Two years after winning the Dutch Privacy Awards in 2023, Privacy First spoke with Niels Bloembergen of Mediajungle. The team has not been idle since then, the organization has grown and since January 2024 they have a new office in Leeuwarden. Below is an impression of our recent conversation with them.
Mediajungle 's original mission remains undiminished: to make youth, children and adults with mild intellectual disabilities (LVB) digitally resilient and self-reliant. Through clever inclusive design, they also reach a broader target group. Mediajungle has started developing multiple products and has further expanded its team to include a media educator and a research expert. Their focus is to see what content is needed to reach the LVB target group and to develop appropriate tools for this purpose.
Mediajungle has developed a new interactive online platform where learning programs can be followed. This is in addition to the development and publishing of, for example, board and card games. The team is aware that online programs have different requirements than physically developed products. This variety in offerings is an important development for reaching the target audience.
"The LVB target group is actually the 'canary in the coal mine'"
This vulnerable target group is often the first to face specific new social problems. This signal is a precursor to the problems of a broader group.
The difficulty in distinguishing between factual news and disinformation does pose a major threat to the development of young people's worldview. Young people get their "world truth" from social media channels, where public opinion is not optimally represented and fact-check is mostly an unknown word. Information channels from official agencies, for young people in general and the LVB group in particular, are very scarce and too little written in the language of the recipient.
Digital learning tools developed for the LVB group are limited because this target group is small(er). Moreover, it is very difficult to strike just the right chord: not childish, but understandable. This is where Mediajungle stands out and manages to bridge this gap, successfully.
Winning the Privacy Award has helped Mediajungle in increasing external exposure. In particular, the fact that an objective and independent jury commented on the quality, usefulness and necessity of their products and services weighed significantly. It gave them exposure to a wider audience than before and added to the motivation for the employees who have worked so long and hard on this. An award like the Privacy Award helps enormously in increasing the confidence in the organization among external organizations, new clients and funds.
"Children and adolescents develop a chunky brain"
Young people today are not waiting for a long message with nuance. They prefer to be presented with short messages as bite-sized quick chunks on which they can decide for themselves whether they find it "something" or "nothing. Information developers must respond to this reality and take it into account. On the other hand, Mediajungle wants to teach them that the very truth comes with nuances. This requires more explanation and thus again in finding the right balance.
"Find yourself where your target audience is, there is still much to be gained in that."
Classic sources still have the "editorial and factual" scrutiny before it hits the airwaves. "Fast food digital media" for young people does not have that. There is no fact check, no filter, no editorial review prior to publication. The flow of information on social media contains mostly personal opinions that greatly influence young people's worldview.
"Is privacy becoming something for the 'happy few'?"
It seems that you increasingly have to pay to properly protect your privacy. The target audience that Mediajungle is fundamentally targeting, in most cases, due to complexity, has neither the awareness nor the financial resources to protect their privacy optimally. That is the world upside down! An individual's privacy must be optimally protected in the basics, that is stipulated by law. So it is crooked that a citizen has to pay for that protection directly (with money) or indirectly (with his/her data); this is unacceptable.
A current example is that with a paid subscription to Facebook (Meta), your privacy is better protected. You just have to be able to afford that. If you already have to make difficult choices every month about where to spend your money, you probably won't choose a paid Facebook subscription. So there is still a long way to go, and we need to be enormously keen that privacy does not become something for the ''happy few.''
For candidates still hesitant to enter, Mediajungle says that entering the Privacy Awards has led to better shaping their future plans and bringing up aspects they had previously paid less attention to. The reward of winning an Award, as well as being nominated in itself, is a culmination of years of work by the team at Mediajungle. This is something they are very proud of to this day.
