Finnish Media Literacy Policy – Revision in a Nutshell

The Ministry of Education and Culture’s media literacy policy and the national policy document on media education, ”Media literacy in Finland” was published on 16th December 2019.

Media Literacy in Finland updates and extends the previous media literacy guidelines published in 2013. For the first time, we have a national policy stating that media education in Finland should be targeted equally to all groups of people.

To sum up, the vision is that in Finland Everyone’s opportunities to develop their media literacy are improved . Media literacies that promote good, meaningful life are an important element of civic competence. Media literacy is promoted and supported with the help of high-quality, systematic and comprehensive media education.

In practice, this means more hard work for us media educators. Revising the policy is an achievement, but still just a milestone. At the national level, people cannot be expected to become media literate without strong support. It is imperative that public services, civil society, research and sompanies all play their part in promoting and practicing media education and thereby media literacy.

How, then, will media education become more comprehensive, of higher quality, and more systematic?

Based on the joint discussions, a number of proposals for action to achieve the objectives have been drawn up. You can find the proposals of action here.

We received some comments during the policy draft commenting phase, asking for more specific guidance on the type of organization that would be responsible for each objective. However, despite our primary intention, we gave up on this. The reason was practical: the end result, when taking into account the already existing media education activities, was that most of the objectives would have belonged ”all” types of organisations. Organizations operating in the field are best aware of their own activities and are expected to contribute to the objectives and measures that are reasonable.

Networking, open sharing and collaboration help to avoid duplication and increase resource efficiency. One of the key messages of the policy is the importance and encouragement of cooperation.

You can always ask KAVI for help if you are interested in Finnish media education. Information about Finnish media education organisations’ activities will also be shared on this developing website.

At KAVI we will also be responsible for the follow-up of the policy. The follow-up will be carried out in connection with the national reporting of the AVMS Directive. Once we receive the directive’s reporting guidelines from the EU Commission, we can also better design a follow-up program for the new national media literacy policy.

Naturally, we will adapt our own operations in KAVI’s media education to the new guidelines and update our action plan as soon as possible. We also welcome ideas and co-operation suggestions to implement the policy.

Let’s make the 2020s a success story for media literacy!

Saara Salomaa
Deputy Director
National Audiovisual Institute