Teachers: successful media literacy education happens in practice

From April to December 2025, NGO Tuleviku Meedia ran a project on media literacy and information resilience for young people and teachers in Tallinn, Harju County and Ida-Viru County. The project consisted of 24 lectures, which were attended by more than 460 students and dozens of teachers.

"Our meetings focused on fact-checking, the importance of reliable sources of information, including in crisis situations, the attention economy, and the risks associated with content produced by artificial intelligence," says Julia Rodina, Tuleviku Meedia founder and media lecturer. "During the project, we noticed that the level of media literacy among teenagers can vary greatly from school to school, but often many of them do not see the danger in situations where their personal data is not sufficiently protected and do not consider this to be a risk."

Thanks to the project, 56 teachers have also expanded their knowledge of media literacy. Among them is Maria Dragunova. "We are all part of the media space, we depend on it to a large extent, but we also shape it ourselves. And here, teachers can be mentors in shaping good taste. This can start as early as primary school, by offering a choice of sources. It is important to instil in students the requirement to be creators of quality content, and it is important to teach them to take a critical approach when consuming information," the teacher says.

"Teaching media literacy to schoolchildren is one of the important aspects of modern education. But at the same time, teachers must also be taught media literacy. The more teachers engage with this topic, the more different aspects of interaction with the media space open up for them," Maria Dragunova is convinced.

The meetings with teachers focused on media literacy in the age of artificial intelligence and its impact on information consumption, the production and dissemination of misinformation, as well as the work of journalists during the election period and the issue of youth radicalisation in the online environment. The teachers also visited the ERR News House and the RusERR editorial office.

Teachers say that the introduction of media literacy into the school curriculum is both a necessary and important step. At the same time, it is necessary to find the most engaging teaching methods.

“For the third year now, I have observed that students show genuine interest in media literacy: they enjoy analysing fake news, comparing the same information in different media outlets, analysing advertisements, coming up with headlines and writing articles for different age groups," said Valentina Martsinkevichene, a teacher at Tallinn Eurogümnasium, sharing her experience. According to her, after completing the media literacy course, students become more interested in the news, and their attitude towards what they read and hear becomes critical and mature.

The aim of the Tuleviku Meedia project was to increase the resilience of Russian-speaking young people aged 15-19 in Tallinn, Harju County and Ida-Viru County, as well as secondary school and vocational school teachers, to disinformation and to strengthen their media literacy. The project was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Defence.