Wednesday, September 25, 2019

MIL resources from Twitter; Misinformation in Mongolia #globalmilweek

I'll be liveblogging again from the Global MIL week conference in Gothenburg today. Ronan Costello (Twitter) talked about use of the UNESCO MIL curriculum and related materials, which they have developed for use with students and will make available as a resource site. This includes examples of how the material could be used in class. This resource is going to be available for Global MIL week in October and Twitter will promote the #thinkbeforesharing hashtag. Also during MIL week they will donate advertising for selected worthy nonprofits who want to advertise their MIL resources. Other things mentioned in the talk were statistics about the number of accounts that were challenged or banned by Twitter.
Namnandorj Bayaraa (Remo Media, Mongolia) talked about misinformation in Mongolia. He started by saying that the penetration of the internet in Mongolia was 70% and most people had smartphones. 65% of the population is under 35. He gave examples of fake news. One was saying that Macdonalds was opening and giving away iPhones (they don't Have a Macdonalds in Mongolia) and others to do with giveaways and fake news about food e.g. a soup having antibiotic powers, food products carrying serious diseases. The speaker pointed out that it was easy to laugh if you were media literate, but generally people were stuck being bombarded with this material. Additionally there was a lot of propaganda. For example socialism / communism compared with democracy: with the former portrayed as causing health and happiness and the latter social problems and misery. Satirical sources such as the Onion would be translated into Mongolian as fact. The speaker went on to describe what Remo Media is doing to improve MIL. Examples were having awareness campaigns, working with news companies and in schools. Their website (Mongolian) is here https://www.remo.mn

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