Mikko Salo, Founder of Faktabaari, on the challenges of information and media
Mikko Salo founded Faktabaari, a Finnish NGO dedicated to combating misinformation and promoting media literacy. Over the last decade, Faktabaari has established itself as a leader in fact-checking and digital education in Finland by offering valuable resources to educators and the public. With a focus on empowering individuals—particularly young people—, the NGO helps individuals navigate today’s complex information landscape, while fostering a fact-based public debate. We’ve talked with Mikko Salo to better understand the evolving media landscape in Finland and in Europe, and the importance of keeping a high level of transparency when it comes to mass information.
The Institut français presents this interview as an introduction to the "European Dialogue", taking place in Helsinki on October 23 and 24, around the theme: "Information and Media in the Face of War."
Updated on 21/10/2024
5 min

Can you present the work of your NGO Faktabaari in the field of media education and the fight against misinformation?
Faktabaari offers fact-checking and digital information literacy services. We started ten years ago by focusing on fact-checking political claims—evaluating their sources and accuracy. Soon, we realized that teaching the method of fact-checking was even more important. We began developing our actions from a media literacy perspective and addressing the changing digital information landscape.
We offer two key services: Faktabaari PRO for fact-checking and journalism training, and Faktabaari EDU on educational resources for intermediaries like teachers. These educators, acting as multipliers, use our materials—such as manuals for younger audiences—to foster debates on topics like AI and social media in classrooms. Our goal is to build on existing institutions to catalyse ongoing media literacy efforts with some new elements.
Our focus is on addressing the needs of digital natives who are often not equipped to navigate today’s complex information landscape. Young people are frequently exposed to unreliable sources, particularly through social media or no sources at all as for generative AI! That’s why we are currently concentrating on providing resources for Finnish schools about generative AI or social media so they can spark a debate in the classroom. For example, in our Faktabaari FactHacker video series, teens are encouraged to critically explore the information space by asking three key questions: Who made the claim? What evidence supports it? What do other sources say? However, it's still largely up to teachers to bring these discussions into their classrooms.

Trust in institutions and media has traditionally been a hallmark of Finnish society. What is it like today?
Trust in institutions remains high in Finland, as it does across Nordic countries — our country still ranks among the top five in Europe on all relevant indicators to this. This trust extends to institutions such as science and the police as well. However, maintaining that trust is increasingly difficult as the communication landscape evolves rapidly, especially with the rise of social media and AI.
A major challenge is that social media keeps on altering our global information space, while AI companies are challenging traditional, trustworthy journalism. It's difficult to keep pace, but we are dedicated to providing resources that are grounded in reliable sources. In the Nordic countries, public broadcasters also do a balancing job helping to maintain trust around overcommercialized information space, but public broadcasters face pressure from commercial media and political forces trying to politicize the information debate. There is also growing polarization, especially around identity driven themes like migration. These topics can easily be weaponized in digital channels both by domestic and foreign actors, including Russia. Finland recently joined NATO and Finns empathize strongly with Ukraine defense.
How significant is the fight against fake news when the truth of facts is increasingly being questioned?
Our mission over the last decade has been to support fact-based public debate. Facts are crucial for maintaining a safe democracy, especially in the digital age. However, the narrative around facts is just as important. That's why we focus on proving accountability, sourcing, and transparency—especially as generative AI becomes more prevalent. In this context, we also need to know what data these AI models are based on and know if they’re built on reliable sources. We doubt, but no one knows yet.
While fact-checking is crucial, it only buys us time. We also need to address the larger information ecosystem, including the algorithms that drive misinformation and the incentives behind social media companies. Our goal is to help people understand the state of play of modern marketing driven information economy, especially in sensitive political contexts, and encourage them to critically evaluate the information they consume.
We also carried out with Finnish-French partner CheckFirst a public initiative called digital election watch, which focuses on observing recommendation systems in times of elections with a possibility of getting caught on unethical or manipulative online campaigns and biases. Our goal is to show people what they're exposed to on social media and empower them to transition from being passive consumers of information to informed citizens. We build on a simple slogan: "Stop. Think. Check." It's about encouraging people to take care of their thinking, nurture their curiosity, and seek reliable sources before jumping to conclusions or falling into conspiracy theories. This requires limiting the time spend with addictive social media.
In your opinion, are the media prepared to adapt to the evolution of practices within societies and to information threats?
Several Nordic media outlets are doing a great initiatives of engaging young people but more innovation and cooperation to scale is needed. Our main challenge is figuring out how to attract younger audiences and have them engage with reliable sources of information and keep them curious while social media nowadays persuades more to passivity and of being manipulated. Possibilities could include offering young affordable subscriptions to accountable journalistic media along public broadcasters. Young people could also be engaged on news processes to understand how much work good journalism needs. This is an ongoing debate, especially with commercial media relying heavily on tracking cookies and too often just what sells.
However, it seems to me that journalistic media must take responsibility for educating their future audiences on the importance of their work. They need to be the most information-literate actors in society. If they just try to mimic social media companies, they lose to them anyway. Instead, they should focus on transparency and accountability, especially in the face of generative AI, which makes it harder to discern what is true and genuine. There’s an urgent need to educate people on how AI models are trained and mark the content produced with AI models. EU level has fortunately started to regulate these technologies for systemic risks, but legislation need also to be implemented. Ultimately, we need to keep digital power i.e. tech companies and the ones weaponizing it accountable and push for improvements in transparency, authencity and accuracy in the digital space. Democracies need both fact-based public debate and a shared reality.