Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

96Comunicar, 39, XX, 2012Finally, the booklets were published with differentlaunch date, and disseminated throughout the country.The main methodological steps of this process arereported in Figure 5.2.5. Dissemination of the projectThe way in which the project was disseminatedand the booklets were distributed throughout Portugalwas carefully considered beforehand. The team’sintention, and the initial commitment given to theFoundation, was to distribute the booklets free ofcharge via a mass circulation national newspaper.However, difficulties arising from the economic crisisin the country hampered this goal, but were partlyovercome by means of a partnership with a regionalnewspaper. Thus, the booklets were distributed by anewspaper that covers the city of Braga 3 and thesurrounding area, with a circulation of around 9,000copies. The team’s concern was that the booklets reachedthe largest number of people across varioussocial classes and geographical areas.This distribution strategy was accompanied bypublic meetings which the team held to launch thebooklets. The three booklets were published on dateswith a special meaning: the booklet about televisionwas launched at a bookshop that celebrated the 20thanniversary of the Convention onthe Rights of Children (November20th, 2009); the videogames bookletwas presented at the same bookshopcoinciding with InternationalChildren’s Day (June 1st, 2010); theInternet and Social Networkingbooklet was presented at a seminaron «Digital Lite racy and SocialNetworks», which was attended byabout 200 people. These sessionsensured significant exposure for theproject and aroused much interestamong the population, particularly inthe media.The project and booklets werealso presented at national and internationalconferences, at schools andin public libraries. In fact, librarieshave become important partners inthe distribution of the booklets, andpartnerships with civic associationsand schools have also been esta -blished.The team also foresaw that theproject could reach beyond thePortuguese border, and so the booklets were translatedinto English, which enabled their distribution atinternational conferences and encounters with peoplefrom the communication and education sciences. Theidea was to make the project as widely known as possible,to raise awareness in researchers from differentknowledge areas of the importance of media literacyand of providing resources to make this scientificknowledge more readily available to society.In the first quarter of 2012 the booklets were madeavailable online in Portuguese and English (www. -lasics.uminho.pt/edumedia/?lang=en), thus reachingout to an even greater target audience.3. Final remarksIn this project, media literacy was understood «ina context of empowerment and human rights» (Living -stone, 2011: 417), namely children’s rights to participate,express their opinions and be informed, as advocatedby the Convention on the Rights of Children.The core idea was to provide resources that empowercitizens, young people and adults to deal critically withmedia, either traditional or new. As Livingstone stated,«it is certain that most cultures hope children will becritical media consumers, though not all provide, orcan provide, the educational resources to enable this»Figure 5. The project methodology.© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 91-99