Beat 102 103 is Ireland’s first regional radio station, broadcasting from state of the art purpose-built studios on the outskirts of Waterford city. It is the only station licensed to target 15-34-year-olds in the South East of Ireland incorporating counties Wexford; Waterford; Carlow; Kilkenny and South Tipperary.
At exactly 1:02pm on July 1st 2003, Ireland’s first regional radio station was launched in the South East of Ireland so on July 1st 2024, Beat marks 21 years of market leading broadcasting.
Beat has been a long-standing supporter of MLI, regularly promoting the ‘Stop, Think, Check’ message with ads and editorial for the Be Media Smart campagin.
This year, on its 21st birthday, Beat further demonstrated its commitment to promoting media literacy and supporting the work of MLI by developing and delivering a comprehensive Digital Media Literacy Roadshow.
From January to May 2024, eleven of Beat’s multi-platform content creators delivered a total of 41 bi-lingual digital media literacy information sessions, on site, at twenty different secondary schools across the South East. The schools that were visited included two Meánscoileanna Gaeilge where the course was primarily delivered as gaeilge by two of Beat’s presenters who are fluent gaelgeoirí.
For each session, the presenters worked in pairs and delivered this campaign with passion. At the end of each workshop, students had to complete a pop quiz to demonstrate what they had learned. All correct answers went into a draw for an iPad for the individual student, and €1,000 for the school to go towards tools to support the school’s media literacy curriculum.
The course content was created in-house by the team, based on the junior cycle’s “an introduction to digital media literacy” short course curriculum and Media Literacy Ireland’s “Stop, Think, Check” campaign. The presenters’ engaging, fun and interactive sessions brought the theory to life for students. In total, the campaign directly engaged with 2,000 first year secondary school students on site and thousands more online.
A bespoke, subtitled, bilingual video version is hosted on the Beat website, available to all schools nationwide. This specially tailored course was commissioned by young people for young people and co-funded by Coimisiún na Meán. The young presenters spoke to twelve/thirteen-year-olds in their own language with relatable content. The students were encouraged to put their learnings from the course, into practise in their own digital lives.
In addition, Beat has also created a series of 10 podcasts which are also desgined to help people, especially young people, to ‘Stop, Think and Check’ when it comes to engaging with digital media. The series covers topics such as ‘Fake News’, ‘Media Literacy’, ‘Social Media’, ‘Men in Media’ ‘Influencing’, ‘International Womens Day’, ‘Screen Time’, ‘Hacking’ and ‘Stereotypes’.
School’s who would like the digital version of Beat’s Digital Media Literacy Tour can email info@beat102103.com
