Citizens in a mediated world : a Nordic-Baltic perspective on media and information literacy

In the Nordic countries, media and information literacy (MIL) has been an issue on the agenda for many years. Several formal and informal meetings have taken place where different kinds of MIL questions have been discussed. The last expert meeting funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers was held in Stockholm in October 2013, when Sweden had the Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers. The point of departure for the Stockholm meeting was a new strategy for Nordic cultural cooperation that was launched in 2013, where two themes were The Digital Nordic Region and The Young Nordic Region. Nordicom and the Swedish Media Council arranged the conference and documented it afterwards.

The aim of the Stockholm expert meeting was to put the MIL issue on the political agenda, and to encourage Nordic cooperation in the field with different kinds of actors. The documentation contains a broad description from each country, as well as research articles from well-informed actors in the field. In the conclusions specific calls towards political actors were made, and further exchange of experience and enhancing actors? competence were discussed. One of the calls from the Stockholm expert meeting was directed towards the Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM): A desire for a follow-up meeting. A Nordic MIL network was therefore established in June 2015. The main purpose of the network is to utilise each other as resources, collaborate on initiatives and stand together as one united voice towards the rest of Europe, and internationally, on topics of MIL.

After a Nordic network meeting in 2015, and on the initiative of NCM, an application for a new conference was submitted to NCM from the Nordic media and media education authorities together with Nordicom. The application was granted, and a follow-up conference was held in Helsinki in May 2016, in liaison with the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day Conference.

The event was organised by NORDICOM (Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research) together with KAVI (National Audiovisual Institute) in Finland, jointly with the Nordic media and media education authorities: Media Council for Children and Youth in Denmark, Fjölmiðlanefnd (The Media Commission) on Iceland, Norwegian Media Authority and the State Media Council in Sweden.

However, instead of a Nordic MIL Forum like the Stockholm expert meeting, the 2016 meeting in Helsinki was extended to a Nordic-Baltic venue, encouraged by the NCM. Compared to the Nordic countries, MIL is a rather new question on the agenda in the Baltic States. The media contexts differ between the Baltic States as well as in relation to the Nordic states, and so do the political agendas. The conditions for having an exchange on MIL issues were thus advantageous.

Conference presenters and round-table discussion hosts were asked to report back from the Conference. The aim of the contributions was to provide some light to the current issues being discussed within the field of MIL in the participating countries, and thus contribute to the ongoing discussion.

This publication is the documentation from the Nordic-Baltic conference Citizens of Mediated World. Nordic-Baltic Perspectives on Media and Information Literacy on 2 May 2016 in Helsinki. We would like to thank everyone involved in the conference, but especially Anu Löfgren who coordinated the venue with distinction, and the Nordic Council of Ministers who financed the conference.