Internet Regulation Updater

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The UK’s regulator for online content and safety (Ofcom) has released its media literacy plan for 23/24. Media literacy is one component of the overall approach to improving online safety for users. This includes promoting media literacy in society at large but also media literacy by design; tools that are built into online services (a prompt to read an article before forwarding it on or a flag that content comes from an unverified source for example).

Ofcom has a legal duty to promote media literacy. In addition, it is gearing up to take on its new role as the UK regulator under the UK’s Online Safety Bill (OSB).

Ofcom’s position is that its media literacy work supports these online safety duties. The work Ofcom does on media literacy by design principles “will inform our thinking on online safety, particularly around the measures that can be put in place by platforms to help users empower themselves to keep themselves safer online.”

Areas of focus under the 2023 Media Literacy Plan place a particular emphasis on online safety for underserved communities and taking a targeted approach to supporting groups at high risk of specific harms.

Ofcom is working with those in the sector and experts to develop principles for media literacy by design. Those draft principles are anticipated in the autumn of 2023 and will focus on the design of on-platform interventions which are “choice-preserving, self-activating and timely for users”. After further consultation, social, search and gaming platforms will be encouraged to embed the best practice for promoting media literacy by design into their products. Ofcom states that it will encourage this, including by considering whether the principles can play a role in Ofcom’s future guidance to services about how to comply with their forthcoming duties under the Online Safety Bill and the VSP regime.

Accordingly, the plan and media literacy by design principles will be a useful reference for those companies in scope of OSB on what media literacy strategies might be expected of platforms by the new regulator.

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Lauren Taylor, Internet Regulation Partner

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