Conference Program

Media literacy is increasingly recognized as a key element in European Union (EU) media regulation policies (Lacourt 2024; ERGA 2024) as well in the promotion of digital citizenship (CoE 2019) and in the protection of information integrity (OECD 2024). While UNESCO has launched relevant initiatives in media and information literacy field since the previous decade (UNESCO 2013), in the last few years the EU Audiovisual Media Service Directive has invited for the first time Member States to promote the development of media literacy skills and to report to the European Commission on the implementation of such measures (ERGA 2023), and the European Media Freedom Act has finally given a definition of media literacy in an EU legislative measure. Following this recent attention to media literacy, different studies and initiatives have sought to provide guidelines in this field, with a particular emphasis on younger and older populations as target groups (Melstveit Roseme et al. 2024; EDMO 2024).

In this context, AGCOM, the Italian convergent communications regulatory authority (AGCOM 2025a), entrusted with monitoring tasks concerning the media and digital literacy skills promotion at national level (AGCOM 2025b), has launched a research activity aimed at identifying the main media and digital literacy needs in the Italian population. This research activity has been implemented through a survey addressed to a sample of 7.053 individuals, representative of the population aged 6 and above residing in Italy. The sampling plan has involved the use of the area of residence and gender variables, and a specific emphasis on age, identifying 8 specific groups, including younger (61-13 yo) and older minors (14-17 yo) as wells as seniors (65 yo and above). The main findings of this research activity concern (i) the availability of devices, access to media, access to news media, and ways to regulate minors’ media access adopted by parents, (ii) the analysis of the level of concern about and the frequency of exposure to the main activities and content that may constitute risk factors in the legacy and digital media environment, and the ways in which citizens prevent and tackle such phenomena, and (iii) the knowledge of algorithmic recommendation systems and of the use of specific algorithmic curation tools provided by online platforms in the Italian population (AGCOM 2025c).

The goal of this proposal is presenting the main results of this research activity, with particular reference to the seniors, highlighting the main differences between this category and other age groups, and giving policy recommendations aimed at increasing specific media and digital literacy skills among the seniors themselves.

In particular, the high level of concern regarding potentially risky activities and content, with specific regard to disinformation, and the low algorithmic literacy (Frau-Meigs 2024) level among seniors will be further analysed and contextualised, with the aim of highlighting the need for tailored media and digital literacy interventions including specific activities to enable this population segment to navigate the high-choice media environment (van Aelst et al. 2017; Castro et al. 2022) and diversify their news media diet.