David Buckingham

Researcher

Sara Bragg

Project Details

July 2003 - June 2005

Funder: European Commission and others

Project Website

http://www.mediarelate.org/

MediaRelate is a practical media and sex education project, which involves the development of published teaching materials. The project emerges from our earlier research in this field, that demonstrated young people?fs enthusiasm for learning about personal and sexual issues from the media rather than from parents or school. (See the report, 'Children, Media and Personal Relationships' (http://www.asa.org.uk/ / http://www.mediarelate.org/), and book, Young People, Sex and the Media: the facts of life?, by David Buckingham and Sara Bragg (2004, Palgrave Macmillan)).

Existing media texts aimed at or enjoyed by young people seem rarely to be used as a topic of discussion and source of learning in their own right within personal and sexual health education. We believe this is a lost opportunity. We are therefore producing and evaluating teaching materials that will support teachers and youth workers in working with young people aged 12-15. Our teaching materials aim to develop media 'reading' skills in young people, and encourage them to explore contradictory perspectives and values represented by different media genres and forms, and to reflect on themselves as audiences for texts. The materials will include units on: students' own views on their media consumption, teenage magazines, dramas such as soap operas, and advertising.

Media Relate is a partnership between the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, the English and Media Centre, London, the Netherlands Education-Entertainment Foundation and the Department of Communications at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. It is partly funded by the European Commission, with additional support from a range of funders including (in the UK) the Broadcasting Standards Commission.