HELSINKI — Finland is consistently ranked as Europe’s most media-savvy country, and the skills needed to detect online fraud are on the school curriculum amid a boom in disinformation and disinformation campaigns.
“Who knew what a troll was before?” literature and Finnish teacher Saara Varmola asked her 14-15-year-old students, who all quickly raised their hands during a lesson at a school in the capital Helsinki in November.
“Who produced the material that you are watching, what are you producing yourself and whether you have an ethical responsibility,” Varmola told Agence France-Presse (AFP) as she listed the critical questions to ask when living in an increasingly characterized global information environment of through misleading information.
By teaching its citizens how to critically engage with media content to expose hoaxes, misinformation and disinformation, as well as to produce their own content, Finland aims to promote media literacy as a civic skill.
The Nordic country was among the first in Europe to draw up a national policy for media literacy in 2013.
Updated in 2019, this policy ensures that media literacy is integrated into subjects at all levels of education, from early childhood to high school grades.
To increase the competence of adults and the elderly, libraries and non-governmental organizations offer courses.
“Media literacy is crucial for building societal resilience, and Finland realized this quite early on,” says Education Minister Anders Adlercreutz to AFP.
Students attend a media literacy class at the Hiidenkiven Koulu school in the Finnish capital Helsinki on November 19, 2024. AFP PHOTO
“As traditional media accounts for less and less of the information we receive, it is especially important to be able to critically evaluate what you read,” he added.
“Not immune to influence”
Finland is considered a forerunner and has ranked first on the European Media Literacy Index every year since it was first published in 2017 by the Bulgarian Open Society Institute.
The index compares 41 countries’ resistance to disinformation based on indicators such as education quality, media freedom and trust in society.
Neighbors Denmark, Norway, Estonia and Sweden followed Finland last year.
A collaborative approach across many sectors helps explain Finland’s success in promoting media literacy among its 5.5 million residents, Adlercreutz said.
“It’s not just the school. It’s the media, newspapers, companies, the libraries, museums. Everyone kind of takes part in this work,” he said.
Leo Pekkala, deputy director of Finland’s National Audiovisual Institute, which is tasked with implementing the country’s media literacy policy, said it also boiled down to Finns’ trust in its societal institutions.
“We Finns still have a very strong trust in the armed forces, the army, the police and the government. We trust our politicians, and we also trust the media,” Pekkala said.
Still, between sharing a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia and facing the rise of artificial intelligence, Finland is not immune to the impact of disinformation and disinformation campaigns, Adlercreutz warned.
“I’m not so sure we’ve yet been fully tested on this issue,” he said.
Critical thinking is key
In the snow-covered school in Helsinki, Varmola handed out tasks to her students with questions related to online disinformation: “Can YouTubers and streamers mislead?” “Is sponsored content a way to influence through information?”
“Yeah, YouTubers and streamers and people on social media can do it. In my opinion, it’s something you come across,” said 8th grader Bruno Kerman in a discussion with some of his fellow students.
“Yes, and who is stopping them?” classmate Niilo Korkeaoja continued.
Students said the education system had equipped them with the ability to spot suspicious information online, critically analyze content and verify sources they come across on social media networks such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.
– The school has taught me to interpret messages in the media, even those written between the lines, says Ronja Turunen, another student.
The country has a long tradition of promoting media literacy among its citizens. When its free primary school system was introduced in the 1970s, the first curriculum already referred to mass media education.
While education has evolved and adapted to the changing media environment and the advent of digital technology, the main goal of teaching critical thinking has remained, Pekkala said.
“Our overall goal is to foster the kind of skills that enable people to think and act critically and be active members of a democratic society,” he said.
A major challenge now is to keep all its citizens up-to-date with the rapid changes in the digital sphere, including for the country’s growing elderly population, who may never have learned to spot fake news on the Internet.
