ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the legal expression of media literacy with particular reference to the ethical and social challenges faced by citizens in the media and information society. It summarizes and synthesizes the landscape of legal frameworks for Media and Information Literacy. The chapter assesses the most important issues, challenges and debates facing the further implementation of legal frameworks for MIL at the local/national/translational level, with particular reference to the impact of digital technologies on education and media and information literacy policies. Across Europe, media and information literacy is characterized by a lack of harmonization, fragmentation, inconsistent levels of implementation and problems of marginalization arising from the fact that education remains in nearly all cases a subsidiary issue. The policy orientation of media literacy is implicit in many of the practices of media education, with a strong public dimension and democratic orientation a notable feature of its underpinning.
