Video: Media literacy as seen by the European Association for Viewers' Interests (EAVI).

The way we use media is changing and the volume of information we get today is enormous. People need the ability to access, analyse and evaluate images, sounds and texts on a daily basis especially if they are to use traditional and new media to communicate and create media content.

Consequently, the European Commission considers media literacy an extremely important factor for active citizenship in today's information society. Just as literacy was at the beginning of the twentieth century, media literacy is a key pre-requisite of the twenty-first century. It is also fundamental for European cinema: media-literate people can make more informed choices about the audiovisual content market.

Media literacy is thus the ability to:

- Access the media
- Understand the media and have a critical approach towards media content
- Create communication in a variety of contexts.

In particular, projects have received European financial support with the objective of :

- analysing media representations and media values in a multimedia perspective;
- encouraging the production and distribution of Media Literacy related content;
- stimulating the use of media in order to improve participation in social and community life;
- intensifying networking around media education related issues;
- concentrating on the implementation of media literacy initiatives bridging the media industry and the education world, in a “hands-on” approach.