The Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change is a multidimensional initiative that provides curricular materials, training and support for journalism schools, programs and classrooms across the world. It is organized through a network of participating universities in China, East Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the UK, Latin and North America and brings together expert Faculty and around 70 students, from undergraduate to Ph.D level.
The Academy’s objective is to lead the creation of global media literacy curricula, multimedia stories, and comparative research, and to become a leading hub for global media education in the 21st Century. The curriculum developed over the past six years has led to the publication of News Literacy: Global Perspectives for the Newsroom and the Classroom by Academy Director, Paul Mihailidis. Students work in international teams and across disciplines.
Key questions to be addressed by students include:
Each year, participants build web-based and downloadable lesson modules on how global media cover issues of critical importance. Past topics have included Terrorism, Climate Change, Religion and Civic Voice and Protest.
The overarching themes in 2014 will be “Civic Voices: Justice, Rights, and Social Change”. Students will identify emerging challenges to civic rights and justice in their respective communities and analyze how digital culture and media supporting social progress in a more globally connected world. This work will emerge in the form of case studies of community change, and instances where civic activism helped bring forth the marginalized and oppressed voices around the world. This year, the Academy will be working with the Media for Change initiative founded by University of Miami's professor Sanjeev Chatterjee and Engagement Lab at Emerson College.
Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change 2014
What Media Can Change