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

Everyone needs knowledge about the media and information systems in order to express themselves and have a critical awareness towards media and different kinds of information content. Media and information literacy is perhaps the most important and significant tool for developing this kind of knowledge and ability. Media literacy definitions have been discussed in research literature for decades. Different models on media and information literacy include different parts. Potter (2010) approached the concept with the help of three questions: 1) What are the media? 2) What do we mean by media literacy? 3) What should be the purpose of media literacy? The answers to these questions are complementary to each other and there is no need to try to agree on only one consensus definition. Similarly, a recent review of research articles by Lauri Palsa and Heli Ruokamo (2015) concludes that the definitions are multifaceted and that there is no consensus about the definition. The authors further argue that there is no need to find a general agreement. Rather, multiple media literacies should be discussed, which would possibly help contextualise different media literacy definitions and help both practitioners and researchers to understand each other.