This index helps assess society’s resilience to fake news and information manipulations. When creating the index, indicators such as media freedom, public education, and mutual trust are evaluated, as published by organizations such as EUROSTAT, the EBU, Reporters Without Borders, and others.

Lithuania scored 54 points on the media literacy index and ranked 20th out of 41 countries. Lithuania is surpassed by both Latvia (55 points, 18th position) and Estonia (71 points, 4th position).  Estonia ranks in the top five along with other Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark). The countries with the lowest level of information literacy are Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Georgia.

What trends did the Open Society Institute in Sofia observe?

• The better the education level of the residents (based on PISA indicators) and the greater the media freedom, the higher the resistance of the residents to false and fabricated information.
• There are no countries with low education and high media freedom levels.
• Some countries with relatively good education levels but low media freedom are more strongly influenced by disinformation. Among them are Poland and Hungary.

What could we do to increase information resilience?

• In Finland, the fight against disinformation starts in kindergarten: the foundations of information literacy are acquired at an early age.
• The principles of information or media literacy are integrated into school curricula.
• Independent, strong, and analytical media.

This Information Literacy Index was announced during the international conference “The Role of Civil Society in Countering Disinformation and Promoting Media Literacy” held in Sofia in June 2023. The conference was funded by the Active Citizens Fund through the EEA and Norway Grants financial mechanism.

MediaLiteracyIndex2023_6JUNE2023

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Rethinking values, reviewing the challenges of intercultural dialogue in Lithuania and Poland at a time of division and ethnocentric authoritarian tendencies, sharing experiences and generating ideas that could be mutually taken up by Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish practitioners building intercultural connections. These are the expectations that we, together with the team of the Stefan Batory Foundation (Poland), raised when organising in October an international seminar for Lithuanian and Polish civil society organisations working on the empowerment of national minorities, migrants and foreigners.

The venue of the seminar – the 17th-18th century manor house where Česlovas Milošas used to spend his summers, Krasnagrūda, the centre of Paribio – was chosen by chance. In these lands of the periphery, Krzsystof and Malgorzata Czyzewski, Bozena and Wojcecj Sroeder managed to restore the palaces that had been destroyed by time and to establish, as Prof. I. Veisaitė used to say, a utopian world, or, as K. Czyzewski himself calls it, the small centre of the world. It is impossible to describe the uniqueness of the place in a nutshell, because in this margin, through practice, culture and music, communication, intellectual and academic gatherings, it has been possible to bring together different and diverse people under the same roof of shared memory and heritage.

The title of the seminar “Hearing the Other” was primarily an allusion to the target groups of the civil society organisations participating in the seminar: national/ethnic minorities, migrants, people from other cultures. However, this concept is increasingly resonating in a polarised and divided society, as it is difficult to find a way to talk to someone who thinks, thinks or behaves differently. Not to mention entering into constructive dialogue and building a relationship.

“We are able to turn otherness into a household museum exhibit, a curiosity, a monkey in a cage, an attractive media topic, but not into a partner with whom we have a natural relationship, with whom we disagree, compete, defend or criticise,” writes Czyzewski in his recent book “The Little Centre of the World”, also in Lithuanian.

It is in this small centre of the world, in these marginal lands where different ethnic groups (Lithuanians, Poles, Jews, Russians) with tensions of historical memory have lived, that they are able to create natural relations of coexistence and solidarity. It was here that 30 representatives of civic organisations from Lithuania and Poland spent 4 intensive days seeking inspiration, forging new partnerships and gaining practical ideas through a programme of lectures, workshops, excursions and relationship-building.

I hope that the connections made and the informal network of common activities created will continue to build invisible bridges and respond to the leitmotif that was constantly heard during the seminar – how to break stereotypes in our very homogeneous societies, how to hear the other.

And we, the Open Society Foundations and the Stephen Batory Foundation, are considering the possibility of continuing this kind of dialogue a year from now.

Photo: Gabija Jakimavičiūtė

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The major social problems that face many governments are complex and their solutions are not readily discernable. This can make it easier for governments to argue that a concentration of power is needed to deal with these issues. In difficult times like this, the role of civil society becomes even more crucial. We are used to thinking about the organizations of civil society in their instrumental function, the important things these organizations do and the valuable services they provide. However, in its generic function, the collective of civil society institutions—and in particular, those organizations that focus on advocacy, social justice work, independent policy analysis, and related missions—can be considered a Fifth Estate guarding against the concentration and abuse of power.

This report is a call to philanthropy to stay engaged, re-engage, or start engaging in building, supporting, and nurturing civil society and its institutions, wherever those institutions are under threat. The reason for this call is twofold. The first is that there is a lively discussion about the correlation between vibrant societies and open and participatory governments on the one hand, and an independent and well-resourced civil society on the other hand. The second is that philanthropy implements its program agenda primarily through the institutions of civil society.

Our objective is to contribute to progress toward the ultimate goal of building vibrant civil societies that can endure over the long run, are embedded in the culture of their countries, and are sustained from within.

The analysis in this report is based on the 15 countries we visited, rather than the full geographic coverage of the Partnerships and Trusts.

Read Sustainin Civil Society report here

Report was written by the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and Graduate Center, The City University of New York.

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The 2018 CSO (The term Non-Governmental Organization or NGO is more prevalent in Lithuania) sustainability index reports on legal environment, organizational capacities, financial viability, advocacy, service provision, sectoral infrastructure and public image.

Estonia continues to have the highest level of sectoral sustainability, not only in the CSO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, but in any edition of the CSO Sustainability Index worldwide. CSOs in Estonia, as well as most other Baltic and Visegrad countries, operate within a supportive legal environment, have strong organizational capacities, and are strong advocates and service providers. While financial viability continues to be one of the weakest dimensions of sustainability, CSOs in these countries have access to more diverse sources of funding, including government grants and contracts and individual and corporate philanthropy.

The gap between these ends of the spectrum seems to be shrinking. While CSO sustainability in countries such as Poland and Slovakia, which are at the higher end of sustainability, deteriorated in 2018, sustainability in Azerbaijan and Belarus improved.

In many countries civil sectors are highly polarized, often mirroring deep divisions in society. This polarization manifests in several ways. Most commonly, different CSOs have conflicting opinions, including on highly charged issues. In more extreme cases, governments purposely divide the sector by implementing laws selectively, limiting certain organizations’ access to public funding, providing variable access to decision-making processes, and vilifying CSOs with which they disagree. The biggest polarization among Lithuanian CSOs appeared when discussing child rights and child protection.

Although financial viability continues to be the weakest dimension of CSO sustainability in nearly every country covered by this edition of the CSO Sustainability Index, there were some positive developments in 2018, with half (twelve) of the countries reporting improvement during the year.

Find the latest regional reports here.

The report in Lithuania was prepared by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), fhi360 organization and Bendruomenių kaitos centras.

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