Raskrinkavanje and high schoolers: First media literacy workshops completed

CA Why not (Raskrinkavanje.ba) implemented the first phase of the project “Strengthening media literacy among young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina” in the period from January to August 2020, in cooperation with the Association of Secondary School Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina (ASuBiH) and with the support of the European Union.

In the period from January to March, we organized four focus groups in cooperation with ASuBiH, in Banja Luka, Prnjavor, Sarajevo and Mostar, to conduct research on the habits of consuming media content of secondary school students. The goal was to maximize the impact of media literacy workshops organized a few months later. The focus groups were led by social research experts from the NGO proMENTE, while the participants were secondary school students of various profiles.

This research provided us with an insight into how young people in BiH use the media, which served to develop appealing and age-appropriate content and structure of media workshops.

After completing the focus groups, we implemented training for trainers, held on July 16 and 17 in Tarčin. At the training for trainers, we educated 10 secondary school students who will facilitate media literacy workshops together with the Raskrinkavanje team in the next phase of the project. The idea behind the education of 10 young people are peer-to-peer workshops in which both facilitators and participants are high school students.

The training for trainers was divided into two parts: in the first part we educated secondary school students on media literacy and verification of media facts based on focus group reports, while the second part was dedicated to workshop simulations and developing participants facilitation skill. In this training we also talked about the design of the workshops and how they should ultimately look like.

Brano Jakubović from Dubioza Kolektiv visited us during the training, and motivated the participants with his speech and discussion about his views on the media and media literacy, as well as by talking about himself and the work of his band on this topic.

In the first phase of the project, respecting the measures and recommendations for combating the spread of the pandemic, we implemented five workshops for high school students in cooperation with ASuBiH, in Modriča, Doboj, Zenica, Bugojno and Gradačac. We talked about the media, social networks, media manipulations and fake news, but also about how to recognize problematic content on the Internet and fact-check it. The workshops were attended by 10-15 high school students, most of whom are members of ASuBiH. The workshop was led by members of ASuBiH who participated in the training for trainers, together with the Raskrinkavanje team.

As part of this project, we will talk about the media with high school students from a total of 15 cities across BiH.