Promoting media literacy
Susanna Ahonen looks at a new initiative in Finland to help students and their teachers navigate the troubled waters of fake news.
The importance of media literacy in Finland
We are very proud in Finland that our country continues to lead the way in progressive educational practices. We also have no doubt that learning and strengthening media literacy is critical to preserving democracy, societal well-being and balance in an era of increasing hybrid influence and disinformation.
News Media Finland (NMF) is our industry organisation for newspaper publishers and other private news media. As well as having pride in our educational standards, the members of the NMF also take great pride in their work and its importance for our way of life. According to independent research, Finland remains the country with the highest trust in journalistic media worldwide. Trust in news is surveyed annually by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University. Although trust in news in Finland had been on the decline until 2020, it rose again during the COVID-19 pandemic and has held steady since. According to the Reuters Digital News Report published in June 2024, 75% of the adult population in Finland trusts the news they follow and 69% trust most news in general. In addition to high trust, interest in news is also the highest in the world in Finland.
(See the overview and key findings of the 2024 Digital News Report by Nic Newman 17th June, 2024)
No room for complacency
However, nothing can be taken for granted. ‘News avoidance’ is on the rise here. People can be overwhelmed by what they hear in the media – there is so much news available and a great deal of it of the news people read or hear seems to be ‘bad news’. News avoidance poses a different sort of risk – but it is a risk nevertheless. And of course, since February 2022 other forces have been at work here in Finland. The amount of disinformation, information influence and the societal need to protect against hybrid threats have significantly increased since the start of the war in Ukraine and when Finland joined NATO. Information influence aims to systematically affect public opinion, behaviour and decision-makers, thereby impacting societal functionality. Children and young people, in particular, encounter disinformation and ‘information influence’ on social media platforms. In recent years, global social media giants have also significantly reduced the visibility of journalistic news on their platforms.
All this is very concerning to many Finns and raises issues of responsibility for the Finnish media industry. Jukka Holmberg, the President, of NMF, has drawn attention to the lively and healthy public debate in Finland about the role of journalism, the importance of freedom of speech, press freedom, the role of responsible independent journalism in a democracy and its relationship to those in power.
However, although media trust is exceptionally high in Finland, high levels of trust depend on good journalistic quality, effective self-regulation in the industry, and a high degree of media literacy among citizens.
Promoting media literacy
Finland has been an international leader in teaching media literacy as we know that trust and literacy can only be maintained through continuous actions. We also know that the NMF has a responsibility to play a role in maintaining this tradition and it has conducted nationwide media education work annually as part of its operations.
This year we have gone a step further in collaboration with United Imaginations, a leading branding and communication agency here in Finland, who had come up with the idea for a ‘media literacy primer’ for high school students. We agreed that this was a good idea and we started to work with them on the project. They were more than happy to leave the content choice and topics to us while they developed the design of the primer with the help of type designer Ville Salervo with whom they collaborated to produce the specific layout for each section and the final overall layout. Together we evolved the idea of an alphabetical guide to media literacy.
AC Book of Media Literacy
The final product has been The ABC Book of Media Literacy which is being distributed to all students starting their upper secondary school year in August 2024. Our aim has been to introduce key areas and concepts that are necessary to be able to ‘read’ and interpret news reports. It covers everything from algorithms and bots to watchdogs, X and zines.
It is designed to support teachers in guiding young people to understand the features of the changing media world, recognise danger spots and to help them develop a critical eye in order to make valid conclusions from what they read or watch online.
In short, we hope it will provide young people and their teachers with an A to Z of the media landscape and how best to navigate it. After all, in our view, media literacy is now second only to reading in importance as a fundamental skill-set required by every citizen in our country.
Susanna Ahonen is the Project Manager at NMF
FEATURE IMAGE: Unsplash+ In collaboration with Alex Shuper
Support Images: kindly provided by NMF
FURTHER READING
Media Literacy A to Z: How Finland is Arming Students Against Misinformation
Media Literacy A to Z: How Finland is Arming Students Against Misinformation
THE ABC BOOK OF MEDIA LITERACY… pdf
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EyYOXvJGIVPSpfTmnlJe1cHcpv0ee7vZ