SEOUL: A media literate society would approach information received via social media analytically, according to an academician.
Arizona State University professor, Dan Gillmor said if the society understood media literacy and became knowledgeable, they could discern between true information and misinformation as well as be able to distinguish fake news.
Gillmor who teaches digital media literacy said there was a need to systematically help people develop better skills in finding, understanding and creating credible news and information as well as sharing it with integrity.
“For media literacy to reach as many people as possible and to reduce the damage that misinformation is causing in so many places we must collaborate across discipline, ideologies, borders and ages.
“This is a job for teachers, librarians, journalists (journalism organisations) and technologists (technology companies),” he told Bernama after presenting his paper on ‘Fake News and Media Literacy’ at the two-day Korea Press Foundation (KPF) Journalism Conference 2017 here, today.
Gillmor said society should learn to be sceptical and scrutinise every information they received.
Another speaker at the conference, Nic Newman from Research Associate of Reuters Institute, said it used to be a straightforward business where media was the provider of contents and audience, the recipient.
He said the advent of the new media had enabled the audience to contribute media contents via smartphones using various social media platforms.
“Thus, devices and platforms are changing the format of news; do not assume journalism in the future will be about articles or narrative television packages,” he said, adding that journalism organisations should adapt and change before they become obsolete. BERNAMA