Field Notes – DKMK
The Workshops
In Croatia we have established cooperation with our associated partners Retirement home St. Ana and with Foudation “Zajednički put”. Their commitment has made it possible to provide workshops in small groups even in time of pandemic. Eldery people were in the focus of our work, but in the second phase we have asked students of communication science and journalism to participate and provide F2F support to eldery people in direct communication. This has been recognized as the important and innovative approach.
- We were surprised by the curiosity of the elderly people and their willingness to share their concerns and doubts with the social media environment. We had the opportunity to meet, discuss and elaborate with highly skilled eldery people but also with those with elementary knowledge on disinformation and media.
Our experts have emphasized the importance of media literacy programs for eldery people but also the role of local municipalities in ensuring preconditions for these programs. Eldery people have been recognized by the experts as vulnerable members of our societies with huge interest in media literacy.
We were indeed surprised by the quality and thoroughness of their questions. It was interesting to see the differences in their needs. While one of the participants had problems with cookie policies, the other one asked for help in e-services with the goal to be a more active citizen in our society. In the last workshop we had experience of the eledery person having a huge experience in social networks chat and discussion. But what surprised us the most was the critical media literacy approach while evaluating the role of journalists and editors in mainstream media.
“I would like to open an account on Facebook but without being visible to my friends!”