Europe Asia News

The European Parliament said that because of the global and cross-border nature of the digital environment, coordination across the European Union is needed to protect citizens and democracies.

In a resolution adopted on July 7 with 447 votes in favor, 128 against and 78 abstentions, Parliament called for media literacy and digital learning to be promoted as basic skills for all citizens throughout the education process and beyond.

Members of Parliament said media literacy and digital learning would enable citizens to identify disinformation, foreign information manipulation and interference, cyberbullying and other forms of online harm.

The resolution said policies should be developed to help citizens understand how platform design can influence their perception of information. Programs should also help users distinguish between editorial, commercial and synthetic content, identify persuasion techniques and recognize content generated by artificial intelligence.

Members called for greater cooperation between public and private organizations to develop media literacy across the EU, while urging that digital learning tools used in education be kept free from commercial influence and that cooperation with the private sector be conducted in the public interest.

The European Parliament also called for additional measures to protect children using video-sharing platforms as part of the evaluation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Given their role in shaping young people's information consumption habits, Parliament called for influencers and content creators to also be subject to media content rules and for codes of conduct and clear guidelines to be established.

The resolution's rapporteur, Marcos Ros Sempere, said democracies should not leave citizens to deal alone with disinformation, addictive designs and the commercial interests of major platforms, stressing that media literacy and digital learning should become basic skills for citizens of all ages.