Minna Aslama Horowitz, Docent and Researcher at the University of Helsinki and contributor to the NORDIS project, addressed the major Nordic Council of Ministers event “Media Literacy and Democracy Education for Societal Resilience” on 18 September 2025 in Helsinki.
Key points from the keynote “Multidimensional Media Literacy for National Resilience”:
- Research indicates that we in the Nordics lead in both trust and media and information literacy. However, there are still information inequalities, signs of fragmentation in the public sphere, and enormous challenges posed by ever-changing technologies that threaten our information integrity and societal resilience.
- That is why we need to understand literacy as multidimensional — not only as media literacy of individuals, but also as the digital and knowledge capacities of society as a whole and of its knowledge institutions — so that they can respond to challenges and elicit trust in those responses.
- But reactions are not enough: we need specific visions of what information integrity and resilience mean to us now and in the future, both in principle and in practice. To be strong, we must cherish and fortify the Nordics as a united tech-democratic region that can share visions, solutions, and resources.
The full presentation, including links to the latest research, can be watched here:
Mikko Salo, founder of the Finnish fact-checking media Faktabaari and member of NORDIS, also promoted the popular digital information literacy materials: the AI Guide for Teachers (2025) and the related AI-to game — all available in English, Swedish, and Finnish.
The event gathered experts and policymakers working in media and information literacy, education, teacher training, lifelong learning, the youth sector, and public libraries. It was organised within the framework of the Co-Presidency of Finland and Åland of the Nordic Council of Ministers, held in Helsinki on 18–19 September 2025.
The resilience theme will continue under the Danish Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers, following the ongoing Danish EU Presidency.
NORDIS extends its gratitude to the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the National Audiovisual Institute in Finland, the Finnish National Agency for Education, Nordic Culture Point, and the Nordic Network of Lifelong Learning.