Paragraph 1: The Baku Signal and the Anatomy of Trust
In a world increasingly pulled apart by algorithm-driven outrage and carefully engineered falsehoods, the first Media Forum of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) arrived in Baku on October 1 with a simple but urgent question: how do we build trust when reality itself seems negotiable? Under the theme “Building Trust Through Media in a Polarized World,” the forum gathered policymakers, journalists, and researchers to confront the fact that the information environment is no longer a side issue—it is the battlefield where public confidence is won or lost. President Ilham Aliyev’s address, delivered by his Assistant Hikmat Hajiyev, did not waste time on pleasantries. It cut to the core: media literacy and the responsible use of new technologies are not optional refinements for a mature society; they are essential conditions for a sustainable foundation of trust. The President did not single out one villain. Instead, the message painted a sobering picture of how the widespread dissemination of disinformation—now supercharged by artificial intelligence that can generate convincing fake content at scale—poses a direct threat to public trust in every institution, from governments to newsrooms to the very idea of shared facts. The address then offered a broad answer to the question of who should build a reliable information environment: government agencies, media organizations, digital platforms, journalists, researchers, and civil society. Each has a role, but the most revealing part of that list is who comes last. The reader. The ordinary person scrolling through a feed, deciding what to believe, what to share, and what to dismiss. Media literacy, the address argued, is what turns that reader from a passive target of manipulation into a strong, active link in the chain. This framing is important because it shifts responsibility away from a vague “someone else” and places it onto the daily choices we all make when we encounter information. The Baku forum was not just another conference with lofty declarations; it was an attempt to make that chain visible and to ask each link to hold.
Paragraph 2: What Europe’s Resilience Index Teaches Us About the Classroom
The scale of the challenge can be measured, and for nearly a decade the Open Society Institute in Sofia has been trying to do exactly that. Since 2017, its index has tracked how resilient European societies are to disinformation, and the 2026 edition offers a revealing picture. Four countries share first place: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, and the Netherlands, each scoring 71 points. Meanwhile, countries closer to our region cluster near the bottom of the list. The index is built on a surprisingly straightforward formula. The largest share of the score comes not from technological investment or sophisticated fact-checking platforms, but from two quieter factors: the reading skills acquired at school and the quality of the media environment. In other words, informed readers are shaped in the classroom long before they ever encounter a conspiracy theory in their social feed. Finland has topped this list every year since the index began, and its approach is worth dwelling on. In Finland, media literacy education starts in kindergarten. It is not an after-school club or a single training session; it is woven throughout the national curriculum and is officially considered part of the country’s overall defence strategy. Leo Pekkala, director of the National Audiovisual Institute, puts it bluntly: teachers should incorporate information-verification exercises into every lesson, whether they are teaching physics or mathematics. This is not about creating a generation of cynical sceptics. It is about building a reflex—an ingrained habit of asking where a piece of information came from, who benefits from it, and whether it holds up against other sources. The Finnish example proves that resilience to disinformation is not a matter of national intelligence or wealth; it is a matter of deliberate, patient educational design. The lesson for the rest of Europe and for Azerbaijan is clear: if you want a society that trusts itself, you must start with children and with the people who teach them. You cannot bolt media literacy onto an adult population after the damage is done; you have to grow it from the ground up.
Paragraph 3: The Paradox of Trust in the Age of Social Media
The Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford provides another layer of understanding, and its 2026 report paints a stark picture. Across 48 countries, trust in news has fallen to 37 percent—the lowest level since 2015. Trust in news encountered on social media is even lower, at 22 percent, while trust in responses from AI chatbots stands at just 20 percent. Perhaps most striking, the proportion of people who say they are concerned about distinguishing real from fake content online has risen to 62 percent. These numbers are not abstract statistics; they represent a deep unease that many of us feel every time we open our phones. And yet, here is the paradox that defines our age: people trust social media less, but they increasingly turn to it for news. For the first time, social media and video platforms have overtaken television and news websites as the primary source of news, with 54 percent of respondents relying on them. This is a strange situation. We are heading toward a source of information we do not trust, because it is where the conversation is happening, where breaking events first surface, where our friends and family share what they care about. We are not necessarily foolish; we are trapped in a coordination problem. If everyone else is getting their news from social platforms, then being absent from them feels like social death, even if we know the platforms are full of manipulation. This is precisely where media literacy becomes so important. It is the skill that can bridge the gap between our scepticism and our behaviour. It can help us navigate the new media ecology without being consumed by its worst impulses. We cannot simply tell people to stop using social media; that is neither realistic nor helpful. Instead, we need to equip them with the tools to move through those spaces with their critical faculties intact. The trust built in a school classroom—through careful reading, source-checking, and calm questioning—can become the trust that survives the chaos of the digital town square.
Paragraph 4: Azerbaijan’s Institutional Scaffolding for a More Literate Society
In Azerbaijan, the response to this crisis is already taking institutional form. Media literacy is not being left to chance or to the goodwill of individual teachers. The charter of the Media Development Agency and the presentation document of the newly established Media and Broadcasting Council both identify media literacy as a separate, explicit responsibility. This may sound like bureaucratic detail, but it matters. When a government names something as a specific duty, it can no longer ignore it. The Media Development Agency has announced that it is studying international practices and, crucially, developing a unified domestic strategy that targets specific groups—not just a vague national audience, but actual concrete communities with different vulnerabilities and needs. There are also practical initiatives already in motion. Media Literacy Week is held every December, and last year it concluded on December 22 with a conference titled “Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence and Media Literacy.” The event was not purely academic; it included discussions about open lessons and awareness sessions for schoolchildren, suggesting a genuine effort to reach young people where they are. The agency’s Media Literacy platform and the “MEDİA Volunteers” programme seek to instil information-verification habits among the younger generation, creating a corps of activists who can spread good practices peer-to-peer. All of this is encouraging. It shows that the problem of disinformation is being taken seriously at the highest levels of the Azerbaijani state, and that there is a willingness to learn from international models. But it also raises a question that cannot be avoided: how do we know any of this is working? How do we know that a student who attends a Media Literacy Week session is actually better at spotting fake news six months later? These are uncomfortable questions, but they are necessary. The infrastructure for media literacy is being built, but infrastructure without measurement is like a bridge built without load testing. You hope it holds, but you do not actually know until it collapses.
Paragraph 5: The Missing Measure and the Road Ahead
That is the central weakness. Azerbaijan is not included in the Sofia index nor in the Reuters Institute report, and the country has no regular national indicator for measuring media literacy. It is difficult—perhaps impossible—to manage results that are not measured. You can hold all the conferences you want, launch all the volunteer programmes you want, but without a baseline and a regular tracking mechanism, you are essentially working in the dark. The Finnish example shows that results take years to emerge; you cannot expect immediate returns from an educational intervention. The authors of the Sofia report also consider education the most reliable, albeit long-term, approach. This means that if Azerbaijan starts now, the dividends will not be fully visible until a whole generation has passed through the school system. That is a hard truth for any government that wants quick results. But the path is not mysterious. Several concrete steps are available. There is no need to wait for media literacy to become a separate school subject; that would take years of curriculum reform and teacher training. Instead, media literacy can be integrated into existing subjects. In Azerbaijani language lessons, students can be taught to identify manipulative headlines. In history lessons, they can learn how false narratives have been used to divide societies. In computer science lessons, they can see how algorithms amplify outrage. The Finnish model works in precisely this way: every teacher teaches students to question the source of the information they encounter, regardless of the subject being studied. Alongside this, a baseline national survey is needed. An annual survey measuring trust in news, concerns about fake news, and information-verification habits would make it possible to evaluate the Media Development Agency’s projects using measurable data. Without such data, we are debating opinions rather than facts. The President’s address also identified digital platforms as partners. Making verified information in Azerbaijani more visible and removing fake accounts promptly could serve as key measures of this partnership. This is not about censorship; it is about cleaning the public space to allow trustworthy voices to be heard.
Paragraph 6: Four Questions for Daily Habit and the Signal from Baku
In the end, the most human and practical solution may be the simplest one. Four questions are enough to establish a daily habit of verification. First: Who published this news, and are their name and contact details available? Anonymity is often the first warning sign of a story engineered to deceive. Second: When was the news published? Could old footage be presented as a recent event? This is a common manipulation technique, especially in times of conflict or political tension. Third: Is the headline designed to make me angry or afraid? Emotional manipulation is the core mechanism of viral disinformation; if a headline is pushing your anger buttons, pause before you click share. Fourth: Has the same information been confirmed by a second reliable source? If only one outlet is reporting something dramatic, it is probably worth waiting. These questions are not complicated. They do not require a degree in media studies. They simply require a moment of reflection before we let an algorithm tell us what to feel. The CICA Media Forum sent a signal from Baku that resonates far beyond the hall where it was held: in a polarized world, trust begins in the newsroom and is reinforced on the reader’s phone. It is a chain that connects journalists who check their facts, platforms that remove deception, teachers who encourage curiosity, and ordinary people who pause before they share. No single actor can carry this burden alone. But every actor can take one step. For the journalist, that means accuracy over speed. For the platform, that means transparency over obscurity. For the teacher, that means asking one more question in class. And for each of us, the reader, it means remembering that the information we consume shapes the world we live in. The next time an alarming headline appears on your screen, take a breath. Ask the four questions. Trust is not something we simply receive; it is something we build, click by click, question by question, and the building has to start somewhere. Baku has made it clear that the time to start is now.