CALL FOR PAPERS: Media Literacy Education for All Ages
A Special Issue of the Journal of Media Literacy Education
Guest Editors Päivi Rasi, Heli Ruokamo, and Hanna Vuojärvi Faculty of Education, Centre for Media Pedagogy, University of Lapland, Finland
Proposals are invited for papers for a special issue of the Journal of Media Literacy Education on the theme of Media Literacy Education for All Ages. The call is open for the international Media Education Conference 2019 (MEC 2019) participants and scholars who don't intend to attend the MEC conference in Salla, Finland, in April 2019. MEC is a small, informal conference, where participants exchange ideas and information on media literacy education, particularly the roles of media in teaching, learning, society, and psychosocial well-being across all ages. MEC is organized by the Faculty of Education's Centre for Media Pedagogy at the University of Lapland, Finland.
The Journal of Media Literacy Education provides a forum for established and emerging scholars, media professionals, and educational practitioners in and outside schools. An extended conceptualization of literacy, media literacy education helps individuals of all ages develop the habits of inquiry and skills of expression needed to become critical thinkers, effective communicators, and active citizens in a world where mass media, popular culture, and digital technologies play important roles for individuals and society.
Individuals' media literacy education needs and interests change over the course of their lives. For example, in infancy, media literacy education is expected to support well-being, emotional and cognitive development, and social relationships. In old age, media literacy education may be especially important to support cognitive functioning and the abilities to obtain and critically assess health-related information and use online health and medical services. In today's learning society, digital technologies and media play central roles in learning through the life span. Multidisciplinary research and development of pedagogical models to support learning with digital technologies, therefore, are still topical themes for media literacy education. Areas of interest include, for example, online and mobile learning, playful and game-based learning, and simulations, video, and virtual reality in learning.
The world's aging population, the increasing knowledge about the malleability of the brain even into old age, and the current emphasis on lifelong and lifewide learning call for media literacy education that addresses media literacies across the life course and life span. Developing media literacy education to meet these needs may also require reassessing and developing the agencies related to providing such education. Who, for example, should be responsible for providing media literacy education for elderly people or the parents of young children?
The international MEC 2019 theme Media Literacy Education for All Ages invites papers that address how individuals' media literacies and media literacy education needs and approaches vary with age.
To Potential Authors
Please submit a 500-word abstract by email to before September 30, 2018 to be considered for publication. Please include "Special Issue: JMLE" in the subject title. Abstracts should make clear the conceptual or theoretical perspective, data sources (if empirical), and contributions of the submission. Abstracts will be reviewed by the review committee and notifications of acceptance will be sent to the corresponding author by October 15, 2018. Full papers will be due on December 21, 2018, and must be uploaded to the JMLE website: www.jmle.org. All papers undergo blind peer review.
