Double Trouble: Resilience to Fake News at the Time of Covid-19 Infodemic

The Media Literacy Index was created in 2017 as a response to the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon to measure the potential for resilience to ‘post-truth’, ‘fake-news’ and their consequence in a number of European countries and contribute to finding solutions. The Media Literacy Index 2021, presented in this report, is the fourth edition of the index after those in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The Media Literacy Index scores and ranks 35 countries in Europe according to their capacity to withstand the ‘post-truth’ and its negative ramification. The main assumption is that indicators for media freedom, quality of education, interpersonal trust and e-participation can serve as predictors to the level of resilience of a society to fake news, post-truth and related phenomenon. The concept of media literacy is employed to gauge the potential for resilience to the negative effects of diminishing public trust, severely polarized politics, and fragmented media, among others.

Year Country Organisation Author Type
2021 Europe OSIS Lessenski, M. briefing, policy brief, report
Theory of Change Keywords Download/link
Intermediate Outcome 1, Intermediate Outcome 2 access to information, covid-19, enabling environment, media literacy Download/link