Empowering People in the Digital Age: Media and Information Literacy and Increasing Geopolitical Tensions in the Baltics

• In Event: Disinformation and Media Literacy

Abstract

In the past few years, the expansion and development of digital communication technologies accelerated, it is evident in various spheres, including also geopolitical conflicts, where winning the info-war is becoming integral part of the strategy.

While digital transformation in general (including new media technologies) has enormous possibilities to support progress towards more sustainable future, - fighting global risks, inequality, poverty, etc., – the reality however proves, that many of these new tools can be easily manipulated and can become a destructive and powerful weapon to break the public unity, sow panic and fear, disrupt quiet public life. Therefore, in the uncertain and turbulent times as we find ourselves today, it is essential to empower citizens by ensuring their media and information literacy and to secure their resilience to possible manipulations.

Drawing on the multiple datasets from different public surveys and other documents this research paper questions Baltic public media and information literacy and public resilience to harmful information. It summarizes the current situation by listing biggest challenges and providing with recommendations and good examples, - how and why public empowerment through media and information literacy can help handle the risks, digital and geopolitical challenges in the uncertain future.

Short Bio

Inesa Bunevičienė (PhD) is an associate professor at the Department of Public Communication at VMU. In 2013 she defended her dissertation in political science on the topic "Deliberative manifestations of democracy on the Internet: assessing the quality of public climate change discussions on the Facebook social network" (Dissertation supervisor - VMU prof. Auksė Balcytiene, consultant - Jurg Steiner, professor emeritus of the University of North Carolina (USA).

Inesa's research interests and topics include risk and crisis management and communication, health discourses, their construction, risk amplification processes, media and information literacy, disinformation processes and their impact on crisis management.

Currently, researcher is actively involved in health communication research. Inesa Bunevičienė is also actively involved in other international project activities: from 2020 gives lectures and advises, supervises students' works in the project MicroMaster: Internationalization at home through online Micro Masters and virtual mobility; A researcher works in the Erasmus+ partially funded project ERUM: Enriching Research Understanding through Media.

She is founder of Cura te ipsum - a health literacy promoting initiative. As an expert, she participated in the preparation of the communication guide of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania "Presentation of the communication guide of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania: the most important principles of unified communication and their practical application" (2017).

Author

• Inesa Buneviciene, Vytautas Magnus University