NEW media has come to dominate many aspects of our lives. It offers a range of opportunities, benefits and allows us to easily look up information, maintain social contacts and create and share information. We exploit these possibilities but, at the same time, we need to assess it continually, select the offer and choose how to deal with it, because, apart from opportunities and benefits, new media also presents challenges and possible dangers.
Rising cases of misinformation and disinformation around the globe amid growing access to the internet and social media, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, has led scholars and policymakers to rethink policies related to media and information literacy (MIL) to address issues arising from the lack of it. The move to educate society, particularly teachers and educators, on the importance of MIL came only as an afterthought.
The internet has revolutionised the way we read news and retrieve information. It has become a global means of daily communication. However, the tools we use for this are easily exploited to spread fake news and disinformation. This phenomenon affects the entire world, including Malaysia and its Southeast Asian neighbours. With over 400 million people in the Southeast Asia region accessing the internet, the battle to fight fake news is understandably arduous. Media activists and educators are also working frantically to teach MIL to citizens.
Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil calls on the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to take faster and tougher action on the recent post about Meta allowing scam ads on its platform. Fahmi said the special team established to deal with fake news on Dec 1 will handle the communication aspect, especially on how to deal with fake news. (Bernama, December 2022).
Meanwhile, Deputy Communications and Digital Minister Teo Nie Ching said the era of digitisation now allows information to be easily manipulated by parties having malicious intent, especially information disseminated on social media. Therefore, people need to be more aware in evaluating any information received before acting on it or sharing it with others.
The actual degree of damage caused by false rhetoric and malicious rumour-mongering is unknown. However, we have witnessed from anecdotes around the world the harm that false information can cause. Sick people who are scared to seek professional help have died from consuming off-label medications. Vulnerable groups have been targeted by hate speech, and political propagandists have pit supporters against one another.
MIL is crucial for developing the life and work skills necessary for the 21st century. It is one of the tools that may be used to stop radicalisation, hate speech online, and enable individuals to recognise and defend themselves from political propaganda. The changing media landscape as a result of the digital revolution, as well as growing interest and participation in hybrid learning, has caused the issue of disinformation and a lack of MIL to worsen.
While the government’s crackdown on fake news and false information is a much needed initiative, perhaps it is more important to go back to the root of the problem: The lack of MIL among Malaysians.
MIL competencies help us to better understand the messages that we receive and emphasise critical thinking skills that enable consumers to develop independent judgements about media content, and should be included in the school curriculum to better combat misinformation and disinformation issues.
Since teachers are primary agents of change (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), 2013) and play a key role in the 21st century learning environment (Sarah Gretter and Aman Yadav, 2016), they need to ensure that their curriculum develops the much needed MIL competencies, so that their students can take full advantage of knowledge societies, thereby becoming empowered global citizens (Unesco, 2013).
Renee Hobbs (2010) encourages the research community to “develop meaningful tests for new teachers to measure their ability to implement digital and media literacy instructional practices into the curriculum”. In doing so, she stresses the importance of instruments in measuring teacher competencies in media literacy.
Teachers need to continue teaching about biased reporting and learn to find ways to gather evidence in the classroom through accurate data, not subjective opinions. In this context, teachers play a role in empowering students not only through knowledge transfer, but also by teaching them how to critically evaluate information, process verification, access credibility of source and use social media responsibly. Ambigapathy Pandian and Kalantzis M. (2001), in a publication titled “Literacy Matters: Issues for new times”, pointed that Malaysia lacks trained teachers with MIL backgrounds.
Sharing the mission that MIL is a critical everyday life skill, the MIL for Asean Network, now a Unesco MIL Alliance and one of the primary drivers of MIL in the Southeast Asia region, strives to empower teachers across the region to integrate MIL components into the schools’ curriculum. The network conducts regular dialogues for teachers and educators through capacity building programmes such as workshops, seminars and boot camps, research and consultancy work to inform policies, and runs communication and information campaigns on integrating MIL in their subject areas.
The work at MIL for Asean Network supports and advances the achievement for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4, SDG 11 and SDG 16 by “Affording youth and adults with critical MIL competencies that enable quality education” (SDG 4), “Promoting citizens’ own communications power that makes cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG 11), and “Enabling citizens to reflect on how information they interact with may influence their thoughts, beliefs and attitudes on others (SDG 16).
With fresh funding from the US State Department through the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF – a competition that provides alumni of US-sponsored and facilitated exchange programmes, with funding to expand on skills gained during exchange experience to design and implement innovative solutions to their community’s global challenges) 2022, the co-founders of MIL for Asean Network, Lai Cheng Wong (Malaysia) and Melinda Quinones (the Philippines) will work with partners across the Asean region, namely Kampuchea Action to Promote Education in Cambodia, Seameo Regional Centre for Education in Science and Mathematics in Malaysia, Seameo Regional Open Learning Centre in Indonesia, Centro Escolar University and Polytechnic University of the Philippines in the Philippines and Rangsit University in Thailand.
Taking off from the success of TechCamp Malaysia-Philippines “Teaching MIL in Everyday Life”, the inter-region team will soon hold the Asean Teachers’ Boot Camp themed “MIL: Building resilience for the futures of learning” and launch the MIL Hub official website in February. The theme is timely and pertinent as Malaysia and its neighbouring countries have seen a drastic increase in the spread of disinformation and online scams over the last two years during the pandemic. The target groups for the boot camp are teachers and educators, administrators and education officers from public and private schools and teacher training institutions. A total of 100 highly aspiring and motivated teachers from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand will be selected.
The project aims to expand participants’ knowledge and competencies on MIL, to enable them to integrate it across the curriculum and develop students’ critical thinking skills so that they can actively engage with different segments of society.
Boot camp participants will have opportunities to participate in intensive seminars and discussions on topics related to MIL, such as countering misinformation and disinformation in a modern classroom, f act-checking, data privacy and protection, internet safety, and deep fakes detection.
Wong said: “The goal is to provide opportunities for teachers and educators to discuss and address critical issues such as cyberbullying, hate speech, misperceptions and information disorder in the media. Teachers must be well-trained to empower students with the necessary competencies to critically understand the ethical issues surrounding the access and use of information from all forms of media. It is, therefore, important to take a healthy approach to the information disseminated in the media, a skill that should be practised from elementary school onwards.”
Lai Cheng Wong, Educator and MIL Advocate for Asean Network. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
