Case Study 1: Finland's Media Literacy Education — A National Model

Overview

Finland consistently ranks among the top countries globally in media literacy indices. The Open Society Foundations' Media Literacy Index, which measures the capacity of European countries to resist fake news, has ranked Finland first in Europe every year since the index's inception in 2017. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report has consistently identified Finnish news consumers as among the most discerning and skeptical in Europe. What accounts for Finland's exceptional performance, and what can other countries learn from its approach?

This case study examines Finland's systematic approach to media literacy education — from curriculum integration to teacher training to national policy — and evaluates the evidence for its effectiveness.

Background: Finland's Educational Context

To understand Finland's media literacy success, it is essential to understand the broader Finnish educational context. Finland's school system is widely admired internationally for its consistently high performance on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) assessments in reading, mathematics, and science. Key features of the Finnish educational system include:

  • Highly qualified teachers: All Finnish teachers are required to hold a master's degree. Teaching is a highly competitive and respected profession, with approximately one in ten applicants to teacher education programs accepted.
  • Significant teacher autonomy: Finnish teachers have considerable freedom to design their own lessons and choose their own methods within national curriculum guidelines.
  • Minimal standardized testing: Finland uses fewer high-stakes standardized tests than most countries, allowing more time for exploratory, inquiry-based learning.
  • National curriculum framework: Finland's National Core Curriculum, updated periodically by the Finnish National Agency for Education, sets broad goals and competency areas rather than prescribing specific content.

These structural features of Finnish education create conditions favorable to media literacy education: well-trained, autonomous teachers who can integrate media literacy authentically across subjects, and a curriculum framework that emphasizes critical thinking and competency development.

Historical Development of Finnish Media Literacy Education

Finland's commitment to media literacy education has deep roots. The country began integrating media education into the school curriculum in the 1970s, when other countries were just beginning to recognize the need. Several factors drove early adoption:

Small market with dominant foreign media: Finland's small population and language (Finnish is spoken by only about 5 million people) meant that Finns consumed significant amounts of foreign media, particularly American television programming. This created early awareness of the importance of critically evaluating media from different cultural contexts.

Strong public broadcasting tradition: Finland's public broadcaster, Yle, has played an active role in media literacy education, producing educational content and resources for schools and partnering with educational authorities on media education initiatives.

Cultural tradition of reading and critical inquiry: Finland has high literacy rates and a cultural tradition of valuing education and intellectual engagement. The country consistently ranks among the highest in the world in public library use per capita.

Political motivation post-Cold War: Finland shares a long border with Russia and has historical experience with Soviet-era propaganda. This geopolitical context has created strong political motivation for developing citizens' capacity to evaluate media critically, particularly after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea sparked concerns about information warfare.

The Finnish National Core Curriculum: Media Literacy as Cross-Curricular Competency

Finland's 2014 National Core Curriculum (revised for implementation in 2016, with further updates in 2020) took a landmark step in media literacy education: rather than establishing media literacy as a separate subject, it embedded "multiliteracy" as one of seven "transversal competencies" that all Finnish students should develop across all subjects.

The seven transversal competencies in the Finnish curriculum are:

  1. Thinking and learning to learn
  2. Cultural competence, interaction, and expression
  3. Multiliteracy (including media literacy)
  4. ICT competence
  5. Working life competence and entrepreneurship
  6. Participation, involvement, and building a sustainable future
  7. Self-care and managing daily activities

Multiliteracy in the Finnish curriculum is defined as "the ability to interpret, produce and evaluate different kinds of texts in different environments and situations using different tools." This broad definition encompasses reading, writing, media, and digital communication, situating media literacy within a comprehensive literacy framework rather than treating it as an isolated technical skill.

The curriculum mandates that every teacher, in every subject, contribute to developing students' multiliteracy competencies. A mathematics teacher examining statistical graphics in news reporting, a history teacher analyzing wartime propaganda, a language teacher comparing journalistic and literary texts — all are contributing to the multiliteracy competency. This integration model contrasts with the common approach of creating a separate "media literacy" course that covers all relevant content in isolation.

Grade-Level Progression: What Finnish Students Learn and When

The Finnish curriculum articulates specific multiliteracy learning goals at each stage of schooling:

Grades 1–2 (Ages 7–8)

Students learn to distinguish text types (stories, instructions, news), understand that texts are made by people for purposes, recognize advertising, and explore media from different cultures. Even very young students are introduced to the concept that "this was made by someone" — that media texts are human constructions, not neutral reflections of reality.

Grades 3–6 (Ages 9–12)

Students develop more sophisticated analysis skills: comparing information from multiple sources, recognizing that different sources may present different perspectives, understanding basic principles of news production, beginning to evaluate source reliability. Students also begin creating their own media texts, developing production skills alongside analytical skills.

Grades 7–9 (Ages 13–15)

The curriculum introduces more complex analytical frameworks: understanding commercial media models, advertising and persuasion techniques, the role of media in constructing identity and social norms, basic concepts of media ownership, and the ethical dimensions of media production. Students practice systematic source evaluation and begin engaging with questions of media representation.

Upper Secondary School (Grades 10–12, Ages 16–18)

Students engage with advanced analytical concepts: media ideology, political economy of media, global media flows, journalism ethics, digital rights and privacy, and the relationship between media and democracy. Critical media literacy — analyzing how media construct reality and serve particular interests — becomes more explicit.

Teacher Training: The Critical Element

Finland's media literacy success is inseparable from its approach to teacher education. Finnish teacher training programs have integrated media literacy competencies in two ways:

Disciplinary integration: Future teachers learn to incorporate multiliteracy and media literacy into their subject area teaching. A future history teacher learns to use media analysis as a historical method; a future Finnish language teacher learns to teach media text analysis alongside literary text analysis.

Dedicated media literacy coursework: Most Finnish teacher education programs include specific coursework on media literacy pedagogy, covering key concepts, assessment strategies, and resources.

Critically, Finnish teacher training also addresses the challenge of teaching controversial topics — particularly media bias and political communication — without imposing partisan perspectives. Teachers are trained to present multiple perspectives, use the Socratic method, and teach analytical tools that students can apply independently.

Professional development for in-service teachers is supported by several organizations:

  • The Finnish National Agency for Education provides curriculum guidance and professional development resources.
  • The Centre for Media Education (CME) at Yle, Finland's public broadcaster, develops materials and training for teachers.
  • The Finnish Media Education Society (FMES) is a civil society organization that advocates for media literacy education and develops teacher resources.

Factual Verification and Source Evaluation: The "1,000 Sources" Approach

One specific pedagogical innovation in Finnish media education is the emphasis on understanding how news is produced before evaluating news content. Finnish educators have found that students who understand journalism's production process — how journalists find and verify information, what editorial standards apply, how sources are selected — are better equipped to evaluate news output.

The Finnish curriculum encourages what teachers informally call thinking about "1,000 sources": recognizing that behind any news story is a chain of sources — official databases, expert interviews, documentary evidence, eyewitness accounts — that the journalist has synthesized. Understanding this production process makes students more aware of both journalism's epistemic strengths and its limitations.

Measurable Outcomes: What the Evidence Shows

The Media Literacy Index

The Open Society Foundations' Media Literacy Index (MLI), developed by the European Policies Initiative of the Open Society Institute-Sofia, measures European countries' capacity to resist "fake news" and disinformation through a composite index of multiple indicators, including:

  • Quality of media and press freedom (Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House)
  • Trust in media
  • Reading habits (newspaper circulation, internet usage)
  • Educational performance (PISA scores)
  • Political and civic engagement

Finland has ranked first in Europe on the MLI every year since its 2017 launch. In the 2023 edition, Finland scored 73 out of 100, significantly ahead of second-place Norway (69) and well above the EU average (40).

Reuters Institute Digital News Report

The Reuters Institute's annual Digital News Report, based on surveys of approximately 2,000 respondents per country in more than 40 countries, has consistently found Finnish respondents demonstrating:

  • High rates of using multiple news sources
  • High ability to distinguish news from opinion
  • High rates of deliberately seeking out alternative perspectives
  • Relatively high trust in established news sources, combined with critical evaluation rather than uncritical acceptance
  • Below-average susceptibility to viral misinformation

PISA Data on Critical Thinking

PISA's 2018 assessment included for the first time a "global competence" module that measured, among other things, the ability to recognize bias and evaluate information quality. Finnish students performed significantly above the OECD average on these measures.

A 2022 study by researchers at the University of Helsinki examined the relationship between Finnish students' media literacy competencies and the school curriculum, finding that students in schools that more actively implemented the multiliteracy curriculum showed higher performance on media literacy assessments. The study noted, however, that implementation quality varied significantly across schools.

Challenges and Limitations

Despite Finland's impressive media literacy record, challenges remain:

Implementation Variation: Despite the national curriculum mandate, implementation quality varies considerably across schools and regions. Urban schools with more resources and more experienced teachers tend to implement multiliteracy more effectively than rural or under-resourced schools.

Digital Divide: While Finland has high overall internet access rates, significant gaps exist in digital skills among older adults and among immigrant communities who have not had access to Finnish schools. The national curriculum-based model addresses only those who go through the Finnish school system.

Social Media Gap: Finland's media literacy education has traditionally focused on traditional media (newspapers, television, radio) and is still catching up with the rapidly evolving social media landscape. Algorithmic amplification, influencer culture, and platform-specific dynamics have introduced new challenges that the curriculum is only beginning to address.

Measurement Challenges: Attributing Finland's high media literacy performance to the curriculum specifically is methodologically challenging. Finland's strong overall educational system, high literacy rates, cultural traditions, and well-resourced public broadcaster all contribute. Isolating the specific contribution of the media literacy curriculum is difficult.

Susceptibility to Sophisticated Disinformation: While Finnish citizens show strong resistance to obvious misinformation, more sophisticated disinformation campaigns — particularly those involving genuine-looking sources, state-level coordination, and emotionally resonant narratives — remain challenging. Finnish security services have documented ongoing Russian information influence operations targeting Finnish public opinion on NATO membership.

What Other Countries Can Learn

Finland's media literacy model offers several transferable lessons:

  1. Whole-school integration is more effective than standalone courses: Embedding media literacy across subjects means more practice, greater relevance, and avoidance of the "siloing" effect.

  2. Teacher quality is essential: No curriculum framework succeeds without teachers capable of implementing it thoughtfully. Investment in teacher education and professional development is inseparable from media literacy policy.

  3. Production education belongs alongside analytical education: Finland's emphasis on creating media texts, not just analyzing them, develops a more complete understanding of how media works.

  4. National policy coordination matters: The combination of national curriculum mandate, public broadcaster involvement, and civil society organizations creates a coherent ecosystem for media literacy education.

  5. Long-term commitment is required: Finland's strong media literacy outcomes reflect decades of consistent investment, not a short-term initiative. Media literacy education requires sustained political and educational commitment.

Discussion Questions

  1. Finland's success with media literacy education is inseparable from its broader educational approach (well-trained teachers, low-stakes assessment, significant teacher autonomy). Is the Finnish model transferable to countries with very different educational systems?

  2. The Finnish curriculum embeds media literacy as a "transversal competency" rather than a standalone subject. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach compared to a dedicated media literacy course?

  3. Despite Finland's high media literacy scores, the country remains vulnerable to sophisticated state-sponsored disinformation. What does this suggest about the limits of media literacy education as a defense against disinformation?

  4. Finland's geopolitical situation — sharing a border with Russia — has created strong political motivation for media literacy education. How might political motivation shape the content and approach of media literacy education in potentially problematic ways?

Sources and Further Reading

  • Open Society Foundations. (2023). Media Literacy Index 2023. European Policies Initiative.
  • Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. (2023). Digital News Report 2023. University of Oxford.
  • Finnish National Agency for Education. (2016). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014. Helsinki: FNBE.
  • Palsa, L., & Ruokamo, H. (2015). Behind the concept of multiliteracy: Theorization of literacy in early twenty-first century Finland. Semiotica, 207, 591–614.
  • Kotilainen, S., & Arnolds-Granlund, S. B. (Eds.). (2010). Media Literacy Education: Nordic perspectives. Nordicom.
  • Kupiainen, R., Sintonen, S., & Suoranta, J. (2008). Decades of Finnish media education. Finnish Society on Media Education.