Good morning, students, teachers, everyone present and joining in remotely!
I am especially pleased to address you at an event which opens new opportunities for you to acquire media literacy skills, which are so crucially important in the modern day and age.
It would be difficult to find a more decisive moment than this year.
A brutal war is happening in Ukraine. In this war, information plays just as important a role as tanks, weapons and soldiers do.
The information space in Latvia has been set into turmoil by the demolition of Soviet monuments and the economic crisis. In autumn, health issues will once again come to the forefront, true and false facts will be circulated about Covid-19 and other diseases.
On any given day, there are millions of such issues and others within the information space. The internet, social networks, media platforms and various communication channels have become our daily sources of information.
How to navigate them? How to differentiate an opinion from a fact? How to identify proposals produced by experts from populist manipulation? How to keep a cool head, be able to analyse information and not promote misinformation any further?
To quote the poet Imants Ziedonis: “So, so many truths. You can lose your way, if you don’t have your own.”
In order to navigate the information ocean, we need to train our minds and our skills. Thank you to organisation IREX and the experts in Latvia for drafting education materials and tools to help in learning these skills.
Our ability to be a strong society and state is based on the strength of our spirit.
And that requires critical thinking and well-trained media literacy muscles.