Media and Information Literacy Repository – South Asia

The current media eco-system has become more and more polluted by the various avatars of “fake news”. This buzz term has been widely used by academics, experts, teachers and ordinary people, in an attempt to understand and address the phenomenon of information disorder in the new media environment. However, studies have rarely questioned what teachers, key stakeholders in the media literacy field, actually understand by “fake news”, and to what extent the new digital tools available to fact-check are actually viable solutions to fight disinformation actively. In this context, we conducted focus groups (N=34 people interviewed in 4 focus groups) with teachers in four countries (France, Romania, Spain and Sweden), in order to assess their understanding of “fake news”, as well as their perception of possible measures to combat the phenomenon, with a particular focus on digital tools. The findings show that the understanding of the concept of “fake news” differs from one country to the other, but also within the same country, with a common feature across countries: intention to deceive. Additionally, respondents identified lack of media and information literacy (MIL) in education as a major gap for combatting information disorders. Furthermore, they find that the use of digital tool for professional fact-checking needs to be repurposed or followed by pedagogical instructions to fit into the complexity of educational practices. Our findings highlight possible solutions for MIL in education using a combination of technocognition and transliteracy as theoretical framework and scaffolded pedagogical design for better adoption of fact-checking techniques.

The term ‘fake news’ has been overused to define news which is factually incorrect either without any ill intention or to deliberately deceive people. There could be various kinds of fake news in the media ecosystem. The scholars and media practitioners prefer to use ‘misinformation’ to denote fake news from a broader perspective. With the growth of social and digital media, the volume of misinformation has increased manifold. The fact-checking agencies, independent or attached to the mainstream publications, have been relentlessly trying to bust misinformation. However, the systematic, organized and technology-driven misinformation generators and distributors are defeating these efforts with the time, speed and bias of the news consumers. With 570 million internet users in India (FICCI 2019), mostly without a proper understanding of the new medium of text, images, video and audio mixed, the fight against misinformation is getting tougher. The wave of misinformation aided with the messages of propaganda, tilted with ideology and commercial interest, unverified assertions is confusing for the audience. Still, people are showing more faith in social media content, often generated by the users, than the mainstream media. This is an alarming situation. Hence, there is a need for digital media literacy at several levels, especially at the grassroots to combat the menace of misinformation. Digital news literacy essentially means consciously accessing, evaluating, understanding the underlying meaning of the message (Livingstone 2003) mediated through complex images, sound, words and deciphering the subtleties while consuming the digital content (Lanham 1995). This paper, through a heuristic method, tries to explore a three-pronged approach to carry out a digital news literacy campaign both among the news producer-publishers and the news consumers. This can help in forming a concrete plan of action, despite the challenges, to educate the digital, mobile-first news consumers in combating the spread of misinformation.

This study aims to investigate why a remarkable number of fact-checking organizations go beyond “fact-checking” and directly involve Media and Information Literacy (MIL) initiatives and delve into their practices, strategies, and challenges. A qualitative research design was adopted via interviews combined with online observations conducted between January and October 2021, with 12 practitioners from 8 different organizations around the world. Fact-checkers aim to inoculate the public against false information flow and build resilience via educational strategies. They also work within the educational system and mobilize volunteer teachers as proxies to disseminate the knowledge to a wider public. The results indicated that when fact-checking organizations involve educational projects with a politically neutral stance, they attract funds from NGOs, tech companies, and sometimes from governments. Thus, it brings an opportunity to widen the social reach and strengthen their separate education departments by employing more educators and translators

Widespread misleading stories circulating in networked public spheres have raised debates about their potential harm to democracies, organizations, and individuals. In the face of this challenge, educators have been rightly questioning how to prepare students to thrive in this so-called post-truth era. Scholarship on media and information literacies has often focused on incorporating new topics to address the issue and re-articulating learning goals. This body of work, however, does not address the question of how to deal with fast-paced changes that surround information disorder in the digital age. Based on Stuart Selber’s multiliteracies, this article proposes a set of competencies in combination with an analysis of the factors that contribute to the creation and circulation of false information. My argument focuses on students’ need to effectively identify misleading stories, thoughtfully question the role of technology in society, and ethically engage in civic dialogues. Taken together, these skills and knowledge provide a framework that they can expand upon as the landscape of information disorder shifts.

Introduction. Misinformation is a complex challenge that cuts across all fields and thus requires an interdisciplinary solution. As professionals who support information access and evaluation across fields and have long-championed information literacy, librarians could be well-situated to facilitate collaborative responses. So far, however, library science has remained fairly siloed in its approach, similar to other fields. Method. As a conceptual paper, this submission does not employ a detailed methodology but provides an overview of relevant literature.Analysis.This paper provides a high-level overview of research and thinking related to misinformation and information literacy across a wide range of fields.Results.The overview illustrates the complexity of the problem and the intersecting ideas and responses, with a focus on how these relate to librarianship and information literacy.Conclusion(s). The paper concludes with a proposed framework for an interdisciplinary approach to studying misinformation with an aim to developing information literacy competencies.

The rise of fake news and misinformation in the digital age poses serious risks for individuals andsociety, particularly during crises like the Israel-Hamas war, the Russian-Ukraine war, or the COVID-19 pandemic. Misinformation serves as a tool to manipulate public opinion and create discord.Vulnerability to manipulation increases in online spaces during crises, where authoritativeinformation is scarce. Emergency management, public health, political and publicadministration, as well as media professionals and citizens express concern and seek solutionsto enhance information quality during such critical times. This article highlights user-centredapproaches to countering fake news and misinformation, tracing their historical evolution fromancient Greece to the present, focussing on their relevance during the COVID-19 crisis and incontemporary information warfare. It describes the vulnerability of audiences to misinformationand outlines prevailing trends in user-centred countermeasures. This article also introducesrecent research on the effectiveness of media literacy interventions on truth discernment, across-cultural comparison of the perception of negative consequences and the injunctive norm,a comparison of video and text to promote lateral reading in adolescents, content-specificindicators on Twitter from a user perspective, a learning system for detecting misinformation aswell as ethical and security considerations in automated detection.

Due to the prevalence of misinformation in current media environments, there is an urgent need for effective media literacy interventions that broadly protect people from its negative effects. However, such interventions do not always have their desired impact, calling for a better understanding of the factors influencing their efficacy. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on 80 experimental studies, following the PRISMA checklist. Interestingly, findings suggest that intervention effectiveness depended more on the outcome variables targeted than on specific intervention characteristics. Notably, most interventions successfully improved users’ ability to detect misinformation, likely because many were specifically designed with this goal in mind. However, their effects on persuasive outcomes (e.g., attitudes) were more inconsistent, suggesting that changing such outcomes may require different or additional strategies beyond misinformation detection training. Based on these findings we propose several suggestions for future research and recommendations for developing more effective media literacy interventions.

The acceleration of digitalization and post-truth debates due to the pandemic process focuses on technology and its effects. As the order evolves from the known universe to the Metaverse, individuals are also in the middle of a centralization where one single instrument controls everything with technological proximity. Centralization forces everyone into a more accessible and efficient communication process by consolidating many possibilities into a single device, but it also makes the spread of information faster and more uncontrolled than ever, diminishing the importance of truth. This post-truth world creates individuals who create their reality, impacting the growth of individuals the most. Cyberbullying emerges at this point, endangering children and teenagers' development and mental health. From a media perspective, technological advancements do not guarantee correct information dissemination. As the spread rate and opportunities increase, so do false information and news. It triggers the spread of false information, fake news, and cyberbullying when the truth is irrelevant. Therefore, the need for verifying information arises. Fact-checking methods are directly related to digital literacy and media literacy problems. Understanding how to verify the information and protect against false, deceptive, and fake news is crucial. The study examines two information verification platforms. Research findings reveal that news is verified by various methods and techniques using numerous tools by platforms, primarily by photo or video content, resulting in the detection of information distortions such as false connection and fabricated-manipulated content. The study also found that various photo/video verification tools and anonymous websites were frequently used.

The growing globalization process has boosted the rapid development of the digital era and technology and given rise to a new concept of citizenship, that of global citizenship and cyber-citizenship, which imposes a new way of being and knowing how to act with others. The cyberbullying phenomenon and the preoccupation to combat it emerged in this context. This paper reflects on the role of education in digital literacy to prevent cyberbullying using a citation-based literature review conducted using this trilogy. Digital literacy was found to help individuals understand appropriate online behaviour and ethical guidelines, enabling them to recognize what constitutes cyberbullying and understand the potential consequences of their actions. By promoting responsible online behaviour, digital literacy can reduce the incidence of cyberbullying. Digital literacy empowers individuals to recognize signs of cyberbullying, whether they are victims or bystanders. By being aware of different forms of cyberbullying, such as harassment, impersonation, or spreading rumours, individuals can identify when they or others are being targeted. This awareness allows for early intervention and support. Moreover, digital literacy encourages individuals to be active bystanders and intervene when they witness cyberbullying. It gives them the knowledge and skills to respond appropriately, such as reporting the incident to relevant authorities or supporting the victim. By empowering bystanders, digital literacy promotes a collective effort to combat cyberbullying. In conclusion, digital literacy is crucial in comprehending and addressing cyberbullying, equipping individuals with knowledge, skills, and a responsible mindset for engaging in the digital world.

The Internet in the 21st century became a necessity for the students. The use of social media platforms has changed the way of communication at tremendous speed. This fast-paced development of communication through social networking sites led to potential cyber threats. This results in an increase in the number of cyberbullying cases worldwide. Additionally, there is little discussion regarding the ethical implication of using social media in school and colleges. so, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of media literacy on prevention of cyberbullying amongst students. In this present study research employed survey method. The selection of samples is done through simple random sampling. A quantitative approach is used in this study. The finding implies that media literacy will play a critical role in reducing cyberbullying as 80% of respondents felt that media literacy is required to minimise online harassment.

Background Cyberbullying has become a significant concern among adolescents, with various factors contributing to its prevalence. Previous research suggests that social-emotional competence can influence bullying behaviors and cyberbullying, but the mediating roles of bullying, school conflict, and media literacy remain underexplored. Objectives This study aims to investigate how social-emotional competence relates to cyberbullying, specifically examining the mediating roles of bullying behaviors, school fighting, and media literacy among Iranian adolescents. Method A descriptive correlational design was employed with a sample of 564 high school students from three cities in China and one city in Tehran, selected through random cluster sampling. Data were collected using four instruments: the Social-Emotional Competence Questionnaire, the Media Literacy Questionnaire, the Illinois Bully Scale and the Cyberbullying Victimization Experience Questionnaire. Path analysis techniques were used for data analysis. Results The findings indicated that bullying behaviors, school conflicts, and media literacy significantly mediate the relationship between social-emotional competence and cyberbullying. Specifically, higher social-emotional competence was associated with reduced bullying behaviors and conflict, which in turn contributed to lower levels of cyberbullying. Conclusions The study highlights the importance of enhancing social-emotional competence in reducing bullying and cyberbullying. The findings suggest that interventions should focus on promoting social-emotional skills while also addressing bullying and school conflicts. Furthermore, integrating ethical education into media literacy programs is recommended to mitigate cyberbullying among adolescents.

Background: The increasing exposure of adolescents to social media demands their development of critical thinking skills to responsibly deal with online information. Media and Information Literacy for Critical Thinking (MIL-CT) enhances adolescents’ ability to critically assess content, misinformation and digital engagement. In relation to Positive Youth Development (PYD), an MIL-CT intervention has the potential to promote critical thinking skills, reflection, resilience, autonomy, proactiveness, social responsibility, and ethical decision-making in the digital world. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and validate an intervention protocol designed to promote adolescents’ critical thinking and key developmental assets essential for adolescents’ positive development in relation to digital environments and social media use. The protocol covers the first phase of a multi-phase research project following the Medical Research Council (MRC) guidance for developing and evaluating complex interventions. Methods: The protocol was developed by identifying relevant theories and scientific evidence in literature, and formulating a draft protocol to address adolescents (15–16 years old) and their parents/legal guardians and teachers. The protocol was then validated by a panel of experts and adolescents in three phases, involving: 1) a review of strengths and areas for improvement; 2) collaborative refinement of contents; and 3) final evaluation of the updated protocol’s adequacy, engagingness, and accessibility. Co-creation with adolescents ensured the intervention was contextually relevant, aligned with their digital habits, and adapted to the unique challenges they face online. Results: The study presents the protocol development and validation findings, confirming its coherence, adequacy, and relevance for promoting MIL-CT. Among the improvements introduced in the final version of the protocol were the incorporation of real examples of misinformation, the simplification of certain activities, and the integration of more interactive components. Stakeholders highlighted the need for flexible and adaptive contents customizable to the diverse educational needs and digital realities of adolescents. Conclusions: The protocol provides a structured approach for promoting MIL-CT in adolescents, follows MRC guidelines, involves multiple stakeholders, and contributes to the development of evidence-based MIL-CT programs. The intervention will promote Positive Youth Development (PYD) by strengthening adolescents’ critical thinking, resilience, and social responsibility online. By fostering informed decision-making and ethical media engagement, the intervention will empower adolescents in responsibly navigating the digital world, and boost their confidence and capacity for civic participation.

This paper provides research findings to support the case for media literacy as an aid to journalists and journalism educators in a disruptive age through the fostering of resilient media engagement by young citizens. It posits that encouraging media literacy in news consuming publics facilitates a more critically engaged civic society. Focused on trust, it shares the outcomes of a project funded by the US Embassy in London, which brought together leading researchers from the United States and UK with a range of key stakeholders, including journalists. Their collective aim: to devise a practical strategy for harnessing media literacy to develop young people’s understanding of and ability to withstand ‘fake news’.

Although access is uneven, studies have shown a high uptake of digital technologies and platforms across Africa, with many accessing social media, which is a fertile ground for the spread of fake news and disinformation, calling for the need to factcheck information before consumption or sharing. The study was grounded in explore, engage, and empower (EEE) model of media and information literacy (MIL), which states that MIL competencies empower media and information users to identify, access, and retrieve information and media content skillfully (explore), analyze, and evaluate media and information critically (engage) and create, share, or use information and media ethically, safely, and responsibly (empower). The purpose was to assess fact-checking practices of students in two universities in Ghana and Nigeria to ascertain the extent to which they factcheck information, their levels of knowledge of fact checkers and the fact checkers that they use. The simple random sampling was used to draw a total of 316 respondents. It was found that although many respondents confirmed the authenticity of news and information received before acting on them, they mostly did so through social media and their networks. Few respondents knew about fact-checking platforms and could state names of actual factcheckers. The study makes a case for MIL, which includes fact checking, to enable media users to analyze and evaluate news and information critically to ensure the consequent ethical safe and responsible sharing and usage of information and media content, as EEE model proposes.

Disinformation represents a critical threat to our democratic societies, particularly considering the role of new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence in the creation and dissemination of content, as well as the challenges involved in its detection. Among the strategies to combat disinformation, debunking, along with media and digital literacy, are the preferred approaches for the EU. Methods This research examines the role of fact-checking organizations in promoting digital and media literacy. An analysis on the websites of a sample of 88 organizations with membership in the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) was conducted. The aim was to identify and classify their activities related to various literacies aimed at mitigating disinformation. Data collection was carried out across two distinct time periods. Results Findings revealed a moderate reach of these activities, with 48.6% implementation and a 60% increase since the last period analyzed (December 2022). The study concludes that: 1) there are differences in the level of adoption across different regions; 2) strategies are adapted to various target audiences, reflecting sociodemographic factors; and 3) fact-checkers serve as valuable and necessary links for the most groups outside formal education systems. Conclusion These activities are strongly reliant on externally funded projects and programs, rather than representing an independent and sustainable business model. Therefore, it is recommended to promote and expand these funding streams. The value of these initiatives lies in their potential to reach vulnerable groups who are excluded from formal education systems.

This article maps fact-checking resources and establishes a typology of the latter, depicting the variety of available tools. The approach is bottom-up: in the frame of a European project on collaborative fact-checking, students in journalism and communication studies coming from France, Greece and Poland were asked to list and classify all fact-checking resources that they use or they are aware of. Findings revealed a common denominator, i.e., the existence of a variety of understandings of this expression, which this study has mapped. However, it also shed light to differences linked to the role of national contexts.

Digital marketing practices have gained an increasing theoretical attention. Most studies concentrated on issues related to Marketing ethics in the context of traditional media. This paper is a literature review that aims is to focus on ethical issues surrounding targeting in the digital marketing era. This article is a theoretical review that presents a conceptual analysis about marketing ethics in children targeting which is merely based on relying on secondary sources of recent data. In this paper, we will concentrate on specificities of targeting in the digital marketing context and children targeting that evolve continuously to sway kids purchasing decision.

Amid information wars and growing populism, when manipulation, propaganda and disinformation appear to be a natural focus, when officials, opinion leaders and media communicate unsafe and unverified information, when only up to 20% of messages can be marked as veracious, it becomes essential to develop critical and meaningful information consumption. The self-explanatory statistics, provided by fact-checkers, speak volumes and inspire those who have command of the investigation method in the fact check format to fully leverage it both in their professional activities and in daily lives. The paper structures and classifies the key aspects of fact-checking, identifies its specific characteristics and effects, and sketches out the future outlook for its use as a new media trend. The work defines central objectives of fact-checking investigations and what differentiate them from conventional investigations. It has been revealed that fact-checkers are gradually shifting their field of activity to the plane of the so-called “unofficial sources” of information, such as social networking websites, public narratives and discourses, media materials of diverse origin, etc. The findings of the study conducted demonstrate a correlation between the general media literacy, which respondents evaluated as rather low – average and below average and the need for its end-to-end improvement, including through interactive media practices, trainings and projects. The study concludes that respondents are actually ignorant of the fact-checking and data verification tools available. We believe the fact is also immediately linked with the overall level of media maturity and respondent information literacy, levels of critical and analytical thinking, and the ability to work on information and its sources

The aim of the research is to evaluate the impact of the current advertising ethics to children on brands and parents’ expectations. The researcher has used a qualitative research method by interviewing ten brand marketers who have the knowledge of Indian advertising landscape to understand their views on the ethical practices currently being following in the industry. The interviews were semi-structured in nature and narrative research design was carried out. The analyses showed that Indian marketers had basic awareness about advertising ethics to be followed in an organisation and most of them are not following any of it when it comes to advertising to children. This research proposes businesses to develop their own ethical advertising guidelines on top of the laws of Indian government, as well as to conduct compliance assessments on a regular basis.

Many researchers and organizations, such as WHO and UNICEF, have raised awareness of the dangers of advertisements targeted at children. While most existing laws only regulate ads on television that may reach children, lawmakers have been working on extending regulations to online advertising and, for example, forbid(e.g., the DSA) or restrict (e.g., the COPPA) advertising based on profiling to children. At first sight, ad platforms such as Google seem to protect children by not allowing advertisers to target their ads to users that are less than 18 years old. However, this paper shows that other targeting features can be exploited to reach children. For example on YouTube, advertisers can target their ads to users watching a particular video through placement-based targeting, a form of con-textual targeting. Hence, advertisers can target children by simply placing their ads in children-focused videos. Through a series of ad experiments, we show that placement-based targeting is possible on children-focused videos and, hence, enables marketing to children. In addition, our ad experiments show that advertisers can use targeting based on profiling (e.g., interest, location, behavior) in combination with placement-based advertising on children-focused videos. We discuss the lawfulness of these two practices with respect to DSA and COPPA. Finally, we investigate to which extent real-world advertisers are employing placement-based targeting to reach children with ads on YouTube. We propose a measurement methodology consisting of building a Chrome extension able to capture ads and instrumenting six browser profiles to watch children-focused videos. Our results show that 7% of ads that appear in the children-focused videos we test use placement-based targeting. Hence, targeting children with ads on YouTube is not only hypothetically possible but alsooccurs in practice. We believe that the current legal and technicalsolutions are not enough to protect children from harm due to online advertising. A straightforward solution would be to forbid placement-based advertising on children-focused content.

Social media platforms are an effective channel for businesses to reach potential audiences through targeted advertising. As the user base of these platforms expands and diversifies, research on targeted advertising and social media needs to go beyond well-studied Western contexts. In an online survey (n=412), we compared users' privacy-related perceptions and behaviors regarding targeted ads on social media in the United States (as a baseline representing Western contexts) and three South Asian countries: Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. We found that participants in the US perceived significantly fewer benefits and more concerns related to security and privacy about targeted ads than those in the three South Asian countries. We also identified that individual's cultural values and religious affiliations influenced the observed cross-country variances. For instance, US participants identified less with vertical collectivism and vertical individualism than South Asian participants; these two cultural dimensions were, in turn, positively associated with perceived benefits. Our findings highlight the limitation of using one's country as a proxy for culture, as our findings show users' privacy perceptions regarding targeted advertising on social media are more fundamentally associated with their cultural values and religion. We discuss the corresponding design, education, and regulatory implications for targeted advertising on social media.

This paper presents a critical race analysis of Library and Information Studies (LIS) writing on global information inequality, that body of literature focused on the connection between global suffering and disparities in information access related to available content, technologies, infrastructure, and skills. I argue that global information inequality represents a key site for the reproduction of racialized discourse in the field. In particular, I contend that the construction of information inequality as a sign of marginalization powerfully (if tacitly) extends colonial mythologies of racial Otherness and Western civilizational superiority. My engagement with critical race and anti-colonial scholarship in support of this claim focuses on two key ideas: (a) the construction of racial difference in colonial discourse, particularly its recourse to narratives of intellectual and technological capacity; and (b) the concept of (international) development as an example of the relatively recent shift to racialized discourse largely stripped of explicit racial coding. After sketching these ideas in broad strokes, I turn to a critical analysis of such racially encoded international development discourse in global information inequality literature, with a focus on the dynamics of narratives, imagery, and other systems of meaning.

Understanding personalized content and its societal implications is critical in the digital media era. This article introduces a novel information-analytical system designed to evaluate the level of knowledge among different social classes regarding personalized content in the digital media ecosystem. Utilizing data from 1213 Czech respondents, we employ fuzzy logic and multidimensional membership functions for an in-depth evaluation of the populace’s awareness. It categorizes population knowledge on personalization processes, their preferences, and trust levels and advocates control mechanisms over online content. The research reveals significant insights into demographic disparities in digital media literacy, emphasizing the urgent need for targeted educational programs. This paper presents a pioneering methodological framework and lays the groundwork for future investigations into personalized media services’ ethical considerations and socio-political dynamics. Our study contributes to the broader discourse on media literacy, algorithmic understanding, and protecting informational self-determination in the digital age.

This study explores adolescents’ awareness of the sources that inform online profiling and their perspectives on online targeted advertisements. It employs thematic analysis to analyse eight focus group discussions (N = 38) with adolescents (13–16 years) in Finland’s capital region. The study advances research on adolescents’ knowledge of the data gathered for online profiling by highlighting that adolescents infer that apart from previous online activities, data on their verbal conversations also inform targeted advertisements. The study also advances research on adolescents’ perspectives on online targeted advertisements by identifying that adolescents’ privacy expectations in the context of targeted advertisements are that data should not be collected without their awareness and commercial entities should not use data on previous conversations for profiling. This study also pinpoints that online profiling gives some adolescents a privacy-invasive feeling of being observed, and others have a boundary until which they consider online data collection for profiling permissible. Moreover, some adolescents express ambivalent views on online targeted advertisements. The findings reflect some adolescents’ acceptance of online profiling and knowledge gaps that can inform media literacy educators. The findings raise concerns about the opacity of online commercial data-gathering practices. Therefore, we urge corporations to demystify their data collection processes.

The study assesses linkages between information technology, inequality, and adult literacy in 57 developing countries for the period 2012–2016. Income inequality is measured with the Gini coefficient while six dynamics of information technology are taken on board, namely use of a virtual social network, Internet access in schools,Internet penetration, mobile phone penetration, fixed broadband subscription, and a number of personal computer users. The empirical evidence is based on interactive Tobit regressions. The findings show that only Internet access in schools unconditionally promotes adult literacy. The corresponding inequality threshold that should not be exceeded for Internet access in schools to continue promoting adult literacy is 0.739 of the Gini coefficient. Policy implications are discussed