Media-literate
active citizens

Development of the internet, digital media solutions, social media, and most recently the artificial intelligent (AI), has shaped the modern societies with the speed that many couldn’t project. It has also increased polarization on the global level, as when other people are eagerly testing ChatGTB, about 37 % of world’s population live still without access to internet (UN ITU 2021).

Discussion about the new phenomena, like the spread of disinformation, online bullying and violence, multiplied online scams, and the rapid development of AI, have also increased the discussion about the importance of media and information literacy.

It is more and more evident that there’s a growing need to strenghten media and information literacy skills among the whole population, and not just because of the technological development, but because of the huge social, psychological and societal impact, good and bad, that the modern media environment enables.

We are understanding media literacy primarily as having the necessary skills and competence for understanding the society and as the ability to participate in the public discussion. We are above interested in the cultural and societal role of media, and understand media broadly, including all different, currently existing platforms for passing, receiving, and exchanging information.

A media-literate person has, for example, the necessary skills and ability to critically consume, analyze and verify messages received through different media in various forms like as print news, films, ChatGTB answers, social media posts etc.

Media-literate citizens can also consider how different messages affect people's thoughts, political views and actions in the society, can evaluate the motives and goals behind the media content, and are able to create and share information in a factually accurate and ethical manner.

Media-literate citizen can also use media to various purposes like voicing out their opinions, keeping decision makers accountable, and for creating important grassroots level action and communities that support inclusion and the sense of belonging.

For this reason, we are also seeing media as a great tool that can be used for strenghtening social participation and civic engagement. Social participation, in simple terms, refers to activities that allow people to socialize, to connect with each other. Civic engagement or civic participation is about addressing a matter of public concern. It refers to people taking individual or collective action for making change.

In order to achieve this, we need to also consider and actively apply the communication rights, as a theoretical and practical framework for our media education activities. Everyone has the potential to communicate, but not everyone has the equal capacity and means to use this potential.

Whether a person is able to communicate, is influenced by whether their communication abilities and preferences are accepted and supported in the environment, and whether they have access to the services they require to achieve their communication potential (International Communication Project, ICP).

The main question we are trying to solve is: How to support youth and adults to navigate in the constantly changing media environment, and to use media as a tool for inclusive social participation and civic engagement?

We expect to see:

1) Improved media and information literacy, especially among working-age adults and migrants who haven’t had access to previous media education or do not have equal media literacy skills compared to their peers.

2) Diverse youth engaged with content creation and public discussion of social and societal matters that are important for youth.

3) Increased ability among our target groups to use media as a tool for social participation or civic engagement, or for both of these.

Why is this important?

• Rapidly changing media environment creates a real social challenge that should be addressed. Media and information literacy skills have already become crucial citizenship skills.

  • For the youth, in general, there is no distinction between the digital world and the physical world, and most have good hard skills in use, for example skills to use digital devices and applications. However, at the same time there seems to be a growing decline of empathy and interpersonal skills, as the respect towards other’s and own privacy and physical and mental integrity has declined while online violence has grown. Also youth may have weak media literacy skills for various reasons, even though they have better access to media education compared to adults.

  • For the adults, the challenges relate to lack of digital skills especially among the elderly, stress and actual marginalization related to rapid development of technology, weak or intermediate media literacy skills, and limited opportunities for receiving media education that would fit the adult needs. Adults are a diverse group, and when it comes to media education, we would need to find more ways to strenghten the media and information literacy skills among the working age adults.

  • Professionally produced media content: journalism, corporate communications, public relations, and social media content produced by influencers, also includes stereotypes, bias, and inaccurate information about migration, and about ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. To empower change we should empower the audiences to be able to better identify inaccurate, misleading information and disinformation, which refers to false information deliberately spread to deceive people.

  • Above all, youth and adults are very diverse groups and people start their media literacy journey with different skills and life situations. There are individuals among the migrant youth whose media skills and experience is very different compared to their peers in Finland. The same applies to migrant adults, who may not have been exposed to any media education before, and may really struggle in navigating the media environment in a new cultural context with a foreign language. We cannot either ignore how differently any media content can handle people depending on their ethnic, religious or cultural background or for example social status.

• Disinformation, but also unintentionally misleading and inaccurate information is potentially dangerous, as media has a great impact on our understanding about the society, social contexts, and population relations. We are forming our understanding of the reality greatly on information that is received through different media sources, which include for example social media, AI solutions, television news, magazines, books, podcasts, and other digital content found on internet.

• For the same reason media has also a great positive potential, to be used as a tool for strenghtening inclusive social participation and civic engagement. Especially under-presented groups like youth and migrants, should be engaged more in content creation and production, and we should keep up the strong ethical debate about communication rights, and about the role, purpose and impact of technological development.

Ongoing projects:

• Youth in Focus

• Digital Storytelling for Active Citizenship: Empowering Youth through Migration Narratives