Al Akhawayn University students Aya Isbayene (BAIS, Class of 2022) and Souad Rahhal (BACS, Class of 2020 and MACDM, Class of 2023) participated in the Media & Digital Literacy Academy in Beirut (MDLAB) at the Lebanese American University (LAU), from the 18th to the 28th of May, 2022 https://mdlab.lau.edu.lb/mdlab-2022/. The students benefited from a fully-funded German Academic Exchange Services (DAAD) scholarship to attend a 10-day media literacy program.
Each year, the Media & Digital Literacy Academy in Beirut invites a diverse set of students, professors, journalists, and activists to attend intensive lectures and workshops aimed at establishing and spreading media literacy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This year, participants from Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Germany joined MDLB to learn from experts in the media and journalism fields. The selected students participated either in a data squad or a digital squad. Each squad had to quickly learn from the intensive lectures and workshops in order for them to apply their newly-acquired knowledge and produce a research and data visualization project, or a research and video-making project. On the last day of the program, 12 teams of 4-5 students presented their final projects, which focused on minority group issues in the MENA region.
The guest speakers during the event included Dr. Jad Melki (Lebanese American University), Dr. Clemencia Rodríguez (Temple University), Dr. Anna Antonakis (Free Berlin University), Dr. Steffen Moestrup (Danish School of Media and Journalism), Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi (Simon Fraser University), and Dr. Antonio Lopez (John Cabot University).
MDLAB is also an event sponsored by the Arab-European Association for Media and Communication Researchers (AREACORE) https://www.areacore.org/, of which network Al Akhawayn University is an official partner, with Dr. Kenza Oumlil as the regional coordinator of AREACORE Morocco.