and/or academic researchers with a specific expertise in communication sciences, psychology, sociology, cognitive sciences or other relevant academic fields;
- Develop tools based on innovative pedagogic approaches, including gaming, creative uses of videoconferencing and other remote learning methodologies, to be used by trained teachers and educators for media literacy training;
- Develop educational modules targeted at different age, linguistic and/or cultural groups, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable segments of the population, to be used by trained teachers and educators;
- Design and deliver appropriate, replicable trainings/training materials to school teachers and/or educators active in out-of-school contexts including by innovative means such as those developed in the third bullet point above;
- Develop 1-2 use-cases on sharing of best practices among trainers of targeted communities;
- Contribute to fostering a media literacy ecosystem based on shared best practices across linguistic and cultural borders, including through the creation of, and/or collaboration with, open educational repositories.
- The total budget earmarked for the co-financing of projects under this call for proposals is 500.000 € (five hundred-thousand euros).
- Depending on the quality of the proposals, the Commission expects to fund of 2 – 5 projects.
- The EU co-financing is limited to a maximum co-funding rate of 60% of the total eligible costs.
- The proposed maximum duration of the project is 12 months.
- The call is open to:
- A grouping of entities (consortia).
- Proposals may be submitted by any of the following applicants or combinations of:
- non-profit organisation (private or public);
- public authorities (national, regional, local);
- international organisations;
- universities;
- educational institutions;
- research centres,
- profit making entities, e.g. media organisations.
- Natural persons are not eligible.
- General notice for UK applicants: In conformity with the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement4 , the UK and persons or entities established in the UK continue to be eligible to receive Union funds under actions carried out in direct, indirect or shared management, which implement Union programmes and activities committed under the MFF 2014-2020 until the closure of those Union programmes and activities. When restrictions apply, these will be clearly specified in the call for proposals.
- Affiliated entities: Entities affiliated to the applicants are not eligible to receive funding under this Call for proposals. They may take part in the action as affiliated entities at their own costs only.
- Country of establishment: Only applications from legal entities established in the following countries are eligible: EU Member States;
- Consortium requirements: In order to be eligible, a proposal must be submitted by a consortium composed of legal entities from at least 3 different Member States taking the geographical balance into consideration. This preparatory action aims at supporting sustainable cross-border co-operation and actions.
- Supporting documents: In order to assess the applicants’ eligibility, the following supporting documents are requested (refer to “Checklist” at the end of the Grant application form for format and support): Examples of supporting documents:
- private entity: extract from the official journal, copy of articles of association, extract of trade or association register, certificate of liability to VAT (if, as in certain countries, the trade register number and VAT number are identical, only one of these documents is required);
- public entity: copy of the resolution, decision or other official document establishing the public-law entity;
- entities without legal personality: documents providing evidence that their representative(s) have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf.
For more information, visit https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/preparatory-action-media-literacy-all-call-proposals-2020