Editor’s introduction. Media and information literacy research in countries around the Baltic Sea

Abstract

This special issue of the Central European Journal of Communication (CEJC) collects studies on media literacy from countries around the Baltic Sea. The focus of the issue is on media literacy and related research in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. The main objective is to inquire into media education and literacy in local conditions within a specific geo-cultural area. This study of the applications of media literacy in its local variants is intended to contribute to our understanding of media literacy in diverse cultural contexts (FrauMeigs, 2007). The inquiry is also pertinent to the ongoing project of contesting the western epistemic center of media studies (Park & Curran, 2000), by focusing on the northeastern corner of Europe, which is characterized by countries with small media markets and a limited number of users of national languages. Indeed, the area around the Baltic Sea is an interesting border zone because countries in immediate vicinity to each other show very different and asynchronous development when it comes to the development of media literacy. In some countries, such as Finland, Sweden, and Poland, raising citizens’ awareness and competence in terms of media and communication has been a public concern for a relatively long time, whereas the Baltic countries have been subjected to propaganda and other restricting conditions that have hindered the systematic advancement of critical media literacy and related agency until recently (del Mar Grandío, Dilli, & O’Neill, 2017; Frau-Meigs, Velez, & Michel, 2017; Frau-Meigs & Torrent, 2009). According to the Media Literacy Index 2019, compiled by the European Policies Initiative of the Open Society Institute in Sofia, which assesses the resilience potential to disinformation in 35 European countries, using the level of media freedom, education, and trust in people as indicators, Finland (#1), Sweden (#4), and Estonia