What is media literacy?

Media literacy is more than "being able to handle devices". It comprises four abilities that work together:

1. Access: being able to find media and information and use them technically.
2. Analysis & evaluation: understanding, contextualising and critically assessing content. Who is saying this? With what intent? How well supported?
3. Reflection: seeing through the role of the media in society and in your own life (business models, algorithms, their effect on opinion and emotions).
4. Production & participation: communicating responsibly yourself, which also means knowing what you share and what consequences that has.

Source criticism is the core of point 2, but it only works when the other three come with it.

Information literacy

Closely related is information literacy: the ability to recognise an information need, to research it deliberately, to evaluate what is found and to reuse it correctly (with a citation). It classically comes from the world of libraries and academia; today everyone needs it.

MIL: Media and Information Literacy

UNESCO brings both together under one roof: MIL, Media and Information Literacy. The concept is used by UNESCO, the European Commission and the Council of Europe, among others, to stress that media and information skills belong together.

UNESCO describes MIL as a bundle of competencies that meets the challenges of the 21st century:

"Media and Information Literacy provides a set of essential skills to address the challenges of the 21st century including the proliferation of mis- and disinformation and hate speech, the decline of trust in media and digital innovations notably Artificial Intelligence."

— UNESCO, Media and Information Literacy (unesco.org)

In other words: MIL provides the essential skills to meet the challenges of our time: the spread of mis- and disinformation and hate speech, the declining trust in media, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

In short

MIL combines media literacy and information literacy: finding content, evaluating it critically, and using and creating it responsibly.

Why now in particular?

Three developments make MIL especially urgent today:

• Everyone is a broadcaster. Publishers and media outlets used to decide what got published. Today anyone can publish, without an editorial team, without a fact check.
• Machines write too. Artificial intelligence produces texts, images, voices and videos that look real. The old rule of thumb "pictures don't lie" no longer holds.
• Attention is money. Platforms earn from how long we stay. Content that holds us for a long time is favoured, not necessarily the true content (more on this in the chapter on algorithms).

Media literacy is thus no longer a specialist discipline for journalists, but an everyday skill like reading and arithmetic.