Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018

UNESCO defines MIL as "a set of competencies to search, critically evaluate, use and contribute information and media content wisely; knowledge of one's rights online; understanding how to combat online hate speech and cyberbullying; understanding of the ethical issues surrounding the access and use of information; and engage with media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote equality, free expression, intercultural/interreligious dialogue, peace, and so on".

To promote these skills, the Global MIL Week will be celebrated on a global scale. On Wednesday, 24 and Thursday, 25 October, the Feature Conference – also called 8th Media and Information Literacy  and Intercultural Dialogue (MILID) Conference – will take place at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. The aim of this conference will be to explore MIL education in all types of environments and by all kinds of stakeholders.

On Friday, 26 October, the Youth Agenda Forum will take place at the University of Latvia in Riga, Latvia. This event will allow young people to make their voice heard, and to become actors of MIL. This year's theme is "MIL Cities in the Era of Algorithms: Youth Voices". It will include the following panels:

• Youth Agency and New Media Landscape in the Era of Algorithms
• Youth Voices in the Era of Algorithms
• Good Youth Practices Across the Globe in the Era of Algorithms

The Youth Agenda Forum will also feature innovative and creative workshops held by various youth organisations and leaders. These activities will be fun and engaging for a younger audience, including music, memes, poetry and so on.

Simultaneously, the Global MIL Youth hackathon (or #GlobalMILhack) will take place from Wednesday, 24 October until Friday, 26 October, online. It will give young participants from all over the world the chance to design concrete solutions for the MIL-related challenges we face today, namely:

• Children and Youth in Media – What more can we do to protect younger audiences and ourselves from harmful content online?
• Disinformation – With many people worrying about fake news being used as weapons, how can we resolve the problem of disinformation?
• Media Immigrants – How can we meet the needs of migrant people for (geographically) broader news media consumption, and how can we help people from different social, economic and media backgrounds have a smoother transition?
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – What can we do through MIL to enable citizen's critical participation in the implementation of the SDGs?
• Dialogue – What actions should be taken to counter people-oriented hate, exclusiveness, fragmentation, and promote dialogue?

On Tuesday, 30 October, the MIL CLICKS webinar, a "way for people to acquire MIL competencies in their normal day-to-day use of the internet and social media and to engage in peer education in an atmosphere of browsing, playing, connecting, sharing and socialising", will be organised on the @MILCLICKS Twitter account. In this innovative format, the speakers will post tweets about the topic using the hashtag #MILCLICKS, and participants will be able to ask questions using the @ function. The Global Alliance for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy (GAPMIL) Youth Committee will also lead actions on social media for the occasion.

Finally, a variety of celebration events will be organised across the world, as shown in this map of registered events/activities in honour of Global MIL Week 2018.

To find out more, visit the UNESCO page dedicated to Global MIL Week 2018 and the UNESCO page on MIL, or visit the UNESCO website more generally.