Legal frameworks for media literacy

Abstract

Our focus in this chapter is on the legal expression of media literacy with particular reference to the ethical and social challenges faced by citizens in the media and information society. Drawing on the relevant literature in the field, our objective here is to develop greater theoretical specificity through the analysis of concepts and relationships mapped against the actual data from the Translit project. Close reading of country reports produced in the course of the Translit enables us to generate questions, to extend the literature on legal frameworks for MIL and policy and to assess how it applies to varied situations across Europe. In this chapter, we summarise and synthesize the landscape of legal frameworks for MIL. Following a review of all 28 European country reports from the Translit project, the aim is to better understand the extent to which different cultures and institutions within Europe participate within the MIL process. Our premise is that the policy debate around media and information literacy has been transformed since the 1990s. Tectonic shifts in the technical, economic, and policy domains have brought us to a new media landscape.