Fight Hate Speech through Media Literacy
Today, June 18, is declared by the United Nations as "International Day for Countering Hate Speech." In the connected world and even among those who are not connected, the menace of hate speech is affecting our lives day in and day out. There is not a single day or moment, we are not facing hate speech. It is, however, more pervasive in the online world. Somehow, the abstractness, and non-analogous nature of the online world give more courage to vomit hate speech than in real life or in real world.
There are several reasons why we have a severe problem with hate speech. One of the primary reasons is that “media” is in the hands of all. And we have no training on how to use the “media”. Every mobile is a media, every internet connection is a media, every mobile camera is a media, every mic button on your mobile device is a media, and every publishing platform is a platform to publish your media produce - facebook, youtube, twitter, medium, linked in, instagram, and the list is endless.
Earlier, in the pre internet era, or in the pre-mobile era, the media used to be always in the hands of the people, who were few and always selected, identified, recognised, trained, responsible, accountable and were assigned to take or use media. Whether it was a newspaper, or a radio station, or a TV channel or a gathering where selected people used to get mic to speak.
Media earlier were in the hands of professionals - educated, literate and responsible. Now, the media is consumerised, democratised, and mass distributed. Earlier media used to serve the masses, now the masses are serving the media. Media is not something that one can naturally know how to use. We need to be comprehensively trained in MIL - Media and Information Literacy or IML - Information Media Literacy. The MIL will make you understand how to deal with information and how to deal with the media. According to Wikipedia, “Information and media literacy (IML) enables people to show and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right.[1] Renee Hobbs suggests that “few people verify the information they find online ― both adults and children tend to uncritically trust information they find, from whatever source.”[2] People need to gauge the credibility of information and can do so by answering three questions:
There is another very interesting term Electracy: “Electracy is a theory by Gregory Ulmer that describes the skills necessary to exploit the full communicative potential of new electronic media such as multimedia, hypermedia, social software, and virtual worlds. According to Ulmer, electracy "is to digital media what literacy is to print."[1]”
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Few years back, I was exposed to the concept of MIL, and I was delighted to know how important it is that each and every person, like she has to go to school and education system, should also be exposed to MIL - purely because there is no one who is deprived of digital media - either you are using it or being used, but most likely both. I am glad that I am a part of MILEN - Media and Information Literacy Experts Network, formed with the help of DW Akademie and together with more than 13 members from across the world have been working on how the masses could be MIL educated so that we have meaningful information production and consumption. Imagine how sane our world would be if at least one person from each household is information literate.?
India is at the crossroads of misinformation, fakenews and even worse hate speech. Hate speech is making our lives miserable online and offline. Unfortunately, reaction of any kind to hate speech only increases it. The most effective methodology to fight hate speech is to ensure that we know how to identify it and how to ensure not to produce, not to forward and ensure that every hate speech producer is identified and reported. One of the ways that we are making our network of communities MIL literate is by making all our digital cadres across thousands of villages educated in MIL and know how to deal with information, so much so that they are gradually becoming the reliable fact checker for their society members.?
Do find time to click here to read some efforts and some stories:?