Disinformation; Internet Literacy Handbook; Media Literacy #GlobalMILweek

Some more impressions from the Global Media and Information Literacy week feature conference, from a few different sessions, yesterday and today. Maha Bashri (United Arab Emirates University) talked about media literacy and milennials in the UEA. This is a young country with a young population. She reported on a survey of undergraduates. It found that students read news for less than 15 minutes a day, mostly getting it from Instagram. They gravitate towards social issues, entertainment and technology. They were aware of the issue of fake news, but not necessarily looking out for it, and might not have the skills to critically assess the news.
Elizabeth Milovidov talked about the Council of Europe's Internet Literacy Handbook https://edoc.coe.int/en/internet/7515-internet-literacy-handbook.html which has recently had a new edition. It is free to download. The handbook aims "to offer families, educators and policy-makers sufficient technical know-how to allow them to navigate, with young people, through communication technology". She also mentioned Digital Citizenship Education project: 10 domains https://edoc.coe.int/en/internet/7643-digital-citizenship-education-project-dce-10-domains.html
Lisa Jane de Gara (University of Saskatchewan) talked about Digital falsehoods and analogue consequences. She reflected on how false narratives take hold, for example anti-vaccination, flat earthers, the new world order. She noted that these are not random, e.g. the anti-vaxers feeling that their role and power as parents is being undermined. de Gara talked about emotional narratives associated or provoked by fake news. The picture above is one of the examples she used. She noted that "Understanding the emotional drivers of different communities allows those communities to be unknowingly manipulated".
Polen Turkmen and a colleague from St Andrews University (whose name I did not catch) talked about ways to address the problem of disinformation. One of the things they talked about was the possible use of augmented reality for disinformation. They called for mandatory MIL education at primary and secondary levels, as a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. They felt that since technological solutions usually address production side and education side, they felt it was important to address both and were also proposing a project to deal with the problem.
Lesley Farmer, in her talk on fake news mentioned her own LibGuide on Fake News which is at https://csulblis.libguides.com/c.php?g=756956 which includes a very useful set of links.