ABSTRACT

The cross-country comparisons confirm that media and information literacy has become a pronounced part of European education policy in all the member states over the last decade. The rise of MIL in European policy-making can be explained by various large-scale societal changes, mostly due to the rise of neo-liberalism in EU politics and its attendant consequences, some of which are paradoxical. While discourses about MIL and citizenship are not new in countries marked by welfare state politics, the novelty lies in the spin on MIL for competence formation a spin which materializes as a battle over its definition that can be related to combination of technology-driven mediatization processes and neo-liberal political discourses and practices. The issue is made more difficult with research on MIL, as it tends to be conducted in theoretical fields that are outside education, in particular information and communication sciences, as evidenced by the Media Education Research section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.