Media literacy is about critical thinking skills, and this is built through education, according to research from the Open Society Institute, according to 24 The chasequoted by de Rador.

Resistance to fake news

Bulgaria ranks last among EU member states in the Media Literacy Index 2022. It is prepared by the Open Society Institute – Sofia as part of the European Policy Initiative and assesses the potential for resilience against fake news in 41 European countries using media freedom indicators. , quality of education and trust between people.

Bulgaria ranks 33rd. Finland (1st place), Norway (2nd place), Denmark (3rd place) and Estonia (4th place) are the countries with the greatest potential to resist the negative impact of fake news and disinformation.

At the bottom of the ranking, Georgia occupies the last 41st place, followed by North Macedonia (40th place) and Kosovo (39th place) with almost the same result, Bosnia and Herzegovina (38th place) and Albania (37th place).

Education is an important component in the fight against fake news / Finnish lesson

For example, the Finnish government, which has been leading the ranking of media education for a year, believes that a good public education system is a powerful tool against the information war against the country, and “widespread critical thinking skills among the Finnish population and a coordinated government response” are considered a key element in the fight against disinformation .

It is generally accepted that more educated people are considered more informed, more critical in their thinking and less likely to fall victim to fake news.

Quality of education

Bulgaria performs worst on indicators that measure the quality of education, ranking 34th out of 41 countries, lagging behind including some non-EU countries in the region, such as Ukraine, Serbia and Turkey, but scoring similarly to Romania.

In general, more educated people are considered more informed, more critical and less likely to fall for fake news, the study authors explained.

Freedom of the press

Bulgaria ranks 32nd in the index, which measures press freedom, ahead of countries such as Hungary and Serbia, but behind non-EU countries such as Moldova, Kosovo and Montenegro.

In terms of people-to-people trust, Bulgaria fares slightly better and ranks 29th, with a similar score to Portugal and slightly behind the Czech Republic, including ahead of another EU member, Croatia.

literacy

The Media Literacy Index also includes a cluster analysis that divides countries into groups based on the proximity of their scores and shows the presence of certain geographic patterns.

The countries with the best results are located in North-West Europe, while the countries with the worst results are in South-East Europe and the South Caucasus.

The Index shows that Southeast and Eastern Europe have a concentration of countries that are potentially more vulnerable to fake news because they have problems with several aspects tracked by the Media Literacy Index – quality of education, media freedom, low interpersonal trust. or a combination of problems in these areas.

The release of the 2022 Media Literacy Index comes at a time when the “infodemic” accompanying the COVID pandemic has coincided with a propaganda “information war” waged against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has multiplied both misinformation and Russian threats.