What the Experts Say I


Media Literacy


In this entry I will summarize the findings of the report “Sense Wanted: Resilience to ‘Post-Truth’and its Predictors in the New Media Literacy Index 2018” (Lessenski, 2018), which analyzed 35 European countries in terms of their media literacy and potential to withstand fake news. At the end it will be discussed how this report relates to Slovakia in particular.

First of all, author of the report, Marin Lessenski, identified highest media literacy in the Northwestern European countries like Finland, Denmark or the Netherlands, while the lowest scores were in Southeast Europe in countries like Macedonia, Turkey and Albania. Moreover, the trend was that countries with the highest levels of media literacy had the best education performance and the highest degree of media freedom.

Secondly, Lessenski argued that there is a number of reasons why fake news has a potential of being powerful. The reasons reside in the nature of fake news - spreading faster when evoking surprise or disgust. As a consequence of being on average six times faster as well as reaching more people, fake news and false rumors are said to beat truth in every respect. This is attributed to human nature, because news that is novel and negative tends to be more attention grabbing. Moreover, fake news are also strongly supported by what is called confirmation bias, which says “people are inclined to believe, repeat or even seek for information that is in line with their already established views, even if this is false information” (p. 7). Confirmation bias can be also enforced by algorithms that social media use for deciding what content to show their users.  “They tend to create bubbles of communication, where the user is shown similar information to his or hers own believes and interests” (p. 9).

Fortunately, the report also offers several suggestions of how to fight fake news. These are namely self-regulation, freedom of media, and education. By self-regulation the author means regulations like codes of ethics, reporting or flagging which are applied by social networks. The suggestion of media freedom is derived from the observation that countries with a higher degree of media freedom are better equipped against fake news. However, the author suggests that education is the most important factor, as he observed that countries with well-educated citizenry like Finland, Sweden or the Netherlands are quite effective at fighting disinformation.

Lastly, Slovakia’s position in this report is relatively mediocre. Out of the 35 countries it is ranked 22nd. Moreover, considering education and freedom of media, education seems to a more serious issue; therefore, if Slovakia wishes to improve the media literacy in its citizens education should be the first step.

Reference
Lessenski, M. (2018). Common Sense Wanted: Resilience to ‘Post-Truth’and its Predictors in the New Media Literacy Index 2018. The Media Literacy Index. Retrieved from http://osi.bg/downloads/File/2018/MediaLiteracyIndex2018_publishENG.pdf

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