Dr. Roderick Flynn:

Media literacy is something that we look at in the media pluralism monitor project and our general assessment is that Ireland still has a nascent policy in this regard. I have two secondary school kids and it is apparent that it is not fundamentally built into the curriculum at the moment. It very much depends on whether the teacher is interested in the topic. I am not saying that there is no media literacy. It exists at junior certificate but it is not that in-depth. At leaving certificate level it is possible just to do traditional poetry and prose and to go through English having never studied media. It is increasingly unlikely but still possible. One of the concerns I have is that there is a tendency to treat media, because it is being done through the prism of English, as a written text, not as a visual text. We have not quite reached that stage yet.

As for literacy in broader social media, that is still very much at a nascent level. My feeling is that this is a curriculum development issue. It is an urgent one because this is their reality, especially for younger kids. I say that it is their reality but some of those kids are now in their 20s and 30s because we have had Facebooks of this world for almost 30 years.