Media Education

The National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI), with its Department for Media Education and Audiovisual Media (MEKU), has a legal duty to promote media education. KAVI is a subordinate of the Ministry of Education and Culture and acts in cooperation with stakeholders.

KAVI promotes media education and safer media environment for children

KAVI coordinates the implementation of Finnish national media education and media literacy policy. In Finland, KAVI operates mainly on the national level, but also reinforces regional media education. This is done, for example, by supporting regional and local organizations in strategic media education planning.

KAVI develops and promotes media education practices, operational models, and pedagogies. We support the media education awareness and competencies of educators, for example, by maintaining an online Media Literacy School. The site provides information on media education, media literacy and media culture as well as a wealth of teaching and learning resources.

KAVI conducts development projects. For more than 10 years, KAVI has coordinated the Finnish Safer Internet Centre (FISIC) projects. FISIC is co-funded by the European Commission and implemented in cooperation with two non-governmental organisations, the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare and Save the Children Finland. FISIC is a wide-ranging action aiming to promote media literacy, media education and safer media environment for children. FISIC implements the European BIK+ strategy.

Between 2020 and 2023 KAVI has been coordinating the national New Literacies development program in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish National Agency for Education. New Literacies aimed to strengthen the media literacy, ICT competence and programming skills of children and young people in early childhood, pre-primary and basic education. With more than 10 million euros funding for its implementation in municipalities, the program has been the biggest single investment in media education in Finland.

A most recent example our projects is the Inclusive and Creative Media Education (ICME). ICME aims to develop operational models of innovative media literacy activities that can be shared and scaled up successfully in different media educational contexts crossing cultural, national, and linguistic borders from inclusive and creative perspectives.

KAVI acts in cooperation

Our aim is to collect experiences relating to media education and to bring together different actors in the field to promote media education.

KAVI is the national center of media education and acts in cooperation with various actors. We coordinate, for example, the Finnish Media Literacy Week and the National Game Week campaigns which connect organisations, corporations, municipal actors as well as the authorities. More than 40 organisations participate annually in the planning and communications of the Media Literacy Week campaign and hundreds of local events are organised during the Game Week.

KAVI promotes and models cross-sector cooperation. We arrange the annual Media Education Forum, which aims at finding new partners as well as exchange of information between media education professionals.

At international level, we actively cooperate in several networks such as EPRA’s media and information literacy taskforce and INSAFE.

KAVI as an expert

We act as expert members in working and advisory groups on both the national and the international level. KAVI represents Finland in, e.g., European Commission’s Media Literacy Expert Group and Safer Internet for Children Expert Group.

KAVI is an expert in media education, media literacy and the development of children’s media environment. We are lecturers and panelists at national and international conferences and seminars. As a media education authority, we participate in the preparation of different policy documents and in commenting thereon.

KAVI promotes research related to the field and conducts media education related studies both on its own and in cooperation with research organisations.

KAVI informs

KAVI raises awareness of media literacy and education. We communicate actively on several social media platforms with professionals of different sectors, popularize recent research data to the public and promote understanding of age ratings in different media. We also keep our own blogs where we bring up topical themes relating to media education and write expert opinions for the publications of our partners. Good cooperation with stakeholders enables us to reach citizens of different target groups.