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Media literacy has become a center of gravity for countering fake news, and a diverse array of stakeholders-from educators to legislators, philanthropists to technologists-have pushed significant resources toward media literacy programs. Media literacy, however, cannot be treated as a panacea. This paper provides a foundation for evaluating media literacy efforts and contextualizing them relative to the current media landscape. Media literacy is traditionally conceived as a process or set of skills based on critical thinking. It has a long history of development aligned along the dialectic between protection and participation. Contemporary media literacy tends to organize around five themes: youth participation, teacher training and curricular resources, parental support, policy initiatives, and evidence base construction. Programs like these have demonstrated positive outcomes, particularly in the case of rapid responses to breaking news events, connecting critical thinking with behavior change, and evaluating partisan content.However, media literacy programs also have their challenges. In general, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation data of media literacy efforts. Some research shows that media literacy efforts can have little-to-no impact for certain materials, or even produce harmful conditions of overconfidence. The longitudinal nature of both assessing and updating media literacy programs makes this a perennial struggle. Because of these challenges, we make recommendations for future work in the field.

Original citation:Livingstone, Sonia and Bulger , Monica E. (2014) A global research agenda for children's rights in the digital age. Journal of Children and Media, 8 (4 Biographical noteSonia Livingstone is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She directs the EU Kids Online network of researchers examining children's online activities, risks and safety mediation in 33 countries. She is author or editor of 18 books on the subject of media audiences and children's media and digital activities.Dr. Monica Bulger is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University where she contributes policy research to multi-national groups such as UNICEF, ECPAT and the European Commission. Her recent work focuses on distinguishing risky internet use from actually harmful experiences and identifying the ways in which digital literacy can reduce harmful online experiences for young users globally. AbstractTaking the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a starting point for evidencebased policy regarding children's rights in the digital age, we offer a global research agenda designed to produce evidence of value for policy makers working to promote children's rights. Informed by research reviews and interviews with international stakeholders, four priorities for theory and evidence are identified: (i) the provision of opportunities that confer benefit, recognising that this may be defined diversely according to the cultural context, (ii) the protection of children from risk of harm, including understanding the relation between vulnerability and resilience, (iii) the balance between risk and opportunities, especially to allow for children's participation even in risky opportunities, (iv) the framing of the research agenda (in terms of concepts, design, measures, and priorities) and the evaluation of policies and initiatives in collaboration with researchers and practitioners from the global South.2

Young people are increasingly turning to the Internet more than to traditional media and information sources to find information. Yet, research demonstrates suboptimal online information literacy among youth today, suggesting potential shortcomings in young people's information consumption behaviors. To assess this, this study investigates several predictors of young people's success in online information evaluation, including their awareness of credibility problems associated with digital information, their use of specific information evaluation practices, and their accuracy in credibility assessment. Results from a study of 2,747 11-18-year-old Internet users indicate both expected and surprising influences of young people's cognitive development, decision-making style, demographic background, and digital information literacy training on their information evaluation awareness, skills, and practices. Theoretical implications and those for redesigning online information literacy interventions are discussed.

Researchers in the humanities adopt a wide variety of approaches to their research. Their work tends to focus on texts and images, but they use and also create a wide range of information resources, in print, manuscript and digital forms. Like other researchers, they face multiple demands on their time, and so they find the ease and speed of access to digital resources very attractive: some of them note that they are reluctant on occasion to consult Communication uses (e-mail lists & noti cations) Electronic journals Journals Grid and cloud resources Text mining Web 2.0 tools Virtual Research Environment (VRE) Image and data processing Arti cial Intelligence Case Studies

That children have a right to protection when they go online is an internationally well-established principle, upheld in laws that seek to safeguard children from online abuse and exploitation. However, children's own transgressive behaviour can test the boundaries of this protection regime, creating new dilemmas for lawmakers the world over. This article examines the policy response from both the Global North and South to young people's online behaviour that may challenge adult conceptions of what is acceptable, within existing legal and policy frameworks. It asks whether the 'childhood innocence' implied in much protection discourse is a helpful basis for promoting children's rights in the digital age. Based on a comparative analysis of the emerging policy trends in Europe, South Africa and the United States, the article assesses the implications for policymakers and child welfare specialists as they attempt to redraw the balance between children's online safety while supporting their agency as digital citizens.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer the possibility of entirely virtual learning environments, with lectures, discussions, and assignments all distributed via the internet. The virtual nature of MOOCs presents considerable advantages to students in terms of flexibility to learn what they want, when they want. Yet despite their virtual focus, some MOOC users also seek to create face-to-face communities with students taking similar courses or using similar platforms. This paper aims to assess the learner motivations behind creation of these offline communities. Do these face-to-face meetings represent an added extra to the learning experience, with students taking advantage of the context of the MOOCs to create new personal and professional connections? Or, are offline meetups filling a gap for students who feel that not all learning can take place online? We also assess the extent to which these patterns vary between developing and industrialised regions, thus testing the claim that MOOCs are helping to democratise access to education around the world. Our research is based on a unique source of socially generated big data, drawn from the website 'meetup.com', which gives us a data set of over 4000 MOOC related events taking place in over 140 countries around the world over a two year period. We apply a mixed methods approach to this data, combining large-scale analysis with more in-depth thematic hand coding, to more fully explore the reasons why some learners add a 'real' component to their virtual learning experience.

Diverse international perspectives show that children can benefit greatly from digital opportunities. Despite widespread optimism about the potential of digital technologies, especially for information and education, the research reveals an insufficient evidence base to guide policy and practice across all continents of the world, especially in middle- and low-income countries. Beyond revealing pressing and sizeable gaps in knowledge, this cross-national review also reveals the importance of understanding local values and practices regarding the use of technologies. This leads us to stress that future researchers must take into account local contexts and existing inequalities and must share best practices internationally so that children can navigate the balance between risks and opportunities. This article documents the particular irony that while the world's poorer countries look to research to find ways to increase access and accelerate the fair distribution of digital educational resources, the world's wealthier countries look to research for guidance in managing excessive screen time, heavily commercial content, and technologies that intrude on autonomy and privacy. We conclude by recommending that digital divides should be carefully bridged with contextual sensitivity to avoid exacerbating existing disparities; that the provision of technological resources is complemented by a focus on skills enhancement, for teachers as well as students; that a keen eye is needed to ensure the balance of children's protection and participation rights, with protection now including data abuses as well as safety considerations; and that we forge collaborations among all stakeholders in seeking to enhance children's digital opportunities worldwide.