Pathways to Democratic Information Resilience

Civic Media and Information Literacy in the Australian Curriculum

A University of Canberra Faculty of Education, News and Media Research Centre (Faculty of Arts and Design) and Centre for Deliberative Democracy (Faculty of Business, Government and Law) Symposium

18-19 November 2026

Ann Harding Centre, University of Canberra

Convenors

Prof. Mathieu O'Neil, News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts and Design, UC
Assoc Prof. Andrew Ross, News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Education, UC

Scientific Committee

Dr Rys Farthing, Reset.Tech & News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts and Design, UC
Prof. Jutta Haider, Swedish School of Library and Information Science
Ms Saffron Howden, News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts and Design, UC
Prof. Ron Levy, College of Law, Governance and Policy, ANU
Dr Jordan McSwiney, Centre for Deliberative Democracy, Faculty of Business, Government and Law, UC
Dr Kay Oddone, Linking Learning Advisory & School of Information and Communication Studies, CSU

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Jutta Haider, Swedish School of Library and Information Science: Infrastructural meaning-making, resilience, and the crisis of information
Dr Kay Oddone, Linking Learning Advisory & School of Information and Communication Studies, CSU: The Information Resilience Imperative. What research tells us about critical literacies, algorithmic cultures, and the professionals who can make a difference

Call for contributions

The Pathways to Democratic Information Resilience: Civic MIL in the Australian Curriculum symposium will bring together civil servants, educators, members of civil society, policy-makers and researchers. Participants will engage in dialogue and collaboratively devise tools and strategies to best equip Australian students with the necessary skills to deal with epistemic pollution in the contemporary information environment.

We invite participants to submit short biographies and summaries of their intended contribution to one of our six panels. Contributions should address issues related, but not limited to, the panel questions. We are particularly interested in contributions based on empirical research and/or professional experience working in the Australian community, education and policy sectors.

Please note:

maximum length for bios: 150 words
maximum length for summaries: 250 words
remember to specify which panel you are interested in contributing to
send summaries and bios to megan.deas@canberra.edu.au before 31 July 2026 COB

Panel 1: Teacher-librarians and civic media and information literacy

Realities and perceptions of teacher-librarian role within educational institutions?
Insights regarding State and Territory differences?
Advocacy and education regarding the value of the teacher-librarian?

Panel 2: Developing civic media and information literacy

What indispensable civic media and information literacy skills ought to be taught?
What useful resources should be developed?
What educational reforms are necessary?

Panel 3: Communicating civic values

Defining Australian democratic values, e.g., free and fair elections, open/accountable government, civil/political rights, respect for/in democratic society, multiculturalism?
How can these values be effectively communicated in the classroom and outside?
What role do civil society organisations play? Should they coordinate more?

Panel 4: Civic media and information skills in the Australian Curriculum

How the Australian Curriculum came to be: does understanding the past help shape the future?
Does the Australian Curriculum need to change to include effective information resilience?
Does teacher training in universities need to change, and how?

Panel 5: Wikipedia in the Australian Curriculum

How can outdated perceptions of Wikipedia's reliability in the teaching community be addressed?
What are the best practices for teaching Wikipedia use in the classroom?
More broadly, should Artificial Intelligence's colonising of Collective Intelligence be countered? If so, how?

Panel 6: National Policies

The Australian Curriculum is designed at the federal level, but its implementation varies between States and Territories and the public and private sectors. Is a mandated National Certificate comprising key civic and civic MIL competencies desirable?
Is a mandated National Certificate achievable?
What other policies would help reduce differences in student education?

Background

Identifying credible information is key to democratic decision-making, which is why in Finland, a recognised leader in this field, media and information literacy (MIL) are part of civics education.^[1] In Australia, knowledge about civic institutions and values is in steep decline.^[2] Misinformed opinions circulate widely, and truth is increasingly harder to discern from fiction. Australian students and citizens need to be equipped with the necessary skills for informed democratic participation. Such skills should be cognitively viable, but popular checklist methods such as 'C.R.A.A.P.' (e.g., 'Is it Current, Relevant, Authoritative, Accurate? What is its Purpose?') are ineffective in an online environment where information is super-abundant, and attention is finite. They take too much time, and are likely to cause cognitive overload.

Since 2021, thanks to the ACT Education Directorate – UC Affiliated Schools Research Program, UC researchers have co-designed with teachers and teacher-librarians in ACT schools new conceptual frameworks and educational methods for the attention economy. Three key information resilience principles – speed, non-partisanship and transparency – were established; adhering to these principles ensures methods effectively manage information super-abundance, increasing polarisation, and the rising influence of AI. The UC civic MIL program aims to improve resilience to misinformation by augmenting students' discernment (their ability to identify clues that content may be misleading) as well as their verification and sourcing skills - their knowledge of methods to determine whether a claim is factual, or a source credible.

Students are taught to be alert to the presence of emotional manipulation in media content and to fact-check information by 'reading laterally' (e.g., do not investigate inside the source: look to the side, open another tab, and search) in traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia, and other sources known to be reliable. Between 2022 and 2025, the program was run once in four ACT primary and secondary schools, twice in an ACT Senior Secondary College, and once at the University of Canberra in the leadup to the 2025 federal election. Lessons from the program informed a report commissioned by the National Science and Technology Council, Office of the Australian Chief Scientist.^[3] In 2026, a micro-credential based on the program has been created at UC and two new programs for stage 3 (Years 5 and 6) and stage 5 (Years 9 and 10) students are being co-developed and implemented with members of the School Library Association of New South Wales.

The Final Report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters' Inquiry into civics education, engagement, and participation in Australia was tabled in Parliament in January 2025.^[4] The report's Foreword by Senator Carole Brown called for a coordinated 'long-term national media and digital literacy strategy' and declared that 'Australia needs a strengthened and standardised approach to formal civics education. The Committee recommends nationally aligned and mandated civics and citizenship content for high-school students, with greater accountability and consistency in how this is implemented, by working more closely with state and territory governments'.^[5] What would a strengthened and standardised approach to formal civics education look like? And how could nationally aligned and mandated civics and citizenship content for high-school students be consistently implemented by states and territories?

https://okm.fi/en/media-literacy/ See also: Webber M., McNaughton S., Gerrard J., Meade S. & Verdonk C. (2023) He Uru Kahikatea: building young people's resilience through media and information literacy and digital citizenship skills, Office of the Prime Minister's Science Advisor, New Zealand.
Duffy, C. (2025) Australian students record worst ever civics result with 72 per cent not understanding the basics of democracy. ABC News.
Newman, E., Ecker, U., O'Neil, M. & Tay, L. (2026) Information Resilience: A framework for misinformation interventions. Australian Government Office of the Chief Scientist.
Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (2025) From classroom to community: Civics education and political participation in Australia.
Ibid, p.iii-iv.

Additional resources

O'Neil, M., Ross, A., Campbell, K. & Jenkins, M. (2026) Co-designing civic media and information literacy skills with Australian teacher-librarians to boost students' resilience to misinformation and democratic participation. Policy Futures in Education, under review. Available on request.

O'Neil, M., Cunneen, R. & Deas, M. (2025) A remedy for epistemic pollution? Public and professional reactions to fact-checking with Wikipedia in Australian classrooms. In C.Y. Song, D. Thussu & D. Margolin (Eds.), Checking the Factcheckers: A Global Perspective. Advances in Internationalizing Media Studies, Routledge.

O'Neil M., Cunneen R. & Ross A. (2023) Reclaiming resilience: Fact-checking in the classroom with Wikipedia, Synergy, October, School Library Association of Victoria.

O'Neil, M. & Jensen, M. (2022) Three reasons why disinformation is so pervasive and what we can do about it. The Conversation, 12 August.

Pathways to Democratic Information Resilience