Intercultural digital media education for social inclusion of socioeconomically disadvantaged youth in the urban migration society
Social inclusion of socioeconomically disadvantaged youth with diverse cultural backgrounds is one of the major and urgent challenges European societies face today as addressed in several Horizon 2020 policy documents. Social inclusion of disadvantaged youth can be supported by improving their digital media literacy and intercultural competence because (1) they require digital skills to be able to economically, culturally and socially participate in today’s high mediatized societies; (2) intercultural competences is key for everyone in the migration society for increasing social cohesion of people of diverse backgrounds. INCLUDED develops an innovative integrated approach to digital media literacy and intercultural competence arguing that they can mutually support each other.
Existing research on digital inclusion points out to inequalities in relation to gender, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, but fails to provide contextualised analyses of the dynamics behind these inequalities and does not sufficiently address the role of schools for improving digital skills of socioeconomically disadvantaged youth in the urban migration society. INCLUDED aims to fill these gaps through an in-depth analysis of digital media use of disadvantaged youth in a school located in a poor migrant neighbourhood. INCLUDED will also develop a participatory action by designing and applying teaching modules for intercultural digital media education together with teachers.
The researcher worked extensively on the digital media use of migrants. Through INCLUDED, she will practice the engaged approach of Participatory Action Research and boost her expertise in Intercultural Education, a key field for supporting the social inclusion in the migration society. INCLUDED will be hosted by the University of Bremen; supervised by the Faculty of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences, a pioneer in Intercultural Education and co-supervised by Center for Media, Communication and Information Research.