France Initiative to Literate Students about Online Misinformation

France is trying to coordinate with one of the world’s largest national media and internet literacy efforts in order to make students aware of how to recognize wrong and junk information online. A class had been organised having journalists and educators to combat the spread of online misinformation. Serge Barbet, the head of Clemi, the main program within the Education Ministry coordinating the effort said “The younger you start the better. That’s why we’ve been pushing for more media education in recent years.

It’s become a vital need and a threat”. After seeing the deadly attack on the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo exposed a deep distrust of the media and vulnerability to conspiracy theories online in 2015, France realised that it must expand media and internet literacy before many countries. Recently in a Spanish class, at College Henri Barbusse near Lyon, France, a discussion on five posts from Twitter happened. The far-right politician Marine Le Pen had posted on Twitter about an attention catching incident in France where a teenager had threatened a teacher. Many students got attracted by the post where one student said that the post seems to be real as the account had been verified by Twitter. However Samia Houbiri stated that Ms. Le Pen did this to simply gain attention. Ms. Houbiri stated that “she picks a topic, she exaggerates things, and then people will say, she’s right, I should vote for her’”.  Also, a journalist in the workshop, Sandra Laffont said, “Politicians may sometimes exaggerate reality because their goal is to convince people that their ideas are the right ones.”  However many countries other than France are also organising internet literacy programs. Ms. Laffont, a journalist for Agence France-Presse in Lyon, was also a part of this initiative after she co-founded an organization called Entre Les Lignes, in 2010. The group used to literate students about journalism along with throwing light on social media and internet misinformation. However, the government supported Ms. Laffont’s effort as a model to help it grow. It is seen that around 155 journalists volunteer, including many from Le Monde which is France’s leading newspaper, and the group held about 500 workshops for students this year. Ms. Laffont incorporates Twitter and YouTube and tries to share links to websites so that the same can be used by the students as references to check facts. She also ensures that she always explains the basics of how journalists gather and confirm facts in order to make students aware as well as help them develop a more critical eye for what they see online. Guillaume Chaslot who is a French engineer who helped develop YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, said the efforts were worthwhile but wondered how effective they would be against Facebook and Google. Some students found the class to be helpful however they still do not know how to us this new information.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/technology/france-internet-literacy-school.html?fbclid=IwAR3myHXXVowPwKsThrBswuV8cxYcam781BrvHxZMBaKR5-8YwZPUfyyl7uA