Rethinking Media Literacy 2025

The unprecedented speed and scale at which information travels, enabled by global connectivity, social media platforms and emerging technologies, have transformed how societies communicate, access knowledge and make decisions. Yet this transformation has also created vulnerabilities. The rapid circulation of misleading, inaccurate or manipulated information, whether intentional or not, can erode trust in public institutions, polarize communities and amplify social tensions. Perhaps most importantly, disinformation disrupts the ability of individuals to freely make informed choices about what is in their own best interest.1 The complexity of the information ecosystem, compounded by algorithmic amplification and the rise of synthetic media, has made it more difficult for people to discern reliable information from false or deceptive content. These challenges not only affect public health responses, electoral integrity and crisis management but also have profound consequences for the exercise of fundamental rights and the health of democratic societies. The rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has further exacerbated the challenge. Tools capable of creating realistic images, audio, videos and text have lowered the barriers to producing and disseminating highly convincing and personalized false content. Even as early as 2020, a study found that in 50% of cases, humans could not differentiate between news created by a person and news generated by AI.2 AI has substantially improved its ability to mimic human writing in the intervening years, along with audio, video and images. By age 11, children’s confidence in evaluating online content often exceeds their actual competence,3 while false information that has proliferated online is now being cited by AI large language models (LLMs), as individuals attempt to fact-check information which they encounter.4 As disinformation tactics evolve, so too must MIL initiatives, integrating insights from psychology, technology and education to remain effective in an ever-changing digital environment. The proliferation of user-friendly, relatively inexpensive and easily accessible applications has enabled the creation of synthetic media and the widespread interaction with non-human agents, such as AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants. This shift underscores the need for teaching and training to equip people with the skills to critically evaluate synthetic media, discern credible information from AI-generated content (AIGC) and interact responsibly and ethically with AI systems.In this context, MIL – which is defined as a set of competencies that empower individuals to access, understand, critically evaluate, create and responsibly share information and media content across different platforms and formats – is critical for building resilient societies and protecting individual freedoms. Beyond enabling individuals to defend themselves against manipulation or disinformation, the ability to seek, receive and impart information freely is a fundamental right, enshrined in international human rights frameworks such as Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. MIL acts as both a safeguard and an enabler of this right, ensuring that people are not silenced by manipulation, overwhelmed by disinformation or disenfranchised by their inability to critically engage with the information around them. MIL serves as a foundational tool for furthering the education of informed digital citizens. It trains individuals to question sources, recognize biases and identify manipulative tactics. Moreover, it cultivates resilience against disinformation by promoting a culture of enquiry and reflection rather than passive consumption, and ideally it should provide citizens with an understanding of the digital information ecosystem in which they now live. This report presents a holistic framework that situates MIL as one node across both the disinformation life cycle and the socio-ecological model (SEM) – a framework to capture the multiple, interacting layers of influence on digital safety, from personal behaviour to interpersonal and community dynamics, institutional obligations and policy levers. By applying this model, the report offers a structured approach to identify gaps in current interventions and supports organizations in more effectively targeting their strategies to strengthen information integrity and uphold fundamental rights. By analysing interventions at different stages – prevention, detection, response and resilience – and examining the influence of individual, community, institutional and societal factors, the framework offers a more comprehensive perspective for action. Indicative case studies offer practical examples of both MIL interventions and the application of this wider framework. The objective of the report is two-fold: first, to assess the state of MIL efforts in the context of current information challenges; second, to unpack the disinformation life cycle and SEM, helping improve the design and targeting of more holistic interventions. It offers a new perspective on how to map and strengthen efforts that seek to bolster information integrity, including – but not limited to – MIL initiatives. Rethinking Media Literacy: A New Ecosystem Model for Information Integrity 6