Online disinformation is a complicated and controversial phenomenon that is proving to be a large challenge for governments, private sector bodies, and civil society groups in a variety of different contexts around the globe. Foreign influence operations conducted through online disinformation campaigns have been implemented in various contexts with the intention to create political instability within these targeted nations. This thesis examines the question: What education policy initiatives are being implemented and/or already exist in the United States and Finland in an effort to make themselves more resilient to transnational online disinformation campaigns? Various policy documents that concern education legislation are analyzed through Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach. Concepts associated with the Securitization theory and Buzan’s (1998) security analysis framework were applied to the content of these documents in order assess whether the reasoning or discourse associated with the introduction of critical media literacy programs was related to counteracting the threat of one foreign disinformation. Results indicated that there were many differences in how and why the United States and Finland implemented media literacy programs. There are indications that the perceived threat of foreign disinformation campaigns is one of the main justifications for the United States and Finland to introduce or improve national media literacy policies. This work allows other researchers to see these differences in approaches and how they relate to the international communities’ efforts toward utilizing media literacy as a security measure against disinformation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-55525 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Benjamin, Clayton |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för globala politiska studier (GPS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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