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Part I
Global analysis of European public policies in MIL
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1 Mapping media and information literacy policies
New perspectives for the governance of MIL
Divina Frau-Meigs, Irma Velez and Julieta Flores Michel
Media and information literacy has benefited from a series of European Commission programmes over the past decade, particularly since its inclusion in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (European Parliament 2010). Its location within the European Commission (EC) has varied, from the e-learning programme (2001–2004) to the Information Society and Media Directorate-General (2001–2009), to the Education and Culture Directorate-General (2010–2014), then to the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT, formerly the Information Society and Media Directorate-General) (2015–). This oscillation between the media and education sectors is partly due to the fact that MIL is located either as a subsection of education or as a subset of new competences within the larger EC digital agenda. In the first case, MIL is placed under the auspices of formal schooling, in the second case, MIL is entrusted to all sorts of actors such as national audiovisual regulatory authorities (the UK Office of Communications, or Ofcom; the French Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, etc.) and CSOs. This oscillation may account for a general sense that MIL is stalled, as there is a “disconnect” or a time-lag between the EC recommendations and the member states’ actions.
The current historical stage for MIL coincides with a time when national policies are supposed to harmonize with EC policies, and when digital convergence is impacting all sectors, MIL included. Its impetus was started while MIL was under the Education and Culture Directorate, complying with the subsidiarity principle of EC governance whereby the responsibility for addressing education questions is submitted to the control of the member states. Digital convergence is modifying the boundaries of MIL as two more literacies are emerging: computer literacy and digital literacy. The EC defines MIL as “the ability to access the media, and to understand and critically evaluate different aspects of the media and media content. MIL also includes the ability to communicate in a variety of contexts” (European Commission 2007). The definition has been willingly left open, to allow for media changes and national adjustments according to local traditions, media histories and cultural needs. This is happening at the same time as the EC is modifying its own boundaries, to embrace a second and third wave of democratization after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The incorporation of the Baltic States and the Eastern Balkans (2004–2007) followed by the Western Balkan enlargements (2011–2013) has brought in different conceptions of MIL and public policy. These post-communist countries come from different traditions in national policies for education as they have given priority to an IT approach favoured by the communist regimes, while countries with an older democratic tradition have prioritized media in their definitions of MIL.
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At a national level, the subsidiary principle depends on the dynamics of sovereignty, as member states present various levels of involvement according to their cultural sensitivity to the issue. The EC tries to federate coordinated actions and consensus-based decisions while preserving the member states’ sense of national sovereignty. Policy framework and training are two of the areas where national sovereignty expresses itself beyond international regulatory recommendations. As Divina Frau-Meigs has pointed out: “Policy makers need to overcome the perceived risks that ME might threaten governmental power, national sovereignty and even the cultural identity of a country” (Frau-Meigs & Torrent 2009, p. 15). Failing to overcome these perceptions inhibits EU inter-governmental efforts, recommendations, declarations and directives that might lead to more effective national actions.
Due to subsidiarity, national policy-makers may implement different policy interventions, calling on various actors and authorities and take regulatory actions to tackle the challenges and opportunities of MIL. Different and multiple levels of government are involved, with several rungs of governance implied. Providing a comprehensive analysis of the way policies and initiatives across Europe address MIL requires a complex understanding of such governance, with the hope to identify the perceived delays, disconnects and time-lags between the EC and its member states.
Drawing on governance theory in a networked media society
Governance theory has recently matured in its application to policy-making (Geyer & Cairney 2015). The literature points to various definitions that all include multi-layered levels of decision-making and the more or less coordinated actions of various actors via regulation by specific actors (Bevir 2013; Hufty 2011). Additionally, multi-level governance is increasingly analysed in the context of European integration as the boundaries between supranational and domestic politics are increasingly blurred (Conzelmann 2008). In this context, the term “governance” has been problematized to account for the increasing fragmentation of public decision-making together with the growing inter-dependence between state and non-state actors.
Mobilizing literature from the broader field of governance studies and applying it to MIL emphasizes the distributed character of decision-making with regulation by public actors on the one hand, and coordination with all stakeholders on the other hand. In the case of MIL, it also needs to draw from the notion of communication networks, especially since the emergence of the Internet and the ensuing digital turn (Castells 1996). So, for the purpose of this research, MIL can be defined as a governance process in so far as it is multi-stakeholder (EC, member states, private and civic sectors) and in so far as some shared standard-setting documents, decision-making procedures, values and programmes are collectively coordinated and implemented to shape its evolution.1
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Thierry Vedel provides a panorama of five governance models in relation to communication networks in a manner that could be tested for MIL as it is located at the crossroads of media and education: state governance (national sovereignty, media regulation), international regime governance (EC directives, consensus-based rules), communitarian governance (technical self-regulated community), market-driven governance (consumers and providers oriented, paid for services) and associative governance (interest groups, chosen membership). Vedel underlines that these models all share two elements in common: an institutional dimension that deals with processes and coordination among stakeholders (with various degrees of externalization or internalization of such processes) and a symbolic dimension that refers to the values and representations articulating the different social agencies and bodies around the social action at stake (Vedel 1999, pp. 30–31).
Additionally, the notion of governance takes into account the phased adjustments needed at all levels of policy-making, in a distributed, incremental, scalable, step-by-step perspective to measure change and account for transformative actions, if any (Frau-Meigs & Hibbard 2016). Governance theory applied to MIL enables the evaluation of MIL policies as it combines cartography with expert and ...
