Sunday, November 25, 2018

Singapore: Media and Information Literacy initiatives, and Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods

From a news report (see below) I learnt that Singapore's Minister for Communications and Information haannounced plans to launch a national framework for information and media literacy in 2019, bringing together initiatives of various agencies, including the National Library Board:
- Chia, L. (2018, November 2). National framework to build information and media literacy to be launched in 2019: S Iswaran. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/education-schools-curriculum-fake-news-select-committee-10739986
Following up on this, I found the complete text of the Minister's speech. It includes more detail about the initiatives and why they are considered important. He says that both legislation and education are needed, and that "An information literate population is our first line of defence".
- Ministry of Communications and Information. (2018, November 2). Remarks by Mr S Iswaran, Minister for Communications and Information, at the Media Literacy Council's Launch of the Fake News Campaign, 2 November 2018. https://www.mci.gov.sg/pressroom/news-and-stories/pressroom/2018/11/remarks-by-minister-s-iswaran-at-the-media-literacy-council-launch-of-the-fake-news-campaign?pagesize=18
I also identified the web page for Singapore's Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods which presented its report in September 2018. This is interesting in providing a non-Western perspective and regional examples (although it also summarises examples from Europe and North America). https://www.parliament.gov.sg/sconlinefalsehoods
Photo by Sheila Webber: Singapore, 2013

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