Rethinking Media Literacy: A New Ecosystem Model for Information Integrity

ISD Germany's July 2025 report makes a structural argument about media literacy that challenges the dominant individual-skills paradigm: the prevailing approach — training individuals to identify false information and evaluate sources — is insufficient against disinformation that is structurally produced and structurally amplified. The report proposes a whole-of-society ecosystem model that treats information integrity as a public good requiring coordinated investment across platforms, education systems, civil society, and government rather than as an individual capacity problem.

The ecosystem framing connects directly to the European Democracy Shield debate: EDS that invests primarily in individual media literacy programmes while leaving the structural conditions of the information environment unchanged is unlikely to achieve durable resilience. ISD Germany's framework provides the analytical basis for a more structurally ambitious approach — one that addresses platform design, economic incentives, and institutional coordination alongside individual skill-building. For practitioners designing resilience programmes and for policymakers working on EDS implementation, this is an important conceptual corrective to the prevailing approach.