MediaRelate - Europe

MediaRelate has its roots in the observation that young people learn the 'facts of life' as much from the media as they do from their families or formal sex education classes in schools.

Face-to-face dialogue and strategising were central to the development of a printed pack containing teaching materials, accompanied by a DVD featuring interviews with media professionals, a drama storyline, and reproductions of advertisements. To begin the process of generating dialogue between sex educators and media educators/researchers, the project held a seminar on 'Young People, Sex and the Media: new educational strategies' in London in September 2003. The 2-day seminar was attended by a range of experts from across Europe working in the fields of media research, media education, and sex or personal education. The questions that ran through the conference were:

• What 'messages' do the media convey about love, sex, and relationships?
• What meanings and pleasures do young people gain from media content, and how do they relate it to their own lives and identities?
• What do young people need to know - about sex, about the media, and about sex in the media?
• How might they be taught, and how might they learn best?

After exploring various existing media materials that aim to provide sex education, participants discussed media and sex education strategies - with a special focus on the approach that the MediaRelate materials might take. A plan for these teaching resources emerged; the materials were then developed. They aim to:

• provide a framework to enable young people to make sense of, critically evaluate, and reach their own conclusions about media representations of love, sex and relationships - especially in the context of their own experience
• offer opportunities for young people to contribute creatively to debates about both emotional and sexual relationships and media portrayals of them by constructing their own media forms using practical production skills
• enable debate and collaboration about cultural differences and similarities in relation to media images of love, sex and relationships. Ideally, this interactive approach will involve young people themselves - e.g., via the MediaRelate website, which is being used to facilitate debates and exchanges, and to provide extra resources to support core teaching activities.

Strategies for meeting these aims include:

• developing media 'reading' skills - e.g. the relation of text and image, conventions of different media genres, and the different ways in which these might be read
• encouraging young people to reflect on themselves as audiences for these texts
• developing skills in media production which enable students to articulate their own perspectives
• constructively engaging with media producers in order to unpack the institutional constraints and processes that underpin media representations of love, sex and relationships
• exploring contradictory perspectives and values represented by different media genres and forms through the inclusion of material that spans a range of European countries, and that addresses issues of diversity and difference
• providing interactive student-centred activities.

These materials do not necessarily:

• serve primarily as a vehicle for the promotion of specific messages about sexual behaviour or attitudes, although teachers may wish to prioritise this aspect as a central aim of their practice
• provide a complete and self-contained course in sex and relationship education
• fully resource every aspect of media content necessary to carry out the exercises - organisers anticipate that teachers would prefer to provide age- and context-appropriate material
• impose value judgements on students' media or sexual preferences.

Organisers hope that the resources will be used by teachers of language and media, as well as within sex education programmes. They may also be used by youth workers in informal extra-curricular settings. Notes will be provided to offer routes through the material to meet the varying needs of diverse groups and contexts. Organisers will aim to offer at least 15 hours of classroom work; however, they anticipate that teachers will use the material selectively and may draw on supplementary resources available on the website, as well as from their own repertoire.

Youth, Sex Education.

Although the media are often dismissed as sensationalist or even corrupting for children, organisers cite a Broadcasting Standards Commission survey of nearly 800 young people aged 10, 12, and 14 in which over two-thirds stated that television and teenage magazines are useful or very useful as a 'way to find out about love, sex and relationships'. That is, they rated them as highly as their mothers as sources of information.

Despite such research findings, organisers claim, existing materials for personal and relationships education rarely refer to media representations. Adults who work with young people may feel unconfident about how media texts such as magazines or TV programmes may be usefully explored in this context.