STOCKHOLM.- Today Bildkonst Sverige (Visual Arts Sweden) issued a groundbreaking report and a call to action—to its own institutions and public, and to the international community. Titled Visual Disinformation and Visual Literacy: Key Skills for Resilience, the report issues a stark warning: society is not prepared for the rising tide of visual disinformation dominating our news feeds, from deepfakes and AI-generated false events to election interference.

In response to this unprecedented threat, Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency (MPF) commissioned Bildkonst Sverige (Visual Arts Sweden) to author the report. By bridging the defence and cultural sectors—and deploying a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the realms of psychological defence, visual studies and arts policy—this groundbreaking initiative offers a pioneering new model for societal resilience. The report argues that in this new era, visual literacy—defined as the ability to produce, process, and interpret images—must be elevated to the status of a fundamental, universal skill. It proposes that systematic training in this skill should become a key component of society’s digital defence, challenging policymakers to fundamentally rethink civic preparedness: If literacy means both reading and writing, then true visual literacy requires not only decoding images, but also understanding how they are made.

Magdalena Malm, General Secretary of Visual Arts Sweden, said: “Just as we once built bomb shelters, we must now arm citizens with the tools to navigate a media environment saturated by disinformation—an increasingly sophisticated visual onslaught of deepfakes, image manipulation, and election interference. There is an urgent need to integrate visual literacy into schools and civil society, treating it as a fundamental democratic skill comparable to reading and writing. In an era when many governments are investing in physical rearmament at the expense of culture, these central skills found in the arts are overlooked. Within the fields of art and film there is a deep knowledge of visual literacy—at this urgent moment these actors are key contributors to the solution.”

Countering the Weaponization of Visual Culture

As media manipulation reaches epidemic proportions, the initiative represents a paradigm shift in thinking around national security. It recognizes what artists have always known: the ability to decode visual complexity—a skill cultivated through millennia of artistic practice—has perhaps become our most urgent civic competency in an age of weaponized imagery.

“Today, there is a lot of research on disinformation, but fewer studies focus on the visual dimension of the problem,” says Hedvig Ördén, a political scientist, researcher at the Psychological Defence Research Institute, Lund University, and one of the report's authors. “This is despite the fact that we live in a society where images and videos are increasingly valued over text. This new report points to the need to develop skills and tools to address disinformation and undue influence in visual form.”

“In an era where AI-generated and manipulated images and videos are spreading at a rapid pace, image literacy is particularly important in resisting misleading information,” adds Tor-Björn Åstrand, Head of Unit for Research and Analysis at the Psychological Defence Agency (MPF), which commissioned the report. “This report demonstrates the importance of being able to interpret and critically examine images, which is an important component of resilience against visual disinformation, not least for children and young people.”

Key Findings

• The Threat of the "Visual Turn": Social media platforms like TikTok are now primary news sources, especially for the young. This global shift from text to image-based information leaves users more vulnerable to emotional manipulation and rapid disinformation spread.

• A Dual Threat to Security and Democracy: Malign information influence is identified as a dual threat—simultaneously a democratic challenge and a security policy issue—that aims to exploit societal vulnerabilities, fuel polarization, and undermine trust in public institutions.

• The Generative AI Challenge: The rapid advancement of generative AI facilitates the low-cost, high-volume production of highly realistic visual disinformation (such as deepfakes), which risks eroding public confidence in established media and complicating the verification of even authentic content.

• Artistic Knowledge as Civic Defence: The report emphasizes that the art and film sectors possess an in-depth knowledge of both the interpretation and the production of images. This expertise is crucial for understanding how images are structurally composed to manipulate emotions and narratives, making the arts a vital partner in societal defence.

• A Call for Educational Integration: There is an urgent need to integrate visual literacy into both schools and civil society, treating it as a fundamental democratic skill, comparable to reading and writing.

• Moving Beyond Verification: The report argues that merely spotting fake images is insufficient. True societal resilience requires the deeper ability to interpret visual language and the agency to express oneself visually—moving from passive consumption to active participation.