# data[].attributes.headline
Enjoy this selection of articles, news stories, videos and websites about MIL for the public good!

# data[].attributes.subject
Enjoy this selection of articles, news stories, videos and websites about MIL for the public good!

# data[].attributes.body
A student-curated treasure trove of information! This set of links & annotations was created by the students in the Information Literacy classes in the Information School, University of Sheffield, UK, https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is.
It celebrates UNESCO's Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week 2021, 24th-31st October 2021, and its theme of MIL for the public good. The links are grouped into 3 categories: (1) Media and Information Literacy helping people in crisis situations; (2) Public libraries using or developing Media and Information Literacy for people's good; (3) Media and Information Literacy helping fight the COVID19 pandemic. If you have any questions or comments, please email the class tutor, Sheila Webber s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk

# data[].attributes.headline
 Media and Information Literacy helping people in crisis situations

# data[].attributes.subject
 Media and Information Literacy helping people in crisis situations

# data[].attributes.body
The following resources are about Media and Information Literacy helping people in crisis situations

# data[].attributes.headline
Media literacy for refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women

# data[].attributes.subject
Media literacy for refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women

# data[].attributes.body
The project “Media Literacy for refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women” aims to contribute to the integration of refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women in Austria, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta and the UK.

Their objectives are:

Enhancing the media literacy competences of (low-skilled/low-qualified) refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women through innovative learning tools

Encouraging (low-skilled/low-qualified) refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women to develop and upgrade their media literacy and digital skills through effective outreach-awareness raising.

Media can facilitate the integration of refugees and migrants in a new country by providing access to information about available education, health or other services or about political and administrative information on the host country, as well as support systems and organisations available. They can also support the learning of the host country language, looking for a job, getting qualifications recognised.

Since refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women face a greater risk of social exclusion (double discrimination), it is very important to provide them with the competences — knowledge, skills and attitudes — and values needed to access, interpret, use and/or produce information and other media content, in the context of the internet and social media, and in a safe and responsible manner, thus contributing to their integration in EU societies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. [2017-1-UK01-8KA204-036683 - Media literacy for refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women]".

# data[].attributes.headline
Informative page on wildfires and climate change

# data[].attributes.subject
Informative page on wildfires and climate change

# data[].attributes.body
This website is dedicated to the sharing of information around climate change and possible solutions. This particular page is educational in regards to wildfires, with a commentary on the conditions of wildfires, statistics on causes and common locations for fires in the western USA, as well as methods of prevention and resilience.
https://www.c2es.org/content/wildfires-and-climate-change/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Climate change has been a key factor in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the Western United States. Wildfire risk depends on a number of factors, including temperature, soil moisture, and the presence of trees, shrubs, and other potential fuel. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change. Climate change enhances the drying of organic matter in forests (the material that burns and spreads wildfire), and has doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States.

Research shows that changes in climate create warmer, drier conditions. Increased drought, and a longer fire season are boosting these increases in wildfire risk. For much of the U.S. West, projections show that an average annual 1 degree C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year as much as 600 percent in some types of forests. In the Southeastern United States modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.

Once a fire starts-more than 80 percent of U.S. wildfires are caused by people-warmer temperatures and drier conditions can help fires spread and make them harder to put out. Warmer, drier conditions also contribute to the spread of the mountain pine beetle and other insects that can weaken or kill trees, building up the fuels in a forest.

Land use and forest management also affect wildfire risk. Changes in climate add to these factors and are expected to continue to increase the area affected by wildfires in the United States.

Trends in the annual number of large fires in the western United States

Since 2000, 15 forest fires in the United States have caused at least $1 billion in damages each, mainly from the loss of homes and infrastructure, along with firefighting costs. The 2017 wildfire season was well above average, with deadly fires in California and throughout the West, including Montana, Oregon, and Washington state. The 2018 wildfire season went on to also break records as the deadliest and most destructive season on record in California. NOAA estimates the total costs of wildfires in 2017 and 2018 to be more than $40 billion. In 2019, wildfires caused an estimated $4.5 billion in damages in California and Alaska. Alaska's record-breaking heat and dry conditions over the summer months set the conditions for the state's historic wildfire season. In 2020, five of the six largest fires on record burned in California and Oregon saw historic levels of wildfire spread and damage. Wildfires across the West led to weeks-long periods of unhealthy air quality levels for millions of people.

Wildfire can affect:

Federal and State Budgets: U.S. Forest Service fire suppression expenditures had increased from about 15 percent of the agency's appropriated budget to more than 50 percent in 2017. Nationwide suppression costs in 2017 and 2018 ballooned to $2.9 billion and $3.1 billion respectively, while state wildfire expenditures have also increased substantially.

Public Health: The growing number of people in wild lands is increasing the risk to life, property and public health. Smoke reduces air quality and can cause eye and respiratory illness, especially among children and the elderly. Wildfires that burn in residential areas can melt plastic water pipes and cause contamination of water systems with a known carcinogen.

Natural Environment: Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems. Although wildfires produce a number of greenhouse gases and aerosols including carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon, the plants that re-colonize burned areas remove carbon from the atmosphere, generally leading to a net neutral effect on climate. However, when fires burn more frequently and consume larger areas, as they are doing with climate change, the released greenhouse gases may not be completely removed from the atmosphere if plants can't grow to maturity before burning, or if the plants that re-colonize are less efficient at carbon uptake.

How to Build Resilience

Communities, builders, homeowners, and forest managers can reduce the likelihood and impacts of wildfires by:

Discouraging developments (especially residential) near fire-prone forests through smart zoning rules.

Increasing the space between structures and nearby trees and brush, and clearing space between neighboring houses.

Incorporating fire-resistant design features and materials in buildings.

Increasing resources allocated to firefighting and fire prevention.

Removing fuels, such as dead trees, from forests that are at risk.

Developing recovery plans before a fire hits, and implementing plans quickly after a fire to reduce erosion, limit flooding, and minimize habitat damage.

The Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation portal helps communities understand and plan for their climate risks today and in the future, including a real-time map of wildfire, drought, flooding, and extreme heat across the United States.

For more details on wildfire resilience, read our report, Resilience Strategies for Wildfire.
Learn more about resilience by visiting our Climate Resilience Portal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.

# data[].attributes.headline
Media literacy critical for teen refugees’ social well-being

# data[].attributes.subject
Media literacy critical for teen refugees’ social well-being

# data[].attributes.body
This article discusses the importance of media and information literacy for young refugees when settling into their new country - specifically, how MIL can compliment school and social support.

"Getting to grips with local media is often overlooked when it comes to helping teenage refugees adjust to a new life [...]

Media literacy can help them make informed decisions to improve their wellbeing and safety, she says."

The European Commission hosted article focuses on the findings by RefugeeWellSchool, an European funded Horizon2020 project.

Link: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/schools-and-media-literacy-critical-teen-refugees-social-wellbeing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A quarter of the migrants and refugees who entered Europe last year were children, while nearly 15,000 refugee children were resettled here - mostly in the UK, France and Sweden.

Helping these teenagers to feel socially supported is crucial to their wellbeing and creating a stable future, according to Dr An Verelst, a clinical psychologist at Ghent University in Belgium.

'If your emotional wellbeing is better, then you are better able to study, achieve academically, find a job and build a family,' she said.

Dr Verelst coordinates a project called RefugeesWellSchool, which is investigating five types of intervention s aimed at fostering social support and integration. It is running the programmes at schools in four Nordic countries, Belgium and the UK and will work with a blend of about 3,000 mostly refugee and migrant newcomers, but also EU-born children.

One intervention is teacher-led discussion groups, where both refugee and non-migrant children discuss topics such as friendship, love, discrimination and future hopes, as well as personal experiences. They also share experiences through non-verbal modes such as drawing. Another intervention is drama therapy, where newcomer children work with trained actors and musicians to reconstruct their stories and engage with themes such as exclusion.

Teachers are heavily involved. Apart from running many of the sessions, one initiative sensitises teachers to how migration experiences can impact children's wellbeing and trains them in fostering cross-cultural empathy.
Interventions
The interventions kicked off in Denmark and the UK this January, with others to follow in the next school year. The aim is to figure out what works best in which school scenarios.

Globally, there is still little evidence on how well different programmes work, says Dr Verelst, with studies often relying on data from individuals rather than bigger groups.

Ilse Derluyn, a professor of social work and refugee studies at Ghent University who leads the project, said: 'The idea is to give the interventions for all minors, whether they have severe emotional problems or not. We want to focus on the broader scope, and more on social relationships and support.'

Young refugees are encouraged to share their story in non-verbal forms, such as drawing. Image credit - Alexander Dummer/ Unsplash

Dr Verelst says for children who have experienced trauma, social support is a buffer against developing mental health problems, while stigmatisation can exacerbate those issues. Building social relationships between newcomers and the existing community is essential when it comes to opening the doors to integration, she says.

'It takes a community and society to help raise, integrate and welcome young migrants and refugees,' Dr Verelst said.

Although it's early on in the project, initial feedback on the interventions is that teenage refugees feel less isolated and the children are improving their understanding of one another.

'Often the children feel they come from very different backgrounds, but actually they find, "we're more alike than we thought," and the social bonds really improve,' said Dr Verelst. When it comes to the teacher-student relationship, drama therapy also offers a language to share difficult stories or emotions, she says.

The project aims to create a honed set of interventions and to share its findings with teachers, the general public and policy makers. 'If it can be proved these interventions work, a larger group of migrant children can benefit from them,' said Prof. Derluyn.
Media literacy
For young refugees, the challenge of social integration also plays out online. Getting to grips with local media is often overlooked when it comes to helping teenage refugees adjust to a new life. Being able to understand media content and technology - or what is known as media literacy - is crucial, according to Dr Annamária Neag, a media literacy researcher at Bournemouth University in the UK.

This is particularly challenging for unaccompanied minors - making up over 40% of refugee children entering Europe in 2018 - who are vulnerable to exploitation and other dangers, says Dr Neag. Media literacy can help them make informed decisions to improve their wellbeing and safety, she says.

For a project that she leads called MedLitRefYouth, Dr Neag has spent the last couple of years investigating media literacy among 14 to 19-year-old refugees in Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, with a view to developing educational materials for teachers and youth workers.

She interviewed children from countries including Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Iran to find out how they used digital technologies and social media. This involved discussing their understanding of themes such as fake news and cyberbullying. The interviews often took place in the accommodation centres or apartments where they lived.

'It takes a community and society to help raise, integrate and welcome young migrants and refugees.'

Dr An Verelst, Ghent University, Belgium

'I could see what kind of technologies they had access to in their homes and how they were using it,' said Dr Neag.

The children have widely different levels of literacy, education and familiarity with technology, which means their needs and aims differ, according to Dr Neag.

For example, among children who were unable to read and write, it became clear that they used digital media in a very visual way. 'They don't live in a text-based world,' said Dr Richard Berger, a media and social science researcher at Bournemouth University who also works on the project. 'YouTube is their Google: they use it like a search engine.'
Social media
The ones who struggle the most to use digital technologies are those using them for the first time, says Dr Neag. Other challenges include not questioning the veracity of content on social media, social media addiction and using platforms for entertainment rather than education, she says, problems which are common amongst many other people today.

Dr Neag is now developing an app with a colleague at Bournemouth University containing advice on using social media and topics such as fake news. Planned to be ready by August, it is being designed for youth workers, mentors and guardians. It will include features such as other media literacy resources available and a list of online groups of mentors to enable users to link up and discuss approaches.

'I would be happy if this app was used as a first step in helping unaccompanied refugee children in being more critical about media and civically active online, and understanding better how ads work or fake news is spread,' said Dr Neag.

Ultimately, improving media literacy can help empower the children, she says. 'To be civically active, have their voices heard and tell their own stories is really important.'
The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Schools and media literacy critical for teen refugees' social wellbeing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A quarter of the migrants and refugees who entered Europe last year were children, while nearly 15,000 refugee children were resettled here - mostly in the UK, France and Sweden. Helping these teenagers to feel socially supported is crucial to their wellbeing and creating a stable future, according to Dr An Verelst, a clinical psychologist at Ghent University in Belgium.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Refugee Council - Support and information for people affected by the crisis in Afghanistan

# data[].attributes.subject
The Refugee Council - Support and information for people affected by the crisis in Afghanistan

# data[].attributes.body
The Refugee Council has supported refugees arriving in the UK since 1951, and works with thousands of refugees each year. Their aim is to assist with integration into British society and to help them come to terms with the trauma so many of them have experienced.

This specific link directs users towards the crisis currently facing the people of Afghanistan, providing information relating to contacts, asylum conditions, and options for legal representation; this link also connects to the Refugee Crisis donation appeal.

https://refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/information-for-afghans/guidance-and-support/support-and-information-for-people-affected-by-the-crisis-in-afghanistan/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You or your friends or family want to leave Afghanistan

The UK Government is assisting Afghans who have worked with them to come to the UK. You can find out if you are eligible here.

The UK Government will be opening a new resettlement scheme for Afghans - it is not open yet. You can read more information here.

The UK Government has set up a helpline for non-British nationals in Afghanistan who may be at risk. You can find out the latest information here. Please note: This helpline may be very busy so please keep trying if you are unable to get through.

The UNHCR has published information for people in Afghanistan which you can find here.

The UNHCR has published information for Afghans arriving in Iran which you can find here.

The UNHCR has published information for Afghans arriving in Pakistan which you can find here.

You are unable to contact family in Afghanistan

The British Red Cross provides an Internal Family Tracing service. If your relatives are not answering normal communications such as telephone, email or mobile, Red Cross may be able to help. Please contact your nearest British Red Cross office redcross.org.uk/trace and tell them they would like to contact a family member.

You are an Afghan who has been evacuated to the UK

The Government have published a website to provide information on your rights an entitlements in the UK.

The Government have also set up a helpline for Afghans living in temporary hotel accommodation. The helpline provides information on the support available to you. Please dial: 02475 389 980 and press ' Option 1 ' when asked to do so.

You are an Afghan living in the UK and have made an asylum claim

If you have been refused but your appeal has not been heard you may wish to speak to your legal rep to ensure the latest information is heard by the judge.

If you are appeal rights exhausted and/or have been issued with removal directions it is important that you seek legal advice. If you need advice or to get a new legal representative, these organisations can provide you with help to understand your options and access a legal representative.

Ask if you qualify for free legal advice (legal aid) before paying for it.

If you are destitute you can contact our Infoline on 0808 196 7272 to access support services in your area.

You live in the UK and want to offer support

You can help refugees rebuild shattered lives in safety here in the UK by donating to our Refugee Crisis Appeal.

We work with hundreds of volunteers to support refugees and people seeking asylum. If you are interested in volunteering with us, you can view our opportunities here.

Our friends at IMIX have produced a helpful list of actions you can take here and abroad to support Afghans.

The government have set up a webpage to allow members of public to offer their support in the form of accommodation, fostering and donated goods. You can access it here.

You want to make a donation to support refugees in the UK

Refugee Council's expert teams are working hard to help hundreds of Afghans including translators and military support staff who have made it to the UK. Donate today and you could help provide life-changing services for refugees arriving in the UK who have lost everything.
Donate today
We also have also started a Crowdfunder for our Refugee Crisis Appeal. You can support this urgent appeal by starting your own Fundraiser.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Support and information for people affected by the crisis in Afghanistan - Refugee Council

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You or your friends or family want to leave Afghanistan The UK Government is assisting Afghans who have worked with them to come to the UK. You can find out if you are eligible here. The UK Government will be opening a new resettlement scheme for Afghans - it is not open yet.

# data[].attributes.headline
Supporting the information needs of refugees and asylum seekers through public and academic libraries

# data[].attributes.subject
Supporting the information needs of refugees and asylum seekers through public and academic libraries

# data[].attributes.body
A useful article discussing the importance of the role of academic and public libraries in welcoming refugees.
It outlines in broad terms the practical services that libraries can offer to refugees, and information needs and information-seeking behaviour of refugees, which play a major role in supporting refugee adults and children as they find their way around their new country.
This article includes case studies which focus on the importance of academic research into support for refugees, and the collaborative work that can be done by academic and public libraries to offer varied information to refugees.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
International Insights

Approaches for support

Natalia Taylor Bowdoin is associate professor/library collections coordinator/Interdisciplinary Studies coordinator at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, email nataliab@usca.edu, Chris Hagar is associate professor, School of Information, at San Jose State University, email: christine.hagar@sjsu.edu, Joyce Monsees is executive director at Standby Task Force, email: joyce@standbytaskforce.com, Trishanjit Kaur is professor and head of the Department of Library and Information Science at Punjabi University, email: trishanjit.kaur@gmail.com, Trae Middlebrooks is late night library supervisor at High Point University, email: tapwater86@gmail.com, Leatha Miles-Edmonson is research and instructional services librarian at Marquette University, email: leatha.miles-edmonson@marquette.edu, Ashanti White is a doctoral candidate at California Institute of Integral Studies, email: ashantilwhite@yahoo.com, Touger Vang is program services coordinator at Yolo County Library, email: tougervang@gmail.com, Musa Wakhungu Olaka is librarian for African, Global and International Studies at the University of Kansas, email: musaolaka@ku.edu, and Charles Agai Yier is resident librarian at the University of Iowa, email: charles-yier@uiowa.edu Contact series editors Clara M. Chu, email: cmchu@illinois.edu, and Barbara Ford, email: bjford@illinois.edu, with article ideas.

Refugees and asylum seekers are very much in the news today, and libraries work to identify information resources, services, skills, training and/or research in order to support the resettlement and integration of these groups. ALA has passed resolutions and gathered information about how libraries respond to and empower immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Public libraries have often been leaders in these activities providing library cards; computers with Internet access; free wifi; books, movies, and materials in a number of languages; English classes; electronic resources; programs on topics, such as job searching; and library staff to assist with questions.

Academic libraries also support research and the teaching of refugees forced into migration as well as library users who are refugees and asylum seekers. Project Welcome1 is a planning grant funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois (in partnership with ALA) to learn about how libraries can address information needs of refugees and asylum seekers, and develop recommendations and an action plan to serve this community.

The projects outlined below were presented or discussed at a summit on February 6, 2017, and hopefully will help academic libraries think about their roles in supporting refugees and asylum seekers.

The information needs and information-seeking behavior of refugees from CAR in two U.S. communities: Important lessons for libraries-Natalia Taylor Bowdoin, University of South Carolina-Aiken

A research grant from the Office of the Vice-President of Research at the University of South Carolina made possible a phenomenological study of refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR), living in two communities in the United States, concerning their information needs and information-seeking behavior.

A successful coup in 2013 plunged the country into extreme violence and resulted in massive internal and external displacement of more than a fifth of its population.

Due to the extreme poverty and underdevelopment of the country, CAR refugees arriving in the United States are one of the most disadvantaged refugee groups the United States has seen. The majority arrive speaking only Sango and have little education or work history outside of subsistence farming. CAR refugee groups also have high numbers of single mothers arriving with multiple children who often have major health concerns. Because they are at such a great disadvantage, understanding their information-seeking behavior, the exact nature of their information needs, and the extent to which these needs are currently being met is vital to their successful resettlement.

The interview instrument consisted of 31 questions covering basic demographics, information practices, extent of support networks, and perceptions of information needs and challenges in the United States. What emerged from the interviews was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Their resilience, fortitude, and often sense of humor in the face of seemingly overwhelming obstacles was truly astounding.

While it is not possible to present all the results from the study here, one thing that became very obvious was that libraries have a long way to go in reaching this, and similar, populations. Only 3 of the 39 interviewees mentioned a local (public or academic) library at all.

For one man, the library was a place to go to take English classes, for another it was where he used the Internet, and for the last it was where his daughter would use the Internet and occasionally find information for him. More research, collaboration with social service agencies, and outreach are essential to understanding the information needs of refugees and how libraries can help them meet these needs.

Information needs and barriers of Southeast Asian refugee undergraduates-Clara M. Chu, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs (University of Illinois); Trae Middlebrooks, High Point University; Leatha Miles-Edmonson, Marquette University; Ashanti White, California Institute of Integral Studies; and Touger Vang, Yolo County Library

While academic libraries wish to serve their diverse user communities, few studies exist that shed light on the information needs of refugees, such as Southeast Asian refugee undergraduate students in the United States. This group is the focus of a study funded by a 2011-12 ALA Diversity Research Grant. Through an online survey and virtual focus groups, this research2 seeks to discover the information needs and barriers of Southeast Asian refugee undergraduates, as well as to understand the role their communities (i.e., family, friends, and community) and libraries play in addressing these information needs.

The study takes into consideration cultural background and recognizes the distinct experiences of refugees. For this reason, Touger Vang, a Hmong refugee and now public librarian, is part of the research team to ensure that culturally appropriate communication and outreach are used. While the study is ongoing, a pre-test has revealed areas to be explored and addressed:

issues of cultural identity,

academic aspirations,

influences involved in the decision to attend university,

knowledge about college,

difficulties with studies, and

self-motivation in choosing and succeeding as a student.

Librarians in public, school, and academic libraries will benefit from the results of the study, which will enable them to assess the services and resources that libraries can offer to ensure that they provide equitable access to information. Other professionals and academic services supporting the higher education needs of refugees will also benefit from understanding their needs, allowing them to assess their own services and develop appropriate ones.

Digital volunteer humanitarian aid organizations: The European refugee crisis-Chris Hagar, San Jose State University, and Joyce Monsees, Standby Task Force

Historically, humanitarian aid volunteers needed to be in a physical space, to be on the ground at the point of a crisis to help. Now, "digital volunteers" with Internet access, mobile communication, and global interaction are able to mobilize to support crisis response and humanitarian efforts. Volunteers situated all over the globe, who could be thousands of miles away from the location of a crisis, gather, aggregate, and process information to solve real-world crisis problems.3 These volunteers are part of various organizations that provide data for "collective intelligence," including crisis mapping that is useful on the ground to local responders. This could be, for example, identifying the location of shelters, medical help, food and water, and open transportation routes.

Chris Hagar works with one such organization, the Standby Task Force (SBTF),4 a global, volunteer humanitarian organization that manages digital volunteers (18,000 based in more than 100 countries) into a prepared network ready to collaborate online and to provide information to various agencies (e.g., United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).

Students from the San Jose State University (SJSU) iSchool have volunteered with SBTF, and former SJSU iSchool student Joyce Monsees is a member of the SBTF Core Team. SBTF responded to new challenges when they were commissioned by an international nonprofit agency, Internews,5 whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people news and information they need to enable them to make their voices heard. SBTF's charge was to collect information concerning the European refugee crisis, described as the "biggest refugee and migration crisis since World War II."6

SBTF tracked information flows for refugees traveling along the Turkey-Balkans-Germany route and identified information gaps that were negatively impacting refugees traveling along the route with the aim of setting up information centers along the route and to create better information systems and help refugees arriving in Europe access services, understand their rights, and stay safe.

Memory keeping: Documenting the history of refugees-Trishanjit Kaur, Punjabi University

The Partition of India was the separation of India on August 14, 1947, and August 15, 1947, into the states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India, respectively. The partition produced the largest movement of population in the world, an estimated 14 million people were displaced and about 2 million died, as Muslims in India fled to Pakistan and Hindus in Pakistan fled to India. Women suffered the most as they were raped, abducted, tortured, and subjected themselves to honor killings by jumping into wells and fires to save themselves from being dishonored. The painful incidents of separation of families, which still haunt many in their old age, need to be documented for future generations before they all pass away.

Many efforts are being made, including the one I am a part of named The 1947 Partition Archive, which has been preserving oral histories of the Partition witnesses since 2010.7 More than 3,000 stories have been preserved on digital video from 320 cities in 12 countries across the world in different languages. It plans to record 10,000 stories by end of 2017.

Students are recruited as Story Scholars to conduct the interviews. Libraries can play a significant role in preserving the memories of refugees, which I discovered while interviewing refugee women. There should be collaboration between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and libraries. Basic information about volunteers, housing, education, medical care, job opportunities, and NGOs can be compiled and made accessible by the libraries. LIS educators can teach memory practices and play a vital role in sensitizing future library and information professionals to plan and provide library services to refugees and asylum seekers.

Libraries in the lives of African refugees resettled in the state of Missouri-Musa Wakhungu Olaka, University of Kansas, and Charles Agai Yier, University of Iowa

Between 1975 and 2017, the U.S. government resettled 370,549 African refugees across almost all its 50 states. A small fraction of this population has been resettled in Missouri, and a couple agencies have helped these refugees integrate in American society, but the role of the library, an established public good, has remained unclear. Our research seeks to establish how refugees from Eastern and Central parts of Africa, who have been resettled in a small town in Missouri, access information they need and make use of libraries. It also explores how libraries have tried to help them.

Almost all of these refugees had lived in rural settings most of their lives, including in refugee camps where access to published information was sparse and libraries were almost nonexistent. Most of these refugees have been survivors of genocide, victims of torture, or other prolonged human rights abuses. Some have been refugees in as many as four countries because of armed conflict.

This is a qualitative study that employs a snowball approach to recruit 24 refugees to be interviewed to elicit critical incidents in their lives regarding how they access information, use libraries, and how libraries support them and their families.

Preliminary findings indicate that most of the refugees first used a functional library in the United States. There is a difference in the way those who came in the United States as children and those who arrived as adults access current information. Most of the refugees make most use of the library within the first two years of arrival in the United States. Supporting children of refugees with homework was cited as the biggest contribution libraries have had on refugee families. Libraries have limited international language or bilingual materials that refugees could use to accelerate the learning of English and integration in American society.

Conclusion

Academic libraries can play an important role in supporting research about refugees and asylum seekers by acquiring relevant collections and collecting primary materials when possible. The teaching about and study of these groups can also be supported by libraries as they provide guides to library resources and information literacy instruction about how to identify and evaluate sources.

Engagement with students and faculty about these timely issues can also be important outreach activities. Book talks including international students from the country that a book discusses can be helpful in expanding awareness. The library could invite international students to suggest a book about their country and then participate in a discussion about the book. The same approach could work with international movies. Exhibits highlighting resources on these topics can be educational and hopefully lead students to learn more about these topics. Librarians can work with faculty to collect original materials about refugees and asylum seekers by collecting digital stories that can then be archived and available for research and education.

Academic librarians could also invite public librarians to share with library staff and others in the university community the work they are doing and see if there are ways to collaborate and provide support. Where appropriate, they might provide refugees access to needed information that the public library does not have available, such as books in a variety of languages. Academic libraries might also collaborate with community organizations to be certain that relevant information about local activities is being preserved and archived for future researchers.

The authors in this column provide some examples of research and good practices that academic libraries can undertake to support refugees and asylum seekers. While much of this is similar to what libraries do to support all users and potential users, the needs of refugees and asylum seekers can be challenging and require commitment, collaboration, and creative thinking.

Notes

1. Project Welcome, https://publish.illinois.edu/projectwelcome.

2. https://diversityinfoneeds.wordpress.com.

3. K. Starbird, "Digital volunteerism: Examining connected crowd work during mass disruption events," in Proceedings of the Computer Human Interaction Conference 2012, May 5-10, 2012, in Austin, Texas.

4. Standby Task Force, standbytaskforce.org.

5. Internews, internews.org.

6. United Nations, "High-level UN Event Tackles Biggest Refugee and Migration Crisis since Second World War," UN News Centre, September 30 2015, accessed March 23, 2017, www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=52074-.Vs6MNJMrLUo.

7. The 1947 Partition Archive, www.1947partitionarchive.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Academic libraries serving refugees and asylum seekers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
International Insights Approaches for support Natalia Taylor Bowdoin is associate professor/library collections coordinator/Interdisciplinary Studies coordinator at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, email nataliab@usca.edu, Chris Hagar is associate professor, School of Information, at San Jose State University, email: christine.hagar@sjsu.edu, Joyce Monsees is executive director at Standby Task Force, email: joyce@standbytaskforce.com, Trishanjit

# data[].attributes.headline
A national campaign to promote preparedness for natural and man-made disasters.

# data[].attributes.subject
A national campaign to promote preparedness for natural and man-made disasters.

# data[].attributes.body
This online resource helps people to educate and empower themselves and prepare them  to respond and mitigate emergencies, including natural and man-made disasters. It is a campaign based in the USA but could easily be relevant to other areas of the globe.

https://www.ready.gov/be-informed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Know what disasters and hazards could affect your area, how to get emergency alerts, and where you would go if you and your family need to evacuate. Make sure your family has a plan and practices it often.

Download the FEMA App to get preparedness strategies, real-time weather and emergency alerts.

Order Free Preparedness Materials

Order free preparedness materials from FEMA's online ordering platform. These materials can be shipped directly to you at no cost.

Hazard Information Sheets

Use these two-sided information sheets to learn more about how to prepare for, keep safe during, and respond to hazards. Learn more about the research behind these information sheets on FEMA's Protective Actions Research site.

Are You Ready? Guide

This comprehensive guide provides detailed information on how best to prepare for disasters within families and communities. Learn general disaster preparedness tips and best practices to inform your planning.

Document and Insure Your Property (PDF)

Disasters are a matter of when, not if. Make sure you're prepared by documenting your property and ensuring that you have the insurance coverage you need.

Know Your Alerts and Warnings (PDF)

When disaster strikes, know who to turn to for updates, alerts, and warnings. This guide outlines the U.S. alert and warning systems and the information you can expect to receive from each source.

A Guide for Alerts and Warnings (PDF)

Learn what to do when you get a hazard alert at home or in the car! The Guide for Alerts and Warnings has information about 17 hazards, their alerts, and the protective actions you can take to stay safe.

Safeguard Critical Documents and Valuables (PDF)

Be prepared for any disaster by safeguarding documents and valuables. This guide includes a checklist to help you prepare your documents should you need to file an insurance claim after a disaster.

12 Ways to Prepare (PDF)

This 9" x 6" cardstock postcard describes 12 key ways that you can prepare for disasters. Just add a USPS mailing sticker to the back to send to community members.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Know what disasters and hazards could affect your area, how to get emergency alerts, and where you would go if you and your family need to evacuate. Know what disasters and hazards could affect your area, how to get emergency alerts, and where you would go if you and your family need to evacuate.

# data[].attributes.headline
Social Media and its Role in Natural Disasters

# data[].attributes.subject
Social Media and its Role in Natural Disasters

# data[].attributes.body
The article explores how social media can be used in different ways by different sectors of the community to aid in both giving and gathering information about  disaster events.

"The emergence of this new communication channels represents an opportunity to broaden warnings to diverse segments of the population in times of emergency. These technologies have the potential to prevent communication breakdown through reliance on just one platform and thereby to reinforce the diffusion of warning messages but also present policy makers with new challenges."

https://preparecenter.org/topic/social-media-disasters/

# data[].attributes.headline
Voices of refugees: information and communication needs of refugees in Greece and Germany

# data[].attributes.subject
Voices of refugees: information and communication needs of refugees in Greece and Germany

# data[].attributes.body
This article explores the information needs and challenges faced by refugees, as well as discussing what humanitarian organisations can do to help them access the information they need. Finding reliable and accurate information that they can understand and feel they can trust is critical for refugees, who may otherwise turn to potentially dangerous sources of information such as from people smugglers. Refugees seek information on topics such as the operation of borders, their legal status and the logistics of basic living.
https://odihpn.org/magazine/voices-refugees-information-communication-needs-refugees-greece-germany/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Photo credit: ©Caroline Haga/IFRC

Since 2015, more than a million women, men and children have undertaken perilous journeys to reach northern European countries, using unofficial migration routes across the Mediterranean and South-East Europe. Not all of them have reached their preferred destination, and many have died or gone missing on the way. These people reflect diverse nationalities and languages and varying levels of literacy, income, social status and access to technology. But findings in a recent BBC Media Action research report show that many have one key thing in common: they require information to make decisions about their next steps, to remain safe and meet their minimum survival needs. And yet, even in this age of digital technology, they often cannot get the reliable information they need due to a lack of online or mobile connectivity and limited consistent information that they trust.

The research study was commissioned and funded by UK aid from the UK government through the Start Network European Refugee Response Programme and the CDAC Network to help humanitarian agencies understand the priority information and communication needs of refugees. Field research, conducted by BBC Media Action in partnership with Development and Humanitarian Learning in Action (DAHLIA), provides a snapshot of refugees' experiences regarding communication and information at different points on their journey: on the route, in 'transit' camps in Greece and, for those who have managed to reach it, in Germany. In-depth interviews with humanitarian actors in Greece and Germany were also conducted to capture their understanding of refugees' communication needs, and the challenges they faced in trying to meet them.

The research was carried out in April 2016, just weeks after the closure of the Western Balkans route left more than 46,000 people stranded in camps in Greece. Despite being 'static', almost all of the refugees interviewed considered themselves to be still on a journey - either back to their country of origin or on their way to their destination country - and believed that things could change at any moment.

Refugee needs

The findings from this research highlight refugees' overarching need for critical information about their current and future situation, as well as their broader communication needs: to be listened to; to be able to tell their stories; and to participate in dialogue that provides them with physical, social and psychosocial support. Many refugees also need trauma counselling.

The research found that refugees had one overriding communication need, both throughout their journey and when static in camps: timely and reliable information on how to get to their next destination safely, quickly and without being detained. Unfortunately this was a need that humanitarian actors were often not able to fulfil, either because they did not know the answers or because they were restricted in what information they were able to provide.

'We need someone to translate for us, to communicate our needs and give us answers to our questions.'

Despite determined work by agencies on the ground, refugees interviewed in Greece tended to be confused about their status and legal rights - not knowing what point they had reached in the asylum process, often holding papers in languages they didn't understand, and frustrated by an application process that they perceived as unfair. Some said their journey to Europe and experience in the camps was worse than living in a war zone, since at least then they knew where they were and had a home, even if their lives were at risk. Refugees living in shelters in Germany, for whom life was often much harder than they had expected, had no official rights to live or work there, no knowledge of whether they would be allowed to stay, and were confused about their rights and asylum status.

Refugees wanted to know: what was next for them?

Aside from questions about their rights, their options and their status, refugees in formal and informal camps in Greece said that they needed basic information about the logistics of daily living, including how to stay safe and where to find healthcare, but often had no common language to communicate with service providers. They voiced concerns about a lack of translators - especially Farsi/Dari-speakers - to liaise between them and agencies, and also expressed mistrust of translators used in asylum interviews.

Trust was a key theme from the research: who could refugees trust for information? Often they did not have a choice, and had to put their 'trust' in whoever could supply relevant information when they needed it most. Faced with an information vacuum or low confidence in official sources, which they perceived to be unreliable, they often sought help from people smugglers, who could provide information about alternative options, even if it turned out to be untrue.

'We need access to the internet to find information and communicate with our family at home.'

The study showed that refugees who stay in regular contact with other refugees and who have wide communication networks of family members and friends (via mobile networks and social networking sites such as Facebook and WhatsApp) were likely to be more resilient than those who were less connected. The latter, particularly Afghan refugees, tended to rely more heavily on smugglers and their travel group for information on their journey, and were often cut off from contact with family and friends.

Suggestions from refugees and humanitarians

1. Have focal points within the camps who speak the right languages, can communicate people's needs and concerns to agencies, and provide answers.

2. Have more legal advisers in the camps (with translators), who can consider people's individual cases and advise them on their options.
'We need one-to-one appointments with legal advisers, to help us understand our rights and our options.'

3. Hold regular meetings within the camps to update refugees on the current situation, preferably led by EU/ government officials.
'They could gather everyone together in meetings to share important updates.'

4. Improve connectivity. Although free wi-fi is available in some camps, all camps need it to enable people to connect to their families and other sources of information.

5. Improve face-to-face communication between humanitarians and refugees, via people who speak the right language.

6. Strengthen the capacity of responders (NGO, volunteer, government) to communicate complex information on rights and asylum in a simple, accurate way.

7. Share critical information about refugee needs and legal issues between agencies.

Challenges for humanitarian agencies

Chief among the challenges facing humanitarian agencies in meeting refugees' information and communication needs was that they did not know when and whether borders would open to allow the refugees to continue their journey. While they wanted to share helpful, accurate information, agencies knew that the situation could quickly change and was outside their control. In April 2016, humanitarian agency staff in Greece reviewed the research findings at a workshop in Athens. They discussed initiatives which were already under way, alongside possible ways to better meet refugees' information and communication needs. Since the research was conducted, humanitarian agencies have explored new initiatives to communicate effectively with refugees in appropriate languages, in an attempt to improve the daily reality for the diverse groups of people who remain static in Greece.

Theo Hannides, Nicola Bailey and Dwan Kaoukji are researchers from BBC Media Action. This article is amended from the Executive Summary of the BBC Media Action research report Voices of Refugees: Information and Communication Needs of Refugees in Greece and Germany, published in July 2016. The content of the report is the responsibility of BBC Media Action. Any views expressed in the report should not be taken to represent those of the BBC itself, or any donors supporting the work of BBC Media Action. BBC Media Action is the BBC's international development charity. It is not funded by the BBC licence fee but is supported by grants and donations from a range of institutions, foundations and individuals.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Voices of refugees: information and communication needs of refugees in Greece and Germany - Humanitarian Practice Network

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Photo credit: ©Caroline Haga/IFRC Since 2015, more than a million women, men and children have undertaken perilous journeys to reach northern European countries, using unofficial migration routes across the Mediterranean and South-East Europe. Not all of them have reached their preferred destination, and many have died or gone missing on the way.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Importance of Social Media for Natural Disasters

# data[].attributes.subject
The Importance of Social Media for Natural Disasters

# data[].attributes.body
This blog post discusses how social media can be used as an important tool to provide communication and support to those impacted by natural disasters.

Apps, like Twitter, can provide vital alerts that provide users with up-to-date information from trustworthy sources.

“Social media has revolutionised communication during disasters.”

How people turn to social media during natural disasters (downtoearth.org.in)

# data[].attributes.headline
The importance of digital and information literacy in Afghanistan

# data[].attributes.subject
The importance of digital and information literacy in Afghanistan

# data[].attributes.body
Whilst the recent developments in Afghanistan have potentially further widened the educational divide between girls and boys, this article explores the importance of digital literacy, leading to skills in information literacy, in the education of those in a country, which already suffers the consequences of a huge digital divide. https://humanparts.medium.com/the-importance-of-digital-5f46b771dbf1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown & Jason Brooks Brown

Photo by Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown

Down a dusty side street and behind walls crowned with razor wire, a roomful of girls huddle around he blank screens of a dozen desktops. The power outage - a frequent occurrence in Kabul and in much of Afghanistan - seems to faze no one. The painted outline of a computer keyboard on a blackboard serves as a reminder of the students' determination to continue their digital education even when access to the technology temporarily vanishes. Today they will not have to wait long for the computers to turn power up. The Women's Annex.com and the Digital Citizen Fund, who sponsor the class, have purchased a generator. The head teacher rushes out of the room, and moments later the distant rumble of an engine and the flickering of the overhead lights sets the girls in motion. Hands reach out from under robes and the computers chirr to life. Excel spreadsheets and paint programs appear on screens. The girls have been learning English language skills and basic computer literacy, including social media, Excel, and various Office programs. Some girls work on blogs they will share on social media sites, and one of them writes: "English and computer skills are very important for us. We learn about the Windows program and Word. We can go on to teach other women the computer and Internet. English is an international language, so it is very important that we know it. And with English we can go to other countries or communicate with people from other countries."
Why Digital Literacy Matters
Globally, Afghanistan suffers from the digital divide: only a small percentage of the population has access to and use of information and communication technology, a factor that increasingly determines (and serves as a measurement of) economic success.

Internally, Afghanistan suffers from a gender divide: men and boys have greater access to education and technology. Prevented in most cases from driving, from being seen with men outside their immediate families, from holding positions of authority, and in many cases from moving freely within their own communities, women often never work outside the home. More than 50% of girls marry or become engaged by the time they are twelve, and when women marry they usually leave school forever. Too often they find themselves isolated and cut off from communicating with the outside world.

Former Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann frames the digital and gender divides in terms of the economic welfare of Afghanistan. "No country can succeed if half its workforce is not utilized," he said in an interview. "As a country without a lot of natural resources, Afghanistan is going to have to develop intellectual resources, and it will be vital to bring women into the educated workforce."

According to the Copenhagen Consensus Center Think Tank, a 2009 study showed a 10% rise in broadband penetration increased GDP growth by 1.34% in low- to medium-income countries. A McKinsey report for the World Economic Forum in 2010 estimated that bringing worldwide mobile broadband penetration to emerging markets to the levels of penetration of mature markets could add $300-400 billion to world GDP and create 10-14 million jobs in emerging nations.

Roya Mahboob - a pioneering social entrepreneur from Herat, Afghainstan, Time 100 person of the year in 2013, and cofounder of the WomensAnnex.com and the Digital Literacy Fund that runs computer classes in girls' schools in Herat and Kabul - says that "if a woman wants to be independent, first she needs an education, second she needs a skill, and then she needs to make money. Only when a woman makes her own money does she have her rights." According to Roya Mahboob, digital literacy not only gives women and girls access to information and educational resources, it connects them to an international community and trains them in technology. The restrictions imposed on women in Afghanistan's conservative society make digital education (which they can learn and potentially access from home, school, and other safe spaces) a likely route to employment in an emerging economy where technology will play an increasing role.

As in many other places in the developing world, growth of technology in Afghanistan has skipped over intermediate stages of infrastructure modernization to adopt contemporary innovations. The rapid construction of cell towers after 2002 has led to 90% mobile broadband coverage across the country. The World Bank and the Afghan government funded a 4810-km national fiber-optic backbone project that has connected more than 23 provincial capitals, several principal cities (including Kabul, Herat, Jalalabad, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif), as well as linking Afghanistan to Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The new infrastructure creates a direct digital path through the region, often called the "Digital Silk Road," and positions Afghanistan to become a Central Asian transit traffic hub. The region needs alternate and additional fiber routes to carry the vast amount of data currently traversing the globe. Having attracted $2.2 billion dollars in private investment and established itself as the second largest tax revenue source for the Afghan government, the technology sector promises to be one of the driving forces behind Afghanistan's economic independence, a prospect that depends on educated women joining the workforce.
Obstacles to Digital Literacy
According to the Afghan Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, only about three million people, or 10% of the country, have access to the Internet. Despite the promise of the fiber optic infrastructure, about 75% of Afghans live beyond the reach of the new infrastructure in rural areas with little or no access to a reliable electricity supply. And even if women could access the Internet, UNICEF estimates 2014 literacy rates for women at 22%. As of 2013, 38% (4.2 million) children (most of them girls) do not have schools where they might learn the language skills that would allow them to make use of connectivity. The Taliban regularly attack girls' schools. Many existing schools lack buildings and books, and few schools provide computer education. There are too few female teachers, and as funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) shrinks or ends its grants in the region, many schools may no longer be able to pay teachers at all.

Increased competition in the market has caused Internet prices to fall in recent years, but because the fiber optic backbone has yet to reach most of the country connectivity relies too heavily on expensive satellite based communications. Even though five mobile networks operate 5,835 base stations providing coverage to 90% of the country with increasing 3G and 4G mobile broadband service, most Afghans cannot afford smart phones or tablets. According to the Afghan Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, only 380 thousand out of 21.7 million mobile subscribers use mobile Internet. With World Bank Gross National Income Per Capita level at $690, 36% of the country living under the poverty line and 35% unemployment, few people in Afghanistan can pay for conventional or mobile broadband access. Women rarely have access to money of their own, so they cannot choose to allocate resources to Internet access. In urban areas Internet cafes have emerged, but most restrict use to men.

According to the Afghanistan Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, "hundreds of towers," particularly in the southern and eastern provinces where the Taliban are most active, face threats. The Taliban extort money from the telecommunications companies and frequently demand that the towers shut down at night for twelve hours so citizens will not report on Taliban movements when they are most active under the cover of darkness. In addition to concealing their own activities, the Taliban seeks to disrupt the communications of the Afghan army, which also relies on the towers for communication. The Afghan government collects $300 million a year in tax revenue from the five companies that operate the towers, but the companies may not be able or willing to continue operating in Afghanistan if they have to pay off the Taliban, shut down their towers for half the day, and pay taxes to a government who cannot provide security.

Despite the many challenges to positive change in Afghanistan and the persistence of fundamental ideological conflicts, reasons to hope abound. That the Taliban now relies on the very same technology they decried in 2002 speaks to the power of technology to serve as a common ground. Chris Fabian, co-head of UNICEF Innovation Labs, recalled a recent incident in which a mobile company's employee was kidnapped by the Taliban from a tower station. The Taliban contacted the CEO and demanded payment. The CEO replied, "If you don't give my dude back, I will turn off your tower. They didn't give the guy back, so the CEO turned off the tower. The employee was returned in an hour." For Chris, the incident speaks to the power of technology and market solutions and serves as an example of the kind of common interest inherent to most compromises.
NGO Approaches to Digital Literacy
Since 2002 the World Bank, USAID, and the Afghan government have worked hard to lay the groundwork for an adequate national telecom infrastructure, which has allowed NGOs, private corporations, and the Afghan government to work toward connecting greater numbers of young Afghans to the rest of the world. Since 2003 scores of governmental and nongovernmental organizations have worked to improve the circumstances of women and girls by promoting digital literacy. The vast majority of programs have sought to provide computers (existing technology) to schools and women's centers.

Among the many dangers associated with delivering new or used technology in the developing world are the following: 1) no one in the host country can train people how to use the equipment and 2) no one can fix or troubleshoot the equipment once it breaks. Recent stories abound of companies earning tax write-offs for donating old computers that soon wind up in toxic heaps polluting impoverished communities. An additional problem, according to Chris Fabian at UNICEF Innovation Labs, arises when the technology is not open source, or does not promote universal access through free license to the product's design. The One Laptop Per Child's project has fallen prey to this problem. The XO computer not only remains expensive, but also is not compatible with some essential software for educating adults.

The most successful programs provide appropriate, versatile technology, together with support and training. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in partnership with the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs has established eleven Women's Development Centers whose trainings and services (in technology and other forms of education and support) have helped thousands of women since the first centers opened.

Help the Afghan Children, a traditional 501(C)-3 nonprofit started by an Afghan-American woman, Suraya Sadeed, has established schools in Kabul, Laghman Province, Paghman District west of Kabul, Kandahar Province, and Kapisa Province. Since 2003, they have trained 29,286 girls in Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and other forms of basic digital literacy. In a similar fashion, Fary Moini, an Iranian-American woman, helped raise money through the La Jolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club to start a school in Jalalabad. She also helped to establish a computer lab at the Nangarhar University in Jalalabad. Both ventures have been successful in training thousands of girls and boys because her efforts included infrastructure and support. Not long after starting the school, she discovered that, by custom, girls must be taught by women. Because of a scarcity of female teachers, she worked to establish a program for training teachers. Despite a number of threats to her life and the lives of her students by the Taliban, she persisted. Global Partners, the Afghan School Project, Trust in Education, Aid Afghanistan for Education - too many organizations to enumerate - have worked hard to provide digital literacy in centers and schools for students of both genders.

Most of the challenges to digital literacy and education in general exist in the remote villages and areas of Afghanistan where the bulk of the population resides. When individual families or communities live at a distance from schools, children (particularly girls) stop attending. In some areas no schools are available at all. In partnership with the Afghan government, UNICEF created the Community Based Education Initiative and the associated Accelerated Learning Centers, which provide education for students who were forced to drop out of school or never attended school in the first place.

In response to the isolation of students and teachers in remote areas of Afghanistan, Program Manager for UNICEF Innovation in Afghanistan Richard Stanley introduced the EduTrac system. Students and teachers might not have access to computers and conventional land-based connectivity or be able to afford expensive 3G smart phones and tablets, but USAID estimates that, as of 2013, 80% of Afghan women have some access to mobile technology either through their own phone or a shared phone. The EduTrac system allows teachers to coordinate and share knowledge with each other, share data and needs with UNICEF, participate in educational group chat with students, and conduct surveys in order to provide important data and information so that organizations can best meet the needs of students.

"We began a pilot in June last year to obtain real-time data from teachers of adolescents in Kandahar and also created a small social network using a simple SMS chat group with them as well," Stanley reports, though he laments that "unfortunately, we have not begun scaling up nationwide as there has not been a minister in six months and the political transition continues. We will scale hopefully in the second half of this year."

UNICEF Innovation Labs has also experimented with the community computer portal in Uganda, which they call the Digital Drum. Katrin Macmillan, founder of Projects For All, has made more extensive use of the approach. Her Hello Hubs in Nigeria are based on the "Hole in the Wall" research of TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra, who demonstrated that, given unsupervised ("minimally invasive") access to technology and connectivity, children will make great strides in literacy, computer literacy, and math and science skills all on their own. Like UNICEF's Digital Drums and the Learning Stations set up by Sugata Mitra in India and Africa, the Hello Hub is a rugged, solar powered, mobile connected computer kiosk loaded with software.

According to Katrin, the Hello Hub is an example of technology "leapfrogging the bricks and mortar" infrastructure that many communities cannot afford. Rather than wait for schools to be built, Projects For All can provide off-the-grid connectivity at low cost "in places where few people want to go" and where the needs are urgent. They hope to work in Pakistan and Afghanistan next. The Hello Hub is not only an educational tool for school children, but also a source for valuable information. "People are able to use the Hub to take note of current information about Ebola and Boko Haram's movements. If people are missing, you can broadcast that. You can warn people about mines," Katrin says. Because the Hubs are built in areas where journalists fear to tread, community-based reporting and storytelling often serve as the only source of information from an area. "The Hello Hub is as much about creating a safe space of nonpartisan community journalism as it is about allowing access to education," Katrin says.

That the Hubs have never been vandalized or intentionally damaged in any way may result less from what Katrin calls their "scruffy" and "unglamorous" appearance than the collaborative nature of their construction. "We build a partnership which we view to be an equal partnership with every community." Katrin and her team don't stay in a hotel on the other side of town or drive armored vehicles. They live with the community in people's homes and use whatever transportation their hosts can make available. They ask the community to feed the team, provide some building materials, and help choose the site for the Hub. According to Katrin, it is essential that "people understand that they are going to be asked to make an investment." When the Hub is complete, Projects For All trains a paid community support officer who can troubleshoot problems at the site.

The Projects For All approach reflects the principals developed by UNICEF Innovation Labs.

According to Chris Fabian, experience (ie, "constructive failure," he points out) has led them to create "a checklist of questions to ask before deployment: Is there content in the local language, do people know how to repair it (the technology) if it breaks, is there enough electricity? and other questions that are shockingly still stumbling blocks for a lot of educational projects. Be open source. Design with user in mind. These principals don't ensure that the project will work, but they do ensure that when it doesn't work at least it's not a totally stupid failure."

"It is their resource," Katrin says of the Hello Hubs and the community. Though the Hub can become a barometer of internal conflict, Katrin sees issues that arise around use of the Hub as opportunities for community engagement. At the site in Suleja, Nigeria, the community support officer reported to Projects For All that children who lived in the sewer were emerging after 10 p.m. at night to use the Hub because it was the only time they could do so without feeling they might be bullied. Projects For All responded by asking the support officer to make himself available on some nights so he could help the children with the technology. Katrin says she wants to return to build another Hub closer to the sewer so the children there can have better access.

The women of the patriarchal Muslim community in Nigeria praised the Hub but declared they would never be able to use the resource because men would dominate access. In typical fashion, Katrin met with the women and asked them: "Well, what are you going to do about it?" At first they wanted Katrin to tell the men to let the women use the Hub. "Do you think that will work?" she asked them. Of course they didn't. Eventually, the women came up with a solution: they would propose "women's hour" at the Hub while the men prayed and slept after eating in the middle of the day. In a few minutes, they could fulfill the purported aim of the hour (to study how to become better Muslims and better wives to their husbands) so they could then spend the remaining fifty minutes using the Hub to communicate with distant relatives, conduct business, or educate themselves.

"They solved it, they cracked it," Katrin says.
Social Enterprise Approaches to Digital Literacy
Even people who work for nongovernmental organizations will often acknowledge the limitations of aid in transforming the economies of the poorest nations. At its worst, aid can be like planting a tree in a place where it never rains and then feeding it with water from elsewhere. Eventually, when the person who owns the watering can and the water grows bored or distracted (or simply runs out of water), the tree dies. For Afghanistan to achieve independence, governments, NGOs and businesses must work together to build infrastructure and seed promising enterprises. Social enterprise often relies on aid to seed projects, but the trees have to be planted where they can eventually grow on their own.

Chris Fabian of UNICEF Innovation Labs declares he is "not a big fan" of charity, though he concedes that there is a place for it. His organization tries to incubate innovations that companies can implement and scale. The most productive forms of assistance plant innovations that can eventually become self-sustaining. Given that cell service reaches 90% of the country and most Afghans have access to rudimentary cell phones, much of the current exciting innovation finds ways to advance digital literacy through hardware people already own: the $25 cell phone.

Richard Stanley of UNICEF Innovation Labs in Afghanistan points to the work done by Paiwastoon CEO Mike Dawson with Ustad Mobile, a "learning platform for basic phones that tracks learners' progress so that any number of delivery platforms can be integrated." Paiwastoon specializes in creating software and communication innovations for Afghanistan. Ustad Mobil (developed with $80,000 in US aid) uses an interactive version of Afghanistan's national literacy curriculum and can be purchased online and all over the country at affordable prices. The program can run offline and then later sync with a cloud when the user has access to mobile service. In 2013 the program was distributed to 200 female police officers as a pilot to improve literacy in Dari and Pashto. Ustad programs include applications for other languages, including English, math, and statistical tracking programs that build on Richard Stanley's EduTrac. Most importantly, Ustad Mobile programs do not require smart phones or tablets but can be run on inexpensive cell phones already in widespread use across the country.

Though innovations like Ustad Mobile and the Hello Hub do not supplant the need for traditional infrastructure - schools, teachers, electricity, computers, reliable connectivity, etc. - they supplement traditional infrastructure where it exists, compensate for infrastructure where it has yet to arrive, and, in the meantime, help individuals and communities build toward a more stable future. Without fail, the successful proponents of digital literacy in Afghanistan and other developing nations are careful students of the cultures where they work, and they are pragmatists. "Everything we build in New York fails," UNICEF's Chris Fabian says. "That's why we have these labs and country offices."

When Ncomputing observed that efforts in the developing world to offer one computer for every child (the One Laptop Per Child model) were falling short because of expense and the ongoing issue of providing consistent and adequate electricity, they created technology that allows multiple screens and keyboards to utilize the "unused" space on a conventional PC. According to Ncomputing, "PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications only use a small fraction of the computer's capacity. Ncomputing's virtualization software and hardware tap this unused capacity so multiple users can simultaneously share the PC" without reducing the speed and performance of the technology for the individual user.

By the time they began working with Ncomputing, The Afghan Canadian Community Center and the Afghan School Project, schools in Kandahar, had stopped accepting donations of used computers because the maintenance and the cost of shipping had exceeded the value of the computers. Struggling to offer computer access to a growing number of students, the schools also faced high energy costs. At the Afghan Canadian Community Center, where the school operates without an external electricity supply, the cost of fuel and repairs on its multiple generators equaled the cost of two teachers' salaries.

Now with 24 stations hooked up to 4 PCs through the Ncomputing device, the Afghan Canadian Community Center and the Afghan School Project have been able to lower their PC acquisition costs by 60% and greatly reduce their fuel costs. While a conventional PC consumes 115 watts per hour, the Ncomputing device only consumes 1 watt per hour. Ncomputing has sold nearly one millions devices (at a cost of $70 a device compared to $180 for the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop) to 20,000 organizations in more than 90 countries. Reduced carbon footprint and e-waste is one of the many positive byproducts of Ncomputing's innovation.

Though Ncomputing is a social enterprise working to offer technological innovations that will benefit digital literacy in the developing world (while also benefiting Ncomputing, a Redwood city LLC), their technology depends, at the moment, on government and nongovernment charitable funds to purchase their equipment. Their innovation does not, in itself, create self-sustaining revenue - it does not (to return for a moment to an earlier metaphor) directly provide water for the tree - but it does lower the cost of education.

In Afghanistan, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, it can be unsafe to use a bank, especially for women, and even more unsafe to travel with currency. The lack of security can have a devastating effect on economic growth for communities and for individuals, especially for women. Mobile company Roshan (an entrepreneurial arm of the Aga Khan Development Agency) and British Vodafone have developed mobile banking technology called M-Paisa uniquely designed to thrive in Afghanistan. Mobile subscribers purchase airtime, make money transfers, and conduct electronic bill payments. Government employees are paid via cell phone accounts. The service now includes person-to-person payments, point of sale payments and microfinance loan disbursements and payments. Western Union has joined Roshan to allow international money transfers through the program. Roshan also created a service called Malomat that gives farmers and agricultural traders daily, real-time market prices for a wide variety of goods by mobile phone.

In a related technology, Etisalat, seeded by funding from USAID, has created an electronic system that hires women as "mHawalas (mobile money agents) who work from home to offer mobile money services (inward- or outward-bound cash transfers, electricity bill payments, new customer registrations, and sales of electronic top up cards) for a 7% commission. To date 1,500 women have taken mobile agent training.

In a challenging environment like Afghanistan, seed-funded social enterprise ventures often forge their own territory within the economy. The introduction of one innovation can quickly lead to opportunity for other innovations and growth in other areas. NGOs, governments, companies, and educational organizations and institutions find success when they overcome the conventional boundaries formed by their different frameworks and strive together toward the same aims.

Social entrepreneurs Roya Mahboob and Francesco Rulli believe that the end goal of education, digital or otherwise, in a country like Afghanistan is economic independence for women and for the nation. No one understands the power of digital literacy better than Roya Mahboob, who began her education in technology with little more than a picture of a keyboard in a used textbook. Before the Taliban were ousted from Afghanistan in 2003, she lived in exile with her family in Iran and could not find access to computers or other technology. She bought a used book describing the physical characteristics of the computer: hard drive, keyboard, monitor, mouse. When she moved back to Herat with her family, she at least knew what a computer looked like, and the United Nations Development Programme was there to offer free classes in how to get online. She learned English through Yahoo Messenger and used the Internet to teach herself much of what she needed to know to start her own company, Afghan Citadel, when just 26.

According to Roya Mahboob, all forms of personal and social advancement for women follow from a strong foundation in skills that provide economic independence. In an effort to close the digital and gender divide, Roya Mahboob and her business partner Francesco have established computer classes in 11 girls' schools and two women's centers in Kabul and Herat that have directly trained 7,000 women and girls and connected 55,000.

When the girls in the schools in Herat and Kabul are asked what they want to do with their education, hands shoot up:

"I want to be a doctor. I want to help children and old people."

"I want to be in computer science."

"I am working with the paint program. I want to plan houses with stores."

"I want to be a politician. Women can be active in the world. They can show their talents. They can do everything like men."

"Women and men have the same human rights. Women also have a mind."

The women and girls write blogs on a social media site founded by Francesco called Bitlanders, a venture he describes as Facebook upside down. Bitlanders, which generates revenue through advertising, pays the women and girls in Bitcoin for blogging on the site. Francesco points out that Facebook leverages user content to make itself and its shareholders wealthy. Bitlanders believes in paying the women and girls, who often serve as witnesses of a world they understand better than any journalist, for providing valuable content. The more people click on their blogs, the more the women and girls make. Using Bitcoin's virtual currency allows the women and girls to circumvent the dangers associated with traditional currency. They have online accounts they can use to travel and purchase computers or other goods for themselves. The women and girls in the schools advance in verbal, design and digital literacy as they learn, usually for the first time, how to join the emerging technology economy. Because of the taboo against posting pictures of themselves or expressing themselves online, the girls use pseudonyms and avatars as profile pictures when they publish their thoughts.

"There was a time when I had to disappear in the society and be visible only on the Internet," Roya Mahboob says. Many people still don't know if I am in the US, in Kabul, in Dubai. We created a digital world for the girls so they can become digital citizens." For women and girls in Afghanistan, who often live in isolation and are treated as second-class citizens, access to technology and the Internet can become a pathway to digital citizenship. As women and girls access information and educational resources available online, both the digital and gender divides will begin to close as the possibilities for the future begin to open.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Down a dusty side street and behind walls crowned with razor wire, a roomful of girls huddle around he blank screens of a dozen desktops. The power outage - a frequent occurrence in Kabul and in much of Afghanistan - seems to faze no one.

# data[].attributes.headline
Combating Global Information Suppression and Encouraging Youth Engagement with Media

# data[].attributes.subject
Combating Global Information Suppression and Encouraging Youth Engagement with Media

# data[].attributes.body
In March of 2020, Reporters without Borders (RSF) allied with Blockworks to create the 'Uncensored Library', a freely accessible trove of censored or banned articles and accounts from all around the world, built into the game Minecraft. The game, unlike the information immortalized within, is legal around the world. Articles in the Library include the writings of reporters struggling to publish media amid widespread information manipulation and erasure, dealing with a range of censored subjects from climate change to war and ongoing crises. These articles take the form of readable books lining the shelves of a massive in-game library; the aim of the partnership is to make information more accessible by young people in oppressive regions of the world, undermining unethical information bans and fostering stronger media and information literacy with regard to state-sanctioned propaganda in such places.

“I feel like this is what we should be doing,” Russian human rights activist and banned news domain grani.ru operator Yulia Berezovskaia explains in a short film about the project.

“The only real way of fighting censorship, is sharing and spreading what has been censored”, she continues.

With regard to the prospect of using digital or virtual platforms to allow recorded information to reach the public more effectively in places where it is subject to manipulation, falsification, or outright destruction, those who were involved in the building of the Uncensored Library believe it is a smart move- one which encourages the recognition of political misinformation and involvement in fostering positive change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In many countries, free information is hard to access. Blogs, newspapers and websites are censored. Journalists get arrested and have to fear for their lives.

Such censorship lets many young people grow up in systems with almost no access to independent press. Their opinions become heavily manipulated by governmental disinformation campaigns.

But although the youth in those countries differ from ours, they do what young people all around the globe do: play video games. Minecraft is a favourite - one of the world's most successful computer games, with more than 145 million active players every month. Here communities can build entire worlds out of blocks, experience the freedom of an open world. Its creative mode is often described as "digital Lego". In these countries, where websites, blogs and free press in general are strictly limited, Minecraft is still accessible by everyone.

Minecraft offers unlimited freedom even in countries where there is no press freedom.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) used this backdoor to build "The Uncensored Libra- ry": A library that is now accessible on an open server for Minecraft players around the globe. The library is filled with books, containing articles that were censored in their country of origin. These articles are now available again within Minecraft hidden from government surveillance technology inside a computer game. The books can be read by everyone on the server, but their content cannot be changed. The library is growing, with more and more books being added to overcome censorship.

"We need to defend press freedom every day." Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi

"In many countries around the world, there is no free access to information. Web- sites are blocked, independent newspapers are banned and the press is controlled by the state. Young people grow up without being able to form their own opinions. By using Minecraft, the world's most popular computer game, as a medium, we give them access to independent information." Christian Mihr, Managing Director Reporters Without Borders Germany

On March 12 - the World Day Against Cyber Censorship - the Uncensored Library will open its doors, giving young people around the world access to independent information, through a medium they can playfully interact with. The campaign runs under the hashtag: #TruthFindsAWay

Censored articles become uncensored books within Minecraft.

Journalists from five different countries, despite having been banned, jailed, exiled and even killed - now have a place to make their voices heard again. Their articles have now been republished as Minecraft books in English and the articles' original language and are available in countries that censored their works.

Reporters Without Borders worked together with the creative agency DDB Germany, the design studio BlockWorks and the prodution company MediaMonks to realise the project. Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi supports the project, alongside international acclaimed journalists like Nguyen Van Dai and Yulia Berezovskaia.

Testing the limits of Minecraft.

The Uncensored Library was built in collaboration with BlockWorks, an internationally acclaimed design studio and consultancy using Minecraft. The library was built over 3 months, and is made from over 12.5 million blocks. It took 24 builders from 16 different countries over 250 hours to design and create the library. The library's main dome is nearly 300 metres wide, which would make it the second largest in the world.

"The Uncensored Library is a bold use of Minecraft. It really encapsulates everything that is great about this game and the community it has created" James Delaney, Managing Director BlockWorks, Architect of the Uncensored Library

The design of the library is a neoclassical architectural style. Derived from the traditions of ancient Roman and Greek architecture, neoclassicism is a style often used in the design of public buildings around the world such as museums, galleries and libraries. It is an architectural style that is often used to represent culture and know- ledge. BlockWorks used this style to design a building that represents freedom of knowledge and the power that truth has over oppressive government authorities and regimes.

The Uncensored Library is accessible through Minecraft with the server address:
visit.uncensoredlibrary.com
The launch of the server is accompanied by the Microsite uncensoredlibrary.com including the launch film, a 360° walk through experience of the library including books, a making-of film and the full Uncensored Library Minecraft map as a down- load to be shared and experienced offline.

Additional to banned articles from journalists, visitors of The Uncensored Library can find the RSF World Press Freedom Index and reports on the current press freedom situation of 180 countries in the world.

An open library inside an open world game to overcome censorship.

The Uncensored Library raises awareness for the importance of press freedom. However the end goal is to empower the next generation to stand up for their rights to information and to give them a powerful tool to fight oppressive leaders: knowledge.

"The only real way of fighting censorship is sharing and spreading what has been censored." Yulia Berezovskaia, editor in chief of grani.ru

Find more information on the microsite: uncensoredlibrary.com

Please use this link to share our launch film:

#TruthFindsAWay

Why Reporters Without Borders (RSF) use Minecraft to reach young people:

Minecraft is one of the world's most successful computer games, with more than 145 million active players every month. First released in 2009, Minecraft's phenomenal success is still growing 10 years later. The game is played around the world, attracting a wide range of ages across both sexes.
"We need to reach the next generation in order to change the future!"
Nguyen Van Dai, democracy activist and blogger

Minecraft is an open world game where players can explore an intentionally blocky, pixelated world. Here they can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools, build structures and cooperate with other players. The game's creative mode is often described as "digital Lego" and is being used in educational environments. Part of Minecraft's gameplay is gathering and crafting items, such as books. Minecraft books have 100 pages and can be written freely. Other players can read them but cannot change the content of the books on the server.

Censored articles from five different countries and various journalist got republished in Minecraft books.

Egypt RSF World Press Freedom Index:

163rd of 180 countries

Egypt is one of the world's biggest jailers of journalists. Most of the media is now controlled directly or indirectly by the state. More than 500 websites are blocked, and more and more people are getting arrested because of their social network posts.

Inside the Uncensored Library visitors can read articles from Mada Masr. Since 2013 the news portal has reported about corruption and security issues in a manner that is often critical of the government. It is the last professional news website that reports independently and is one of the most important sources of quality journalism in Egypt. Since May 2017 the website has been blocked in the country.

Mexique RSF World Press Freedom Index: 144th of 180 countries

Although not at war, Mexico is one of the world's deadliest countries for journalists and even surpasses Syria. Collusion between officials and organized crime poses a grave threat to journalists' safety and cripples the judicial system at all levels. Journalists who cover sensitive political stories or organized crime are warned, threatened and often gunned down in cold blood. Others are abducted and never seen again. Inside the Uncensored Library visitors can read articles from Javier Valdez. He was a journalist and founder of the newspaper Riodoce, a weekly dedicated to crime and corruption in Sinaloa, one of Mexico's most violent states. He was also the author of several books on drug trafficking. Valdez was killed on May 23, 2017 by gunmen. He was 50 years old.

Russia RSF World Press Freedom Index: 149th of 180 countries

Since the widespread protests in 2011/12 the Russian leadership tightened the grip on critical journalists. Each year dozens of people are sentenced to prison because of their online activities. Even a "like" can put someone in jail. The state has been building the infrastructure for systematic mass surveillance and wants to prevent anonymous or encrypted communication. With Russia's sovereign internet law, the government is attempting to gain control over the infrastructure of the web and, if necessary, be able to cut off the Russian internet from the worldwide web.

Yulia Berezovskaia is editor in chief of one of Russia's many blocked websites. She is collaborating with the Uncensored Library to republish articles from grani.ru, a news source for protest activities, politically motivated trials and civil society activism. On March 13, 2014 grani.ru was blocked by the Russian government.

Saudi Arabia: RSF World Press Freedom Index: 172nd of 180 countries

Saudi Arabia permits no independent media. Despite his talk of reform, Mohammad bin Salman has intensified the repression since his appointment as crown prince in June 2017. The number of journalists and citizen journalists in detention has tripled since the start of 2017. Everyone censors themselves, and authorities keep Saudi journalists under close surveillance - as the case of Jamal Khashoggi illustrated.

Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian journalist and his articles can now be read in the Uncensored Library. Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017 and went into self-imposed exile. In the U.S. he worked as a columnist for The Washington Post. Khashoggi was a sharp critic of some of the policies of Saudi Arabia's crown prince. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Vietnam: RSF World Press Freedom Index: 176th out of 180 countries

As Vietnam's media all follow the Communist Party's orders, the only sources of independently reported information are bloggers and citizen journalists. The level of terror has risen sharply in the past three years, with many citizen journalists being jailed cyberwarfare department, which is tasked with defending the Party and targeting dissident bloggers.

Inside the Uncensored Library visitors can read articles from Nguyen Van Dai. He is a Vietnamese human rights lawyer, democracy activist and blogger. In 2006 he founded the Committee for Human Rights in Vietnam, to fight for civil empowerment through legal means. In April 2018 Dai was sentenced to 15 years of prison with an additional 5 years of house arrest but got later released and exiled to Germany. His blog is blocked in Vietnam.

Reporters Without Borders

For freedom of information

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is the world's biggest NGO specializing in the defence of media freedom, which they regard as the basic human right to be informed and to inform others.

In 2019 alone 39 journalist and 10 citizen journalists got killed and currently there are 228 journalists and 120 citizen journalists imprisoned. These are alarming numbers. At the turn of the 21st century, nearly half of the world population still lacks access to free information. Deprived of essential knowledge and manipulated by disinformation, they are prevented from living in a political system in which factual truth serves as the basis for their life choices.

Where governmental media censorship and disinformation campaigns are on a rise globally, RSF fights for freedom of information and for the truth to be known.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
RSF opens "The Uncensored Library" - The digital home of Press Freedom within a global computer game | Reporters without borders

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Press freedom NGO, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), creates a loophole to overcome censorship by building a safe haven for press freedom. Where? Within one of the world's most successful video games, Minecraft. In many countries, free information is hard to access. Blogs, newspapers and websites are censored.

# data[].attributes.headline
To Tell the Truth: Public Libraries in the Fight Against Misinformation, Disinformation

# data[].attributes.subject
To Tell the Truth: Public Libraries in the Fight Against Misinformation, Disinformation

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=To-Tell-the-Truth-Public-Libraries-in-the-Fight-Against-Misinformation-Disinformation

This Library Journal article gives an overview over programmes and philosophies successfully employed by US public libraries in order to combat mis- and disinformation.

It also features further links for those wanting to learn more about the topics and projects mentioned.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How public librarians are tackling the increasingly complex challenge of misinformation and disinformation

Providing accurate and reliable information is a cornerstone of public librarianship, but over the last year librarians have been especially challenged by the pandemic, the election, and the increased visibility of conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, public librarians remain active on the front lines of the fight against misinformation and disinformation and continue to seek out new and more effective ways of helping their patrons apply information literacy principles in their daily lives.

Glenn Harper, a public librarian from Melbourne, Australia, runs a "Fake News" program inspired by inoculation theory. Pioneered by social psychologist William J. McGuire, the theory posits that beliefs can be safeguarded from outside influences if people are given the opportunity to practice refuting insubstantial arguments-much as vaccines protect the body by exposing it to a weakened form of disease. In his course, Harper asks attendees to evaluate 10 actual social media posts, responding with "like" if they believe the story is accurate, "dislike" if they deem it false, or "share" if they think the content not only true but worthy of being sent to a friend or colleague. Afterward, Harper goes over which stories were true and covers fact-checking tips.

He explains, "The idea is to expose people to some ways that social media posts can be misleading and manipulative in the hope that the next time they see something similar, they are alert to both the techniques and their own biases, impulses, and logical fallacies."

The "Fake News" program is promoted on the library's website and social media, and Harper has run it at other libraries, too. "I see light bulbs go off as people realize that they accepted a falsehood or could have fact-checked but didn't. I think that's the biggest takeaway for a lot of people: Pause and fact-check before sharing or liking."

BETTER TOGETHER

Developing partnerships with other organizations can help increase reach, get accurate subject-specific information for patrons, and build awareness and civic trust in other, less visible, public institutions. For example, last September, in preparation for the 2020 general election, the Cook Memorial Public Library District (CMPLD), Libertyville, IL, hosted a Zoom program in which Lake County Clerk Robin O'Connor discussed the vote-by-mail process. She cleared up misconceptions; when a patron asked how to tell whether an electronic vote had been registered, O'Connor emphasized that votes cannot be cast online.

Many people already trust the library, Nate Gass, emerging technology librarian at CMPLD, says. "If you can sow a little more trust back into other civic institutions with library programming, that credibility built through community dialogue and education is another tactic toward battling misinformation." Haley Samuelson, reference librarian, hopes that CMPLD can run a similar program in which a local journalist will discuss the ins and outs of reporting a news story (Gass and Samuelson are 2020 LJ Mover & Shakers).

Paula Brehm-Heeger, Eva Jane Romaine Coombe Library Director of the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library, notes that her institution has worked with a number of other organizations-by partnering with the Christ Hospital School of Nursing, the library provided wellness checks and health literacy information, and the library is in talks with the University of Cincinnati Health Sciences Library, with the goal of hosting a presentation by medical doctors or epidemiologists to promote vaccine acceptance.

The Evanston Public Library (EPL), IL, collaborated with Evanston Latinos, a local organization that works with immigrants, including those who are undocumented, to provide a "Resilient Household" class for Spanish speakers on COVID-19, finances and budgeting during the pandemic, technology, state and local government, and community resources.

"That really helped us start a relationship," says Supervising Librarian Miguel Ruiz. That's crucial when it comes to ensuring libraries reach traditionally underrepresented communities. EPL is located in the city's community center, and one of the class's attendees mistakenly thought that library patrons had to belong to the center to have a library card. Building relationships, says Ruiz, is crucial to removing barriers preventing members of the community from even entering the library.

Libraries must also be aware of the digital divide, cautions Ruiz. Though events are now held virtually, in the case of the COVID relief classes, EPL made an exception "in the name of equity," says Ruiz. "While everyone was going virtual, communities were leaving behind folks who didn't have those digital literacy skills or didn't have access to resources such as computers, laptops, the internet. We recognized that having Zoom classes was not going to be the best fit for the population we were trying to reach." Each class was limited to 10 people, and students and teachers socially distanced and wore masks.

SPREADING THE WORD A flyer from the Warren-Newport Public Library offers tips for fact-checking COVID-19 info. Flyer courtesy of Warren-Newport Public Library

BIAS AND NEUTRALITY

Though it's standard for many libraries to present clear and accurate, nonpartisan information on elections, tackling political misinformation often means wading into murkier territory. Adult Services Librarian Rachel Murray, Programming Specialist Madelynn Austin Lehman, and Readers' Advisory Librarian Jessica Stalker run information literacy classes at Warren-Newport Public Library (WNPL), Gurnee, IL. They don't avoid exploring examples related to politics in their classes-for example, they sometimes unpack the false claim that Ford moved its vehicle production to Ohio from Mexico following Donald Trump's 2016 election win; in actuality, some manufacturing operations were moved in 2015, before the election, as reported by CNNMoney.

However, the librarians stress that they're not here to tell patrons what to think. WNPL serves individuals from across the political spectrum, and librarians want attendees to form their own opinions. Murray notes, "We're not denigrating anybody, we're not coming down on anyone's political beliefs." She finds the Ford example useful because it is "more of a neutral political mention than a discussion of political ideology. It doesn't condemn any political view; it simply shows how framing a topic in a specific light at a specified time can change the overall meaning of a story."

Though the WNPL librarians don't tailor their presentations by audience, Murray says that they "review each example from a 'devil's advocate' point of view. If we feel that someone could take offense to an example, then we choose a different example to avoid hard feelings or misunderstanding."

While Jessamyn West, library technologist in Orange County, VT, understands the desire for a balanced point of view, she says that isn't always possible. In the United States, many assume it's important to present both sides of issues such as abortion or the death penalty, West says, but in other parts of the world, even the assumption that these topics are up for debate is taking a stance.

West stresses that neutrality also posits a world where words or ideas can't cause harm. "I think many, many people are in situations where words can hurt them," she says, citing microaggressions in the workplace or conspiracy theories, such as those that led to the Capitol insurrection.

Says Gass, "We all carry bias with us, and neither journalists nor librarians are exempt from this. The notion of objectivity can be used to reinforce predominant narratives that might actually need to be challenged or questioned with good reporting from diverse perspectives." Gass adds, "That's not to say all claims are equally valid or should be treated as such, but when it comes to teaching media literacy it's perhaps more important to start with how to identify bias in ourselves and what we consume, rather than try to pretend there are sources that are somehow entirely neutral. Then we can begin teaching the importance of seeking out reporting done honestly and accurately, how to sort out opinion pieces from reporting, and how to gauge credibility."

WOVEN INTO THE LIBRARY-AND BEYOND

How can librarians reach individuals who need information literacy help yet aren't interested in attending classes or presentations? It's a question with which librarians are still grappling, but Gass and Samuelson believe that weaving information literacy into all elements of the library's work is part of the answer, such as demonstrating research skills during reference interviews. One of Samuelson's colleagues was asked if Joe Biden was wearing an orthopedic boot to conceal an ankle monitor because he was under arrest for treason. Though initially inclined to shut down the question, the librarian instead showed the patron how to research the topic and that all the outlets she consulted stated that Biden had incurred a hairline fracture while playing with his dog. Samuelson notes, "The patron thought she would give a 'yes' or 'no.' And she said, 'No, I research everything before I answer.'"

Librarians can also practice what they preach by citing sources in everyday conversations. "It's good practice, whenever you're saying, 'I heard this' or 'I read this' or 'Did you hear about this' to throw in where you heard it," says Gass. "It's demonstrating and exemplifying what it means to be someone who cares about where their information comes from."

West says that engaging with the public outside the library can be beneficial. She spends time on social media "pushing back against narratives that are factually wrong." On Facebook, she talks with people she knows, many of whom are older, white, and conservative. She's explained, for instance, why it's neither helpful nor appropriate to ask Black Lives Matter protesters to be "nicer" in their messaging.

"People trust me not because I'm a librarian but because they know me and I'm their neighbor," she says. "They know I would help them if they were in trouble even if they despise what I stand for, and as a result, maybe they're a little more primed to learn from me."

Whether librarians are meeting patrons in the physical library or outside, cultivating a sense of trust is crucial. Says Ruiz, soft skills are especially important when dealing with those who may feel uncertain in the library's space. "Strong interpersonal skills, being able to connect with people-those are the things that are crucial to serving as an information hub. That leads to people trusting you."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
To Tell the Truth: Public Libraries in the Fight Against Misinformation, Disinformation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Providing accurate and reliable information is a cornerstone of public librarianship, but over the last year librarians have been especially challenged by the pandemic, the election, and the increased visibility of conspiracy theories.

# data[].attributes.body
This article by CILIP CEO Nick Poole outlines some of the recent interactions of the book industry and libraries with efforts to protect and improve the environment.

"Climate change and sustainability are key agendas for all of us in the business of books and reading. We have a golden opportunity not only to model sustainability in our own practices, but also to help inform, educate and empower the reading public to take action of their own."

https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/coming-back-greener-1257220#

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In November this year, an army of policymakers, scientists, lobbyists, civil society and activist groups will descend on Glasgow for the 26th annual UN Climate Change Conference, known around the world as ' COP26 '. The conference was originally scheduled to take place in 2020, designated by the UK Government as their 'Year of Climate Action', but had to be rescheduled due to the pandemic.

The selection of Glasgow is no accident. Last year, the city was awarded Global Green City status by the UN, with an ambitious target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. The agenda for this conference is no less ambitious, being the first major opportunity to evaluate progress towards the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit mean temperature rises worldwide to 1.5°c.

Climate change and sustainability are key agendas for all of us in the business of books and reading. We have a golden opportunity not only to model sustainability in our own practices, but also to help inform, educate and empower the reading public to take action of their own.

Not that the public need much prompting! In recent years, the tide of public opinion has shifted decisively towards environmentally-accountable business practices. According to the Nielsen Global Sustainable Shopper Survey in 2019, 81% of consumers feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment (rising to 85% among millennials).

I have been proud to chair the Executive Board of BIC Ltd, the book industry supply chain organisation, as they have developed their pioneering Green Promise, helping the book industry to reduce waste across production, distribution and fulfilment.

At the BIC 'Building a Greener Business' seminar at the 2020 London Book Fair, Jo Shaw of Nielsen Book Services highlighted the Government's commitment to zero avoidable waste by 2050 as well as opportunities to adopt more sustainable practices and reduce plastic waste (particularly the use of virgin plastic).

In many ways, the publishing industry has led the way - for example, signing up to international accords on sustainable production practices and actively seeking greener options for paper, ink, packaging and labelling. The industry's commitment is nicely summed up in the following from Hachette's Environmental Policy: "Our view is that care for the environment goes hand-in-hand with our work as publishers."

In libraries, we share this view, and we are committed to developing more environmentally-sustainable practices across our buildings, services and collections. CILIP recently set out this commitment in a position paper, " Libraries, Information and Knowledge Change Lives" and explored the theme in depth in partnership with the Climate Museum UK at our annual conference last year.

Creating more environmentally-sustainable library spaces is both a significant challenge and a tremendous opportunity. In the case of new-builds and capital projects, libraries are increasingly specifying environmental performance standards like LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) - demonstrating that beautiful, liveable buildings and sustainability often go hand-in-hand.

But the vast majority of library spaces are in existing, established buildings. We face a very significant challenge in retro-fitting spaces to improve their energy efficiency. Interestingly, it looks as though one of the lasting impacts of COVID-19 will be a tightening up of regulations for ventilation and air control, providing an opportunity to commission new, more energy-efficient solutions in existing spaces.

Looking ahead, we think there is a real opportunity to use library spaces and buildings as a showcase for environmentally-sustainable building practices. Libraries are unique multi-functional spaces, offering comfort and respite while supporting a wide range of uses. We would like to explore how these spaces can co-exist more sustainably with their local ecosystems, communities and economies, using sustainable materials and local skills.

We are also exploring the many ways in which our approach to collections and stock can promote more sustainable library practice. For example, how can our selection of formats, whether print, digital or accessible/large-print support our ambitions for carbon reduction? How can we work with publishers to continue to provide the widest possible range of reading materials while reducing waste, packaging and energy use?

A new IFLA Special Interest Group - ENSULIB - has been established to explore these and related questions. In their words, "The consideration of the role of humanity in climate change and the notion of sustainable development are core concerns of society, and consequently of libraries."

This broader view is also pointing us towards another set of questions focused on the connection between reading, literacy and people's engagement with the green agenda. We are currently exploring this from two angles.

The first looks at the question of people's ability and willingness to engage with the science, data and evidence around man-made climate change. Can we do more as libraries to foster the skills needed to understand our impact on the planet and how climate crisis can be averted?

The second considers our educational role - how do we use books and reading to excite and inspire the next generation to connect more meaningfully to the environment and the natural world, to understand their own impact on the world around them and to take collective action? Books and reading have the unique power to build empathy between people, so why should it not do the same between all of us and the planet we call home?

We want to open up this dialogue with our partners across the book industry, including publishers, authors, illustrators, agents, retailers and platforms. We hope to learn from the examples of great practice happening already across our industry and to be able to do more to help people everywhere shape a better, more sustainable world through books and reading.
For more information, please email me at nick.poole@cilip.org.uk or follow us on twitter @CILIPinfo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In November this year, an army of policymakers, scientists, lobbyists, civil society and activist groups will descend on Glasgow for the 26th annual UN Climate Change Conference, known around the world as ' COP26 '. The conference was originally scheduled to take place in 2020, designated by the UK Government as their 'Year of Climate Action', but had to be rescheduled due to the pandemic.

# data[].attributes.headline
Public libraries using or developing Media and Information Literacy for people's good

# data[].attributes.subject
Public libraries using or developing Media and Information Literacy for people's good

# data[].attributes.body
The following resources are about Public libraries using or developing Media and Information Literacy for people's good

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Screenshot from "Information Literacy, Tower Hamlets School Library Services"

# data[].attributes.body
This short video released by Libraries Connected and Tower Hamlets SLS introduces how library services can contribute to the common good by teaching media and information literacy from a young age. (click on the mp4 link if it does not immediately display)

https://www.librariesconnected.org.uk/resource/information-literacy-tower-hamlets-school-library-services

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Check Your Facts | American Libraries Magazine 

# data[].attributes.headline
Libraries use tech tools to fight fake news. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Libraries use tech tools to fight fake news. 

# data[].attributes.body
In this article read how Libraries use tech tools to fight fake news.

More than 200 libraries have installed NewsGuard on their public computers as a teaching device to promote media literacy. Richland Library in Columbia, South Carolina, was among the first, introducing the browser extension across its 14 branches this year.

“More and more people get their news online, with social media platforms being a go-to source for many users,” says Chantal Wilson, the library’s research and readers’ advisory manager. “We thought installing NewsGuard might be one way to help customers identify sources of balanced news.”

“Librarians, particularly public librarians, play a critical role in connecting people of all ages to technology and information.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Albuquerque Journal's coverage of the event was headlined "Drag Queens Dazzle at Library Storytime," while enthusiastic parents voiced support on the library's Facebook page. Other Facebook commenters voiced opposition, sharing links to conservative websites and articles with headlines like "Parents Beware-Registered Sex Offenders Are Performing for Small Children at Drag Queen Story Hours in Public Libraries" (American Pastors Network).

The library didn't delete the Facebook comments, but it has taken steps to help patrons evaluate the quality of the information they see online and identify bias. Like many libraries, Albuquerque and Bernalillo County's library system is turning to a new generation of tech tools and pooling digital resources to teach media literacy.

Flagging, not censoring

NewsGuard is a web browser extension designed to literally red-flag problematic articles and blog posts like the one published by American Pastors Network, a faith-based organization.

Launched in 2018 by a team of professional journalists, NewsGuard was created with . Evaluators use a set of nine journalistic standards to examine the credibility and transparency of thousands of websites and issue a rating and "nutrition label" for each one. For example, NewsGuard users who visit the website of the libraries and schools in mind Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico's largest daily newspaper, will notice a green icon with a checkmark in the corner of the browser window that indicates the website adheres to NewsGuard's standards and has been deemed accurate and reliable. A red exclamation point icon indicates the opposite.

More than 200 libraries have installed NewsGuard on their public computers as a teaching device to promote media literacy. Richland Library in Columbia, South Carolina, was among the first, introducing the browser extension across its 14 branches this year.

"More and more people get their news online, with social media platforms being a go-to source for many users," says Chantal Wilson, the library's research and readers' advisory manager. "We thought installing NewsGuard might be one way to help customers identify sources of balanced news."

NewsGuard, with support from Microsoft as part of its Defending Democracy Program, is one of several browser extensions designed to combat misinformation. Such plug-ins offer both complementary and overlapping functionality. For instance, Trusted News, developed by start-up Factmata and available for Google Chrome, places stories on a spectrum ranging from "content looks good" to "content looks harmful." Trusted News also scans content for what it calls "special states," such as sexism and racism. FakerFact, available for Chrome and Firefox, analyzes articles based on six criteria-such as "journalism," "sensational," or "agenda-driven." The Media Bias Fact Check extension, available on Chrome and Firefox, focuses specifically on an outlet's relative level of bias, assigning one of nine rankings ranging from "left bias" to "right bias" to "conspiracy-pseudoscience" and "satire." And SurfSafe -available on Chrome, Firefox, and Opera-is designed to evaluate the authenticity of images.

Some patrons are skeptical of these services, questioning whether evaluators' biases or institutional pressure-such as outside investors-sway ratings. Andrew Lechlak, digital strategist at the Toledo Lucas County (Ohio) Public Library, says he faced similar pushback when his library first introduced the browser extension.

"The way we look at it, our materials are still going to be biased in some regard," he says. "We do the best that we can to present both sides of an argument, and we feel that NewsGuard hits that mark."

These types of browser extensions do not censor or filter content, Lechlak points out, but aim to connect users with high-quality information and context, "much like a librarian would with any reference question."

"Media literacy is gaining traction in the world of education, but most efforts focus on teaching those skills to children and teens, neglecting adults and seniors, who are actually more susceptible to misinformation, " says Sarah Brandt, NewsGuard's vice president of news literacy outreach. "Librarians, particularly public librarians, play a critical role in connecting people of all ages to technology and information."

Where to verify

To help Albuquerque and Bernalillo County's library patrons check facts and spot misinformation online, Digital Services Manager Ben Ridout maintains an extensive list of reliable websites and online resources, available to the public on the library's website. Similar resource guides have popped up on other library websites in recent years, a response to the proliferation of misinformation since the 2016 presidential election.

"This started out as a small page that has slowly grown," Ridout says, adding that schools and students frequent the page. "I've tried to keep it very neutral. I've just aggregated information."

Frequent entries on librarians' lists of preferred tools include:

Snopes.com is a fact-checking website dating back to the 1990s. Members of the public can submit a claim, and researchers will investigate it for legitimacy and assign it one of several rankings, ranging from "true" and "mostly true" to "false" and "legend."

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania that monitors the factual accuracy of politicians' statements.

PolitiFact is a fact-checking website, created by the Tampa Bay Times and acquired in 2018 by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit education center for journalists. It features a "truth-o-meter," which rates the accuracy of statements in the news and assigns it one of six ratings, ranging from "true" to "pants on fire." (Read our 2015 profile of PolitiFact's editor.)

AllSides breaks trending topics down to three stories, written by sources identified as from the left, from the right, and from the center. The site also has bias ratings for more than 600 media outlets and individual writers.

Promoting media literacy on- and offline

Reference Librarian Bonnie Brzozowski covers these fact-checking sites and more in the "Misinformation and Fake News" workshops she hosts at Corvallis-Benton County (Oreg.) Public Library. She sees in-person discussion-among library workers and patrons who may disagree-as a critical part of the digital conversation, particularly among those less adept with technology.

"I can tell that there's different views within the class, but everyone gets along," she says. "People want better information, and they feel overwhelmed."

Jeanette Jones, adult services librarian at Henderson (Nev.) Libraries, has led similar "Tackling Fake News" workshops in her community. Her curriculum focuses on the history of fake news and examines people's motivations for making and sharing fake news. She also delivers a series of "real or fake?" exercises.

"I find that the class starts out slow but, boy, when we start looking at the examples, and they are actually trying to determine which Facebook post is real and which isn't, it becomes extremely interesting," Jones says. "It really hits them how hard it can be to decipher what's fake and what's not."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Check Your Facts | American Libraries Magazine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Albuquerque Journal's coverage of the event was headlined "Drag Queens Dazzle at Library Storytime," while enthusiastic parents voiced support on the library's Facebook page. Other Facebook commenters voiced opposition, sharing links to conservative websites and articles with headlines like "Parents Beware-Registered Sex Offenders Are Performing for Small Children at Drag Queen Story Hours in Public Libraries" (American Pastors Network).

# data[].attributes.body
https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2019/11/01/media-literacy-in-an-age-of-fake-news/

In this article by George M. Eberhart for the American Libraries Magazine in 2019, it presents how Public Libraries in the USA can provide and also developing methods in educating a broad range of people about Media & Information Literacy. In an era were the internet and other new forms of Media can spread false or misleading information far easier than before, it has become necessary for established sources of knowledge to teach future generations on how to access, identify and use information correctly.

"Misleading information is often difficult to counter because viral memes frequently get translated into other languages, cross national boundaries, and jump platforms, according to Daniel Funke, a writer for the journalism website Poynter."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After several years of fake news and alternative facts, media literacy is still a challenge. The 2018 Learning and Prototyping Report showed that news consumers think they are better at media literacy than they actually are. How can libraries help bridge that gap and help their communities get informed?

Librarians can ensure patrons make informed decisions in local, state, and national elections by helping them think critically. Libraries of all types can promote media literacy by providing handouts, LibGuides, training, and programs about separating fact from online fiction. The following resources can assist.

The National Association for Media Literacy Education, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, defines media literacy as the "ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication," including "technologies that we haven't even dreamed of yet." It provides guides for educators and parents, lesson plans, and election resources. The California-based Center for Media Literacy offers a MediaLit Kit to help educators create media literacy instruction programs across disciplines and grade levels.

Americans tend to label statements they agree with as factual and those they disagree with as opinion.

Between 2017 and 2018, the American Library Association (ALA) partnered with the Center for News Literacy (CNL) at Stony Brook (N.Y.) University School of Journalism on "Media Literacy at Your Library," a pilot program that trained library workers to help adults become better news consumers. The previously mentioned Learning and Prototyping Report describes how five public libraries across the US used CNL's media literacy curriculum to develop public programs tailored to their communities. Among those libraries' discoveries: Young and marginalized audiences were the most difficult to reach, and future efforts could be more effective if programs were hosted in spaces more accessible to those audiences.

Although the program has ended, ALA's Public Programs Office has received a $249,378 National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to convene a group of librarians, educators, and journalists that will design a practitioner's guide for media literacy education. More details will emerge by the end of the year.

A cornucopia of courses

In July, the RAND Corporation released a survey on the effectiveness of media literacy training in K-12 classrooms, Exploring Media Literacy Education As a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay. Researchers found that media literacy competencies are inconsistently defined and evaluated across disciplines, making it difficult to assess outcomes. However, the survey does offer a separate appendix in a ZIP file with a comprehensive list of courses, programs, and other resources, arranged by institution.

One open access course-developed by University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom and information scientist Jevin West-has received national attention. Titled " Calling Bullshit, " the course offers a syllabus, videos, tools, case studies, and a FAQ for educators who wish to adapt it. Bergstrom and West define "bullshit" as "language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence."

At the heart of all media literacy education is the goal of helping children, teens, and adults recognize misleading claims online and in other media. Although often termed fake news, misinformation can take many forms. In 2016, Assistant Professor of Media Studies Melissa Zimdars of Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, and coauthor of Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2020), identified for her students numerous categories of websites containing suspicious information, among them sources that:

purposely fabricate information or distort news

present opinions as fact

rely on disproven conspiracy theories

traffic in unverified claims

consist of state-sponsored propaganda

promote racism, misogyny, or homophobia

use exaggerated or misleading headlines or images as clickbait

A 2018 Pew Research Center survey indicates that Americans tend to label statements they agree with as factual and those they disagree with as opinion. A 2019 study by Ohio State University psychologists suggests that people do draw a distinction between dishonest and biased sources. The researchers found that even accurate news, when reported by a source considered biased, tends to lose its credibility.

Misinformation detection

One widely used source for detecting bias, " How to Spot Fake News" by Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson, was published in November 2016 by FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. An infographic from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (free in multiple languages) summarizes the eight techniques mentioned in the article for assessing news sources. In 2016, Finland became one of the first European countries to have its educational system formally emphasize critical thinking and the ability to recognize disinformation.

Misleading information is often difficult to counter because viral memes frequently get translated into other languages, cross national boundaries, and jump platforms, according to Daniel Funke, a writer for the journalism website Poynter. Information scientists at Indiana University Bloomington in 2017 verified that social bots and algorithms were responsible for spreading viral stories-some fake, others real-through Twitter.

Complicating things further, allegations of conspiracy no longer rely on actual conspiracy theory. Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum write in A Lot of People Are Saying (Princeton University, April) that factual explanations have been replaced by innuendo: "There is no punctilious demand for proofs, no exhaustive amassing of evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern." Instead, what passes for authority is the statement that "a lot of people are saying" something.

A good overview on fake news for librarians is Joanna M. Burkhardt's " Combating Fake News in the Digital Age," Library Technology Reports, vol. 53, no. 8 (Nov/Dec 2017). Burkhardt, who frequently lectures on media literacy, presents a short history of fake news starting with the Roman Empire, explains how misinformation spreads, and suggests proactive methods that librarians can use to help students navigate the information universe. Burkhardt is also the author of Teaching Information Literacy Reframed (ALA Neal-Schuman, 2016), which uses the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education as a tool for designing classroom exercises in media and other literacies.

Nicole A. Cooke, in the ALA special report Fake News and Alternative Facts (ALA Editions, 2018), provides tips for creating a lesson plan to help college students and adult patrons evaluate media. Belinha S. De Abreu's second edition of Teaching Media Literacy (ALA Neal-Schuman, 2019) brings together 15 librarians and teachers to comment on media and digital literacy issues. She also offers six ready-to-teach lessons, a glossary, and a timeline of media literacy milestones. Information Literacy and Libraries in the Age of Fake News, edited by Denise E. Agosto (Libraries Unlimited, 2018), is another excellent roundup of media history and research on combating misinformation.

Finally, those interested in the historical roots of the current contentious political climate can read " The Lie Factory: How Politics Became a Business," by historian Jill Lepore, in the September 24, 2012, issue of The New Yorker. Lepore writes about Clem Whitaker, Leone Baxter, and their consulting group Campaigns Inc., which they launched in the 1930s. "Whitaker and Baxter weren't just inventing new techniques; they were writing a rule book," she argues. That rule book, outlined in Whitaker's speech before the Los Angeles Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America on July 13, 1948, contains advice that has become commonplace in 21st-century political campaigns-including "make it personal," "pretend that you are the Voice of the People," "attack, attack, attack," and "say the same thing over and over again."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Media Literacy in an Age of Fake News | American Libraries Magazine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After several years of fake news and alternative facts, media literacy is still a challenge. The 2018 Learning and Prototyping Report showed that news consumers think they are better at media literacy than they actually are. How can libraries help bridge that gap and help their communities get informed?

# data[].attributes.headline
Online Media Literacy within libraries to support public

# data[].attributes.subject
Online Media Literacy within libraries to support public

# data[].attributes.body
This short blog introduces one of the tactics, upskilling Library staff, and also simplifies some areas of the Online Media Literacy Strategy paper of July 2021 to improve public MIL. It highlights the importance of including libraries in plans and states a goal to become central to their communities for MIL advancement. It also gives some reasons as to why it is so important for the public to have developed MIL when online.

The Link:
https://dcmslibraries.blog.gov.uk/2021/07/30/online-media-literacy-why-public-libraries-are-the-perfect-partners/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On 14 July Caroline Dinenage, Minister for Digital and Culture, visited Battersea Public Library to launch the government's Online Media Literacy Strategy which sets out our ambition to improve media literacy provision across the UK. We are delighted that the event took place in a public library as they are an integral and vital part of increasing media literacy skills.

While huge amounts of work are being done to develop legislation that will make online platforms safer for all users, it will never be possible to eradicate some harms entirely. Equipping citizens with media literacy skills is another vital way to ensure everyone is able get the most out of all the internet has to offer, whilst also making safe and informed decisions online. Understanding the media ecosystem, both online and offline, is a key part of life as a citizen in a 21st century democracy.

The theme of ' Rediscover Summer' this week is and the act of settling into a good book and escaping to another world is a vital part of many peoples lives. But reading also equips us with other essential skills: it enables us to look at things from other perspectives, teaches us to check sources, question an author's biases and critically assess information. These are all important media literacy competencies. By improving our powers of comprehension and analysis, reading enables us to identify misinformation and disinformation, recognise bias and spot satire.

Libraries are a key part of the strategy because we hope they will become media literacy 'hubs' in the community. One of the initiatives set out in the Media Literacy Action Plan for 2021/22, is to upskill library staff and ensure they have the confidence to offer support to the people who use their services to build media literacy skills. This includes developing their resilience to misinformation and disinformation, understanding how to keep personal data safe online, and promoting positive interactions with others online. These are vital skills for all citizens.

During the development of the strategy, we spoke to a wide range of stakeholders - the UK has a rich and diverse media literacy sector with over 170 organisations active in this space. Despite this, media literacy levels remain low.

The primary objective of the strategy is to support the media literacy sector to have impact in a more coordinated, wide reaching and effective way. We have identified six key challenges which have informed the 11 Strategic Sector Priorities that set out actions that sector organisations can take to address these challenges.

The strategy includes the first annual Media Literacy Action Plan which sets out the Government's actions. From an Online Media Literacy Portal, to working with tech companies to implement features that promote media literacy on their platforms, to supporting public service workers to deliver media literacy support to the people they work with, we are committed to ensuring that everyone has the skills and knowledge they need to stay safe and thrive online.

We are pleased to have been able to highlight the role of public libraries in relation to this agenda, and to provide funding to Libraries Connected to develop and roll out a training module on information literacy for frontline staff. This initiative will enable libraries to increase the support they already provide to the public with information literacy skills and knowledge. We are excited about working closely with public libraries across England as key partners in driving this agenda forward.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Olive Baring, Media Literacy Policy Adviser, DCMS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Online Media Literacy: why public libraries are the perfect partners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On 14 July Caroline Dinenage, Minister for Digital and Culture, visited Battersea Public Library to launch the government's Online Media Literacy Strategy which sets out our ambition to improve media literacy provision across the UK. We are delighted that the event took place in a public library as they are an integral and vital part of increasing media literacy skills.

# data[].attributes.headline
How libraries can support digital literacy to improve health services

# data[].attributes.subject
How libraries can support digital literacy to improve health services

# data[].attributes.body
A short article discussing the importance that digitial literacy seems to play in access to health information, according to NHS Digitial - and the CILIP/SCONUL Health Social Care Strategy Group's review discussing how public libraries can support access to health information for the citizens of their communities.

Link: https://www.librariesconnected.org.uk/news/supporting-digital-literacy-improve-health-all

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
'Improving digital literacy can have a significant impact on improving health outcomes for [people] by helping them to take control of their health and care. Giving them skills to access to the right information and services enables them to better manage their conditions as well as helping to relieve the burden on NHS services.' NHS Digital*

As we all work our way through Covid-19, the issue of digital literacy has never been more important. We must widen access to online information by helping people to gain the skills and capabilities they need to navigate and judge whether what they read is true or false.

Evidence suggests there is a growing inequalities gap between those who effectively find and use health information online and those who do not. This week is Health Information Week and there will be many examples of public libraries working together with local NHS Library and Knowledge Services to support their users.

In October 2019, the CILIP/SCONUL Health Social Care Strategy Group brought together health and public librarians to explore the impact of the Topol Review and implications for digital capabilities among the healthcare workforce, healthcare librarians and the public.

At the event, experts from Health Education England, JISC and Breast Cancer Now, among others, shared insights into how people currently use information online. These presentations provided a basis for discussing how librarians could support this.

Discussion then moved on to libraries' ability to influence people at all stages of their lives. This wide framing enabled everyone to see how the different organisations represented could support improving digital literacy. Suggestions to improve digital literacy included:

Sharing existing frameworks and resources

Making the most of current skills within the information profession and considering what new skills librarians might need

Working in partnership and making informal links across sectors to share experiences and resources effectively.

The group then discussed creating a new volunteer role, Digital Health Champions who would work across local health and public libraries to help members of the public, public library staff and volunteers access quality health information and online resources.

We also recognised that there are challenges. Some librarians believe that their roles are at risk of automation. However, advances so far have supported the work of librarians and have even created capacity to extend skills and services. These include allowing librarians to offer critical appraisal skills to the public, patients and health care staff or to design self-assessment tools for people.

We also need to understand the current barriers to progressing with digital literacy. These include the perceived capacity to take on more activities as well as a sound knowledge of good quality health resources and digital capability. Some solutions could be:

Better career development provision for librarians supporting health

Sharing learning across all library sectors

Signposting good quality health information and online resources to public library staff and volunteers

Promotion of public health campaigns in libraries.

Working in partnership will be essential for us to succeed and getting involved with Health Information Week, along with other libraries from across different sectors, is a wonderful opportunity to deliver some of these solutions.

We need to better understand what will motivate people to embrace both health and digital literacy and show them that libraries, at any stage in their lives, can help them to develop the skills they need.

by Deena Maggs, Head of Library Service, The King's Fund and Sue Ball, Staffordshire Libraries and Arts Service and Universal Public Libraries Health and Wellbeing Offer

Health Information Week (#HIW2020) runs from 6-12 July.

Health Education England recently launched a new website with information for the public.

* Widening Digital Participation, NHS Digital

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Supporting digital literacy to improve health for all | Libraries Connected

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'Improving digital literacy can have a significant impact on improving health outcomes for [people] by helping them to take control of their health and care. Giving them skills to access to the right information and services enables them to better manage their conditions as well as helping to relieve the burden on NHS services.'

# data[].attributes.headline
Media and Information Literacy helping fight the COVID19 pandemic

# data[].attributes.subject
Media and Information Literacy helping fight the COVID19 pandemic

# data[].attributes.body
The following resources are about Media and Information Literacy helping fight the COVID19 pandemic

# data[].attributes.headline
SIFT Method For Teaching Information Literacy 

# data[].attributes.subject
SIFT Method For Teaching Information Literacy 

# data[].attributes.body
Michigan State University created a useful video to teach students how to use the SIFT method to fact-check information on the Coronavirus. This webpage includes the video as well as a well-curated collection of links for further learning about the SIFT method and fact-checking techniques. This is all presented in an interesting and interactive format both for the use of teachers and the general public.

https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/newsliteracy/covid19

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to Main Content

It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

More about the SIFT method

If you want to know more about the SIFT method and fact-checking techniques described in the video, these resources are a good place to start.

Coronavirus Fact-Checking Resources

These sites give you a starting point when fact-checking Coronavirus news. Due to the high volume of misinformation circulating about Coronavirus, many fact-checking websites are overwhelmed. You may need to check back after a few days have passed if you are looking for very recent information.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LibGuides: News Literacy: Fact-Checking COVID-19

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Skip to Main Content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

# data[].attributes.headline
Over 80 African journalists trained on fact-checking and communicating health

# data[].attributes.subject
Over 80 African journalists trained on fact-checking and communicating health

# data[].attributes.body
UNESCO, ISAAA AfriCenter and Africa Check organised an online media training course for African journalists.

Focusing on Covid-19 and non-communicable diseases (such as kidney disease and cancer), the purpose of the course was to support journalists in communicating health information to their audiences.

Organisers of the course highlighted the importance of "collaborative efforts in tackling misinformation and enhancing media reporting on health".

Stephen Chinyama, a journalist who attended the course, felt that the course "equipped [him] with a number of simplified terms to use in the context of Covid-19 reporting".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Greater collaboration among different stakeholders has been cited as key in addressing health-related mis- and disinformation, as well as strengthening the capacity of journalists to report more accurately and effectively on health issues.

This was the main recommendation which emerged among 83 journalists, communicators and bloggers from 14 African countries who successfully completed a media training course than ran from June to August 2021. Journalists from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal participated in the training.

What I liked the most about this training was translating health science into a simple language. For me, this was the most illuminating topic. I am now equipped with a number of simplified terms to use in the context of COVID-19 reporting.

Stephen Chinyama, journalist at Power FM in Zambia

The course was organized by UNESCO's Addis Abba Office, ISAAA AfriCenter and Africa Check with support from UNESCO-EU funded project #CoronavirusFacts: Addressing the 'Disinfodemic' on COVID-19 and UNESCO Multi-donor Programme on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists.

The course, which focused on COVID-19 and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), took place virtually as a series of six interactive sessions, and was hosted under the auspices of the Africa Life Science Knowledge (ALSK), a web-based platform developed within the framework of the UNESCO-EU project. The platform helps to bridge the widening gap between science and society through timely interventions on various types of misinformation on innovations in agriculture, food and nutrition, health, and the environment.

While emphasising the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, the Head of the Division of Policy, Health Diplomacy and Communication at the Africa CDC, Benjamin Djoudalbaye praised the media for playing a key role in provision of reliable COVID-related information to the public. He called on partners to join efforts in building a designated online resource library for good practices in journalism, including scientific sources for myth, conspiracy theory or rumour debunking during epidemics.

One of the most important roles journalists play during pandemics is to provide clarity when there is so much uncertainty. They provide the needed contexts and nuances, and break down complicated concepts for non-experts.

Benjamin Djoudalbaye, Africa CDC

Katrin Hagemann, Deputy Head of the European Union Delegation in Kenya, welcomed the initiative. She underscored the critical role that the EU has played in supporting the most vulnerable communities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasised that fact-based, fair, and balanced information and analyses are key ingredients to counter fake news.

Today, we are celebrating the fact that more and more journalists in different African countries have received quality training on fact-checking health information and communicating science, thanks to our partnership with UNESCO. This is the reason why the EU decided to support independent journalism and sensitive reporting worldwide, training journalists through a number of programmes.

Katrin Hagemann, European Union Delegation in Kenya

While thanking the support from EU, Yumiko Yokozeki, Director of UNESCO's Addis Ababa Liaison Office to AU and UNECA, highlighted that through this initiative UNESCO has strengthened its partnership with the Africa CDC, ministries of health, academia, scientists, media partners and fact-checkers. It will continue leveraging its partnership with ISAAA AfriCenter and Africa Check to support community media sector that has the capacity to reach the widest audience in remote areas through their local languages.

Africa Check Deputy Director, Retha Langa reiterated the need for collaborative efforts in tackling misinformation and enhancing media reporting on health. According to him, as a fact-checking organization, Africa Check cannot tackle misinformation alone. Therefore, one of the key outcomes of the training is enhanced knowledge and confidence on reporting about the impact of COVID-19 on NCDs as demonstrated through positive feedback from the beneficiaries.

The official closing of the training provided an opportunity to present the Africa Life Science Knowledge (ALSK) portal, through which journalists are able to get trainings and capacity building to help them to thoroughly investigate, comprehensively interrogate, and fully understand science and health-related issues before reporting on them.

About the #CoronavirusFacts project

Based on the central tenet that information is the opposite of disinformation, the UNESCO project #CoronavirusFacts leverages the pivotal role of freedom of expression and access to information to address information needs in times of COVID-19 and to tackle the massive wave of disinformation which threatens to impact democracy, sustainable development and stability around the world. Funded by the European Union, the project which has activities both at the global level, in four regions and in nine countries, supports professional, diverse and independent media's capacity to report on the pandemic; strengthens local fact-checking organisations to debunk misinformation; and empowers youth and other citizens to critically process what they read and hear linked to COVID-19 through training in media and information literacy. Due to unprecedented challenges for the media and digital technology sectors, UNESCO has created a Resource Center of selected responses to COVID-19.

To learn more, visit: https://en.unesco.org/covid19/disinfodemic/coronavirusfacts

About the Multi-Donor Programme for Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists (MDP)

The MDP serves to further strengthen UNESCO work at a global, regional, and national levels, by channelling funds towards emerging priorities and the most pressing needs to achieve its mandate on freedom of expression. It enables UNESCO Communication and Information Sector to address complex issues through the design and implementation of holistic medium and long-term interventions at national, regional and global levels. The clear advantage of this mechanism is that it allows UNESCO and its partners to achieve greater impact and sustainability, whilst reducing fragmentation of activities in the same field.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Over 80 African journalists trained on fact-checking and communicating health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Greater collaboration among different stakeholders has been cited as key in addressing health-related mis- and disinformation, as well as strengthening the capacity of journalists to report more accurately and effectively on health issues. This was the main recommendation which emerged among 83 journalists, communicators and bloggers from 14 African countries who successfully completed a media training course than ran from June to August 2021.

# data[].attributes.body
The World Health Organisation has its own dedicated section for information on Coronavirus. In particular, it helps you to know how to report misinformation on various platforms (i.e. social media and communications).

Fake News is something that has become a major issue over the past few years. However, one of the major issues that fake news and misinformation have affected largely is the Covid-19 Vaccine.

Misinformation has become something that is hard to police and prevent online. This leads to the question of what can people do on a global everyday scale to prevent it?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
COVID-19 affects different people in different ways. Most infected people will develop mild to moderate illness and recover without hospitalization.
Most common symptoms: Less common symptoms:

sore throat

headache

aches and pains

diarrhoea

a rash on skin, or discolouration of fingers or toes

red or irritated eyes.

Serious symptoms:

difficulty breathing or shortness of breath

loss of speech or mobility, or confusion

Seek immediate medical attention if you have serious symptoms. Always call before visiting your doctor or health facility.

People with mild symptoms who are otherwise healthy should manage their symptoms at home.

On average it takes 5-6 days from when someone is infected with the virus for symptoms to show, however it can take up to 14 days.

# data[].attributes.headline
UNESCO provides free Information Literacy visual resources to help combat Covid 19 misinformation

# data[].attributes.subject
UNESCO provides free Information Literacy visual resources to help combat Covid 19 misinformation

# data[].attributes.body
Visual resources to download and share (unesco.org)

Unesco have designed free graphics in 6 different languages to help inform people of all ages about Information Literacy and to help fight misnformation and disinformation hindering the fight against Covid 19.
They teach people to spot false content, truthful content, teach critical thinking and analysing information skills.
There are also free graphics for parents and teachers to help spread the word further and teach IL to help fight Covid 19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Back to home
UNESCO produced visuals, graphic and social media messages to counter disinformation, fight discrimination, and promote best practices.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced the " massive infodemic " of disinformation and misinformation swirling amidst the COVID-19 pandemic as a driver of the crisis itself. In the current context, the impact of dis- and misinformation are potentially deadlier, and responses are at once more urgent and hold the promise of providing long-lasting effect.

At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO produced visuals, graphics and social media messages to counter disinformation, fight discrimination, and promote best practices. Together, we can build more media literate and tolerant societies, and share verified information during the current crisis.
All these resources are open access and free to be used, downloaded and shared!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Back to home The World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced the " massive infodemic " of disinformation and misinformation swirling amidst the COVID-19 pandemic as a driver of the crisis itself. In the current context, the impact of dis- and misinformation are potentially deadlier, and responses are at once more urgent and hold the promise of providing long-lasting effect.

# data[].attributes.body
Ask For Evidence is a website that aims to give its visitors an understanding on how to correctly ask for evidence, and also how to understand the evidence once they have received it. The guidance ranges from how to ask for evidence from specific groups or people, such as MPs, to how to critically analyse the information that has been received. For example, there are detailed articles that cover how to interpret scientific information and common things to check that is associated with scientific literature, such as whether it is peer reviewed.

This website is of particular importance in the context of how misinformation is being spread via social media, as it gives people the tools and expertise they need in order to assess and evaluate information they come across themselves.

https://askforevidence.org/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We use cookies to help provide you with the best experience using our website.
If you're happy to accept cookies, continue to browse our site or click 'x' and we'll close this message.
Learn more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We use cookies to help provide you with the best experience using our website.If you're happy to accept cookies, continue to browse our site or click 'x' and we'll close this message. Learn more

# data[].attributes.headline
Poynter Coronavirus Fact-Checking Alliance 

# data[].attributes.subject
Poynter Coronavirus Fact-Checking Alliance 

# data[].attributes.body
Poynter, a journalism institute which focuses on fact-checking and media literacy, has created the Coronavirus Fact-Checking Alliance. This is called the  CoronavirusFactsAlliance, which has its own hashtag for use on social media. This alliance is formed of multiple news outlets and institutions from around the world. The Alliance's main aim is to promote information literacy. The level of misinformation about the pandemic is such that the World Health Organisation has called it an 'Infodemic'.

This site uses a range of interactive diagrams, charts, and also hosts a database. These diagrams show the quantity of misinformation that has been spread about various different topics, from governments to vaccines. The database allows you to search across news outputs in 40 languages, from 70 countries, with its principle aim to be to highlight instances where media has been used to dispel or debunk false claims. The database shows false claims in an easy-to-read structure of short summaries, with the option of reading the full story. It has so far amassed 9,000+ fact checks from around the world, with all this information stored on the database, which is searchable by country, language, and claim.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, the #CoronaVirusFacts unites more than 100 fact checkers around the world in publishing, sharing, and translating facts surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alliance was launched in January 2020 when the spread of the virus was restricted to China but was already causing rampant misinformation globally. The World Health Organization classifies this as an infodemic - and the Alliance is on the front lines in the fight against it.

This shows how the category of fact checks has shifted as the pandemic progressed from January 2020 till February 2022.

This graphic shows the categories of fact checks, which are helping our alliance identify successive waves of misinformation as they travel across the globe. When the new coronavirus pandemic started, many hoaxes were about the origin of the virus. Then the alliance detected falsehoods on how the disease spreads, and cures and preventions. Now we are finding hoaxes about religious groups, politicians and the impact of COVID-19 on a country's health system.

Fact Check Database

The #CoronaVirusFacts database gathers all the falsehoods that have been detected by the Alliance and will be updated daily to include new publications. You can sort, filter and search for content.

CoronaVirus Fact-Checking Grant Program

This work has triggered $2 million in support from WhatsApp and Facebook. The latter provides funding for flash grants of up to $50,000 for fact-checkers fighting coronavirus misinformation. Below you find the recipients of these grant programs.

Researching COVID-19 misinformation? Come join us!

If you are interested in researching the COVID-19 Database, please email info@ifcn.org to request access to the database, along with an abstract of your research.

Power in your pocket: WhatsApp chatbots

The IFCN launched a WhatsApp chatbot that allows English speakers to easily access all data available in the CoronaVirusFacts database with a few keystrokes. WhatsApp users just need to click this link or text "hi" to +1 (727) 291-2606 to get the bot's welcome page. There are also options for other languages: Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese. They all use the same phone number.

Twitter List

You can also find fact-checks by the alliance on this Twitter list. Please note: fact-checks are not automatically translated.

(99 members: 15min.lt, 20 Minutes Fake off, AAP FactCheck, AFP, AfricaCheck, Agência Lupa, Agencia Ocote, Animal Político, Annie Lab, Aos Fatos, Bolivia Verifica, BOOM FactCheck, BuzzFeed Japan, Check Your Fact, CheckNews, Chequeado, Colombiacheck, Congo Check, Convoca.pe, Correctiv, Décrypteurs - Radio-Canada, Delfi Melo Detektorius (Lie Detector), Demagog, Détecteur de rumeurs, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Digiteye India, Doğruluk Payı, Dubawa, Ecuador Chequea, EFE Verifica, Efecto Cocuyo, Effecinque - SkyTg24, El Surtidor, Ellinika Hoaxes, Estadão Verifica, FactCheck Georgia, Factcheck.kz, FactCheckNI, FactCheck.org, Factcheck.Vlaanderen, FactCrescendo, Factly, Factnameh, Faktabaari/FactBar, Faktograf, Fatabyyano, France 24 Observers, franceinfo, Full Fact, GhanaFact, India Today, INFACT, Istinomer, JTBC news, Källkritikbyrån, La Nación, La Voz de Guanacaste, La Silla Vacía, LeadStories, Les Décodeurs, Maldita.es, MediaWise, Misbar, Mygopen, Myth Detector, Newschecker, Newsmeter.in, NewsMobile, Newtral.es, Nieuwscheckers, Observador, OjoPúblico, Open, Pagella Politica, Periodismo de Barrio, PesaCheck, Poligrafo, PolitiFact, Rappler, Raskrinkavanje, Re:Check, Salud con lupa, Science Feedback, Spondeo Media, StopFake.org, Sure And Share Center MCOT, Taiwan FactCheck Center, TEMPO, Teyit, The Quint, TheJournal.ie, TjekDet.dk, VERA Files, Verificado, Verificador de La República, Vishvas News, Vistinomer, VoxCheck and Washington Post Fact-Checker)

Please reach out to info@ifcn.org to join the CoronaVirusFacts Alliance.

All the organizations that have joined the alliance are established fact checkers - either verified signatories of the IFCN's Code of Principles or organizations that have been supported by one of the IFCN verified signatories. Single-person operations were not accepted.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, the #CoronaVirusFacts / #DatosCoronaVirus Alliance unites more than 100 fact-checkers around the world in publishing, sharing and translating facts surrounding the novel coronavirus.

# data[].attributes.headline
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters

# data[].attributes.subject
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters

# data[].attributes.body
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters page written by the World Health Organisation (WHO) separates the facts from the fake news. It provides information in an accessible format and links to other useful resources to raise awareness of Covid-19.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
FACT: Hand sanitizers can be used often

An alcohol-based sanitizer does not create antibiotic resistance. Unlike other antiseptics and antibiotics, pathogens (harmful germs) do not seem to develop resistance to alcohol-based sanitizers.

FACT: Alcohol-based sanitizers are safe for everyone to use

Alcohols in the sanitizers have not been shown to create any relevant health issues. Little alcohol is absorbed into the skin, and most products contain an emollient to reduce skin dryness. Allergic contact dermatitis and bleaching of hand hair due to alcohol are very rare adverse effects. Accidental swallowing and intoxication have been described in rare cases.

FACT: Alcohol-based sanitizers can be used in religions where alcohol is prohibited

Any manufactured substance developed to alleviate illness or contribute to better health is permitted by the Qur'an, including alcohol used as a medical agent.

FACT: The amount of alcohol-based sanitizer you use matters

Apply a palmful of alcohol-based sanitizer to cover all surfaces of your hands. Rub your hands together using the right technique until they are dry.

The entire procedure should last 20-30 seconds.

FACT: Vitamin and mineral supplements cannot cure COVID-19

Micronutrients, such as vitamins D and C and zinc, are critical for a well-functioning immune system and play a vital role in promoting health and nutritional well-being. There is currently no guidance on the use of micronutrient supplements as a treatment of COVID-19.

WHO is coordinating efforts to develop and evaluate medicines to treat COVID-19.

Is dexamethasone a treatment for all COVID-19 patients?

Dexamethasone should be reserved for patients who need it most. It should not be stockpiled.

It provided no improvement for patients with mild symptoms. Dexamethasone is a corticosteroid used for its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects. For some COVID-19 patients on ventilators, a daily 6 mg dose of dexamethasone for 10 days improved their health

Fact: Water or swimming does not transmit the COVID-19 virus

The COVID-19 virus does not transmit through water while swimming. However, the virus spreads between people when someone has close contact with an infected person.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Avoid crowds and maintain at least a 1-metre distance from others, even when you are swimming or at swimming areas. Wear a mask when you're not in the water and you can't stay distant. Clean your hands frequently, cover a cough or sneeze with a tissue or bent elbow, and stay home if you're unwell.

FACT: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by a virus, NOT by bacteria

The virus that causes COVID-19 is in a family of viruses called Coronaviridae. Antibiotics do not work against viruses.

Some people who become ill with COVID-19 can also develop a bacterial infection as a complication. In this case, antibiotics may be recommended by a health care provider.

There is currently no licensed medication to cure COVID-19. If you have symptoms, call your health care provider or COVID-19 hotline for assistance.

FACT: Spraying and introducing bleach or another disinfectant into your body WILL NOT protect you against COVID-19 and can be dangerous

Do not under any circumstance spray or introduce bleach or any other disinfectant into your body. These substances can be poisonous if ingested and cause irritation and damage to your skin and eyes.

Bleach and disinfectant should be used carefully to disinfect surfaces only. Remember to keep chlorine (bleach) and other disinfectants out of reach of children.

FACT: Antibiotics CANNOT prevent or treat COVID-19

Antibiotics work only against bacteria, not viruses.

COVID-19 is caused by a virus, and therefore antibiotics should not be used for prevention or treatment.

Some people who become ill with COVID-19 can also develop a bacterial infection as a complication. In this case, antibiotics may be recommended by a health care provider.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
COVID-19 Mythbusters - World Health Organization

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Highlighting some of the misinformation circulating on COVID-19

# data[].attributes.headline
MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network (TFCN) by Poynter

# data[].attributes.subject
MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network (TFCN) by Poynter

# data[].attributes.body
Developed by Poynter, MediaWise is a project to help teenagers sort the fact from fiction. This initially started out as an initiative for American teens, but it's viewable natural has captivated people of all ages and all walks of life. Content can be found on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube.

To quote Poynter - 'MediaWise recently began measuring the effectiveness of fact-checks on Instagram and how they influence users' behavior — on average, more than 83.5% of users surveyed say they are more willing to fact-check on their own after watching a MediaWise Instagram story fact-check.'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 2020, the TFCN focused on fact-checking social media content related to the presidential election and COVID-19. Our national team of teen fact-checkers published 92 fact-checks related to COVID-19 as of Dec. 15.

TFCN fact-checks are unique in that they debunk misinformation and teach the audience media literacy skills so they can fact-check on their own. On average, 86% of respondents polled on the MediaWise Instagram account recently reported they were more likely to fact-check on their own after watching a TFCN fact-check story.

In 2021 this program will expand to produce 30 fact-check videos designed for YouTube. You'll be able to find those on our YouTube channel in January.

Follow @MediaWise on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to see new fact-checks posted daily and learn how you can apply to be part of this program.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2020, the TFCN focused on fact-checking social media content related to the presidential election and COVID-19. Our national team of teen fact-checkers published 92 fact-checks related to COVID-19 as of Dec. 15. TFCN fact-checks are unique in that they debunk misinformation and teach the audience media literacy skills so they can fact-check on their own.

# data[].attributes.headline
Covid-19 and information literacy: a selective list of useful resources

# data[].attributes.subject
Covid-19 and information literacy: a selective list of useful resources

# data[].attributes.body
https://infolit.org.uk/further-reading/covid-19-and-il/

CILIP's Information Literacy subgroup of experts in the field has spent much of the pandemic finding and selecting the best resources around fighting mis- and disinformation around COVID-19. The fruits of their labour can be found all together, sorted by topic on this website ready to be used to teach yourself how to teach others.

It includes blog posts, scientific evidence presented in accessible ways, a collection of tools and resources as well as specific articles on the role public libraries can play in helping their users access the best information possible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Covid-19 and information literacy: a selective list of useful resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Covid-19: seeking reliable information in difficult times: blog post on the CILIP Information Literacy Group site by David Bedford, Academic Support Librarian at the Drill Hall Library, Universities at Medway, highlighting key sources of information on the Covid-19 outbreak

# data[].attributes.body
This website provides helpful tools combat Covid-19 fake news: links to spot fake news, where you can get reliable information, and learn about what SNS platforms are working with to combat fake news.
It also offers tips on how to share information responsibly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In these challenging times, people understandably want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

But given the false claims about Covid-19 circulating online, some people are struggling to know who or what to believe.

Access to accurate, trustworthy and credible sources of news and information has never been more important. So, with the support of Ofcom's Making Sense of Media Panel and Network, we've collected a set of resources to help cut through the confusion and provide people with the tools to navigate news and information about Covid-19.

Many of these focus on debunking common misconceptions or harmful claims about the coronavirus. But there are also some useful tips on how to seek out reliable content, how to tell fact from fiction, and how to find out who's behind particular claims to help us all to 'share' information responsibly.

We've also included a section for families, to help parents support their children's critical understanding during this time. There are also resources from around the world that we think people in the UK will find useful.

We're also publishing monthly research findings which shows how people are receiving and acting on information during the current pandemic, including which sources they trust most.

Tools for fact-checking

Fact Check NI are publishing and currently researching some Covid-19 claims.

Snopes in the US has created a collection of resources relating to the COVID-19 vaccine and the misinformation surrounding it.

Newsguard's browser extension, a tool that rates websites based on their record of publishing accurate information, has been made available for free during this period.

The BBC has produced a guide on how to stop "bad information" on coronavirus from going viral.

Debunking misleading claims - resources and tips

Channel 4 News' FactCheck is also looking at key claims about the coronavirus and has published coronavirus FactCheck Explainer videos as well as doing daily Fact Check social media threads ( Facebook and Twitter) countering misinformation

First Draft News has created a vaccine insights hub which provides live insights, intelligence and reporting guidance on emerging health and vaccine misinformation.

HMG has launched the sharechecklist.gov.uk website. This website gives people five easy steps to follow to identify whether information might be false.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has prepared a collection of regularly updated resources - Coronavirus: the science explained - which lays out the evidence and the facts about the virus, the disease, the epidemic, and its control.

CNN has produced a guide on how to debunk misinformation from families & friends.

Newspeak House has crowdsourced a Coronavirus Tech Handbook, a very extensive library aimed at technologists, civic organizations, and specialists of all kinds working on responses to the pandemic. Among its many resources, it includes links to a range of fact-checking services, for example: FactCheck.org, a non-profit "consumer advocate" for US citizens that aims to reduce the level of confusion in US, which has a dedicated issue on Coronavirus with an Ask FactCheck section; and AFP Fact Check, where specialists around the world monitor online content in local languages, and which has produced a Busting Coronavirus Myths page.

The UK Government has a WhatsApp chatbot, based on the WHO model, to provide NHS advice in an effort to take pressure off the NHS's 111 service and combat the spread of misinformation. Users are told to add a phone number to their contacts list, 07860 064422, and send the word "hi" to the Gov.uk WhatsApp account. More information is available at Gov.uk Coronavirus Information Service.

The UK Government's main coronavirus information site contains the government's current advice and links to a variety of different resources.

The NHS has an 'Advice for everyone' guide on Covid-19 and provides tips on stopping the spread of the virus, looking after your wellbeing and what to do if you need medical help.

NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government also have a page with all the latest guidance about Covid-19, including social distancing and stay at home advice.

BBC Newsround includes coronavirus-related explainers, advice and daily news updates and stories relevant for 7-12 year olds about the current situation online for and has updated TV bulletin times in response to school closures.

Internet Matters has produced a collection of resources specifically helping parents keep children safe and well-informed during the lockdown period.

NewsWise, the Guardian Foundation/National Literacy Trust/PSHE Association news literacy project, has reversioned its teaching resources to make them appropriate for home schooling, and for families to work on together, so that adults can also develop the skills to identify misinformation, rumour and opinion. Resources are aimed at 8-12 year olds.

The Economist has a weekly "thinking through the news" newsletter with a range of activities each week for use by students at home, either alone or with parents, siblings or support from their teachers remotely. The first newsletter includes a new resource on using news literacy skills when processing information about Covid-19 (also available to download on the above link).

The London School of Economics (LSE) has a guide for parents, written by Professor Sonia Livingstone, on how families can manage the explosion of misinformation online and help children deal with the challenges of social isolation.

Media Literacy Ireland has created tips to help people judge the accuracy and reliability of other Covid-19 information.

If you are using the main social media, search and news platforms you should also be aware that they have given priority to UK government, NHS and other trustworthy information.
Apple has a dedicated Covid-19 hub at the top of Apple News, which only includes news stories from reputable sources

Facebook has a dedicated Coronavirus Information Centre on its UK site, combining Government advice, the latest figures and news stories, posts from Government departments and resources and tips on health and community support. Since February 2020, it has been ensuring that NHS and Government advice appears first in search results when people search for Covid-19-related information on Facebook and via Instagram hashtags. And Facebook has verified all the NHS Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts with Government to make them easier to identify as official sources of information.

Google has created Covid resource hub as an one-stop shop for authoritative information and resources.

Twitter has a Covid-19 Search Prompt in 64 countries in 20 languages - partnering with the DHSC and NHS in the UK, and similar institutions in other countries - which works by prioritising credible and authoritative content at the top of results for searches about Covid-19. It has also prioritised an Event Page (including the UK) at the top of users' Home timeline and in the "For You" section of the Explore tab in more than 22 countries, which features trustworthy information and updates about Covid-19.

TikTok has a Covid-19 Hub on its Discover page which includes a 'myth-busters' section on the causes of and cures for Covid-19 for UK users. The hub provides credible information from the World Health Organization that contains answers to common questions, offers tips on staying safe, and dispels some of the myths around Covid-19. Videos with references to Covid-19 have labels that take users directly to the hub.

TikTok Safety Center provides resources on how to find trusted information within its app and explains how it is using technology and human moderation to detect and review content uploaded by users, especially false media advice and misinformation on Covid-19. Every video that is tagged as related to Covid-19 by users or automated technology is then being tagged with a link to a trusted source.

NHS: The NHS website has the latest information on the Coronavirus vaccine. Including who is currently eligible to receive it, how it is administered, information on the safety and side effects of the vaccine. Please visit the NHS websites in the nations for information on vaccines and the vaccination programmes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Oxford University: The vaccine knowledge project from the University of Oxford offers reliable and authoritative information on COVID-19 vaccines. This page includes facts on how the vaccine was developed, the outcomes of the trials for different vaccines and an explanation of the technology used by each vaccine in simple terms.

If you have any comments or want to share other resources, please email us at makingsenseofmedia@ofcom.org.uk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In these challenging times, people understandably want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. But given the false claims about Covid-19 circulating online, some people are struggling to know who or what to believe. Access to accurate, trustworthy and credible sources of news and information has never been more important.

# data[].attributes.body
Science Vs is a free weekly podcast that pits fads against facts. They focus on breaking down complex scientific topics with an approach founded in accessibility, expertise and transparent citations. Topics are explored in a way that is completely within reach of the layperson's comprehension.

Throughout the pandemic they have sought to inject common sense among panic, by explaining the differences between varying case metrics, and how vaccine research has prepared us for this moment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Science Vs takes on fads, trends, and the opinionated mob to find out what's fact, what's not, and what's somewhere in between.

# data[].attributes.headline
Full Fact- Fighting to protect people from bad information about COVID-19 

# data[].attributes.subject
Full Fact- Fighting to protect people from bad information about COVID-19 

# data[].attributes.body
Full Fact is a registered charity with a board that includes representatives of different political groups and viewpoints. They regularly fact check viral social media posts, politicians and media outlets, calling for corrections to help reduce the spread of bad information. At the start of the pandemic they dedicated a page on their website to COVID-19. Where possible, they refer to primary sources within their articles. The COVID-19 page is split into sections (vaccines, symptoms, treatment, etc.) which makes the information easy to access and navigate.

https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=trending

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Get the facts on coronavirus - Full Fact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fact checks about the coronavirus pandemic, including causes, Covid-19 symptoms, vaccines and side effects

# data[].attributes.headline
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool

# data[].attributes.subject
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool

# data[].attributes.body
This tool shows the estimated risk of attending events in different areas. It has a big focus on US but there is also a global section.

You can use the slider to change the estimated group size of the event you will be attending, and the ascertainment bias can either be a ratio of 5:1 or 3:1. The ascertainment bias assumes there are three or five times more cases than are being reported. With these parameters set the map will update the colours to reflect the estimate of their being people attending the event who are COVID-19 positive. With a helpful legend so you can tell specifically what the colours are reflecting.

"The COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool is a collaborative project led by Prof. Joshua Weitz and Prof. Clio Andris at the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with researchers at the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory Duke University, and Stanford University, and powered by RStudio"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Tutorial:

As many parts of the United States begin to lift shelter-in-place, it's crucial for us to be able to estimate the risks involved with resuming non-essential activities, particularly those involving large crowds. The COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning tool can be used to explore the risk that at least one person at an event of a certain size is currently infected with COVID-19, given a certain number of circulating infections in the specified region.

Our risk calculations tell you only how likely it is that at least one person at any event of a given size is infectious. This is not the same as the risk of any person being exposed or infected with COVID-19 at the event

We define circulating cases (people who are currently infectious) as cases reported in the past ten days. Note that real-time risk assessments prior to August 14th used a fourteen day window. The choice of a reduced duration is consistent with CDC advice on the duration of typical infectous periods (though we recognize that individuals may shed longer). We correct for under-reporting by multiplying by an ascertainment bias. Based on seroprevalence data, we suspect that in many parts of the US this is around 10:1 (i.e., ten total cases for every one reported), but this rate may vary by location, and we also include a 5:1 ratio on the main page. Cases may be under-reported due to testing shortages, asymptomatic "silent spreaders," and reporting lags.

Our tool generates figures that look like this.

Please note that our axes are given on a logarithmic scale, so moving up by one tick means multiplying that variable by ten. The diagonal lines divide the chart into risk levels. For example, all scenarios between the orange and red lines involve a 10-50% risk that someone with COVID-19 is present. The grey region indicates scenarios with a less than 1% chance that someone with COVID-19 is present. We give you exact values for a few preset scenarios in the blue boxes. In this example, we also see a 48.7% chance (red dot ⬤) that someone has COVID-19 at an event with 275 attendees if 800,000 cases are circulating in the US.

You can get exact values for your own scenario using the Explore US and State-level estimates tab. You can generate a risk assessment planner for the entire country or focus on a particular state (this will just change our estimate of the total population size and the proportion of people who are infected).

When you input the number of circulating cases, it's important that you include only those that are currently infectious. This is different from the total number of cases reported because people infected several weeks ago are likely no longer contagious. It's also likely that we're only detecting a fraction of cases due to testing shortages, reporting lags, and asymptomatic "silent spreaders." A rough calculation you can do is to take the past week or two of reported cases and potentially multiply it by some constant (for example, five or ten) to correct for the virus' ongoing spread and the proportion of cases you think may be undetected.

Otherwise, we've done that calculation for you in the Real Time US and State-level estimates tab. The horizontal dotted lines with risk estimates are based on real-time COVID19 surveillance data. They represent, estimates given the current reported incidence (circle ⬤), 5 times the current incidence (triangle ▲), and 10 times the current incidence (square ◼).

Notes on Usage and Interpretation:

Please feel free to share any plots that you generate (we've provided a Download button). We'd love for you to use this as a tool to educate your community and weigh the risks of holding certain events right now. You can see how this tool is already being used in the Press tab.

Here's a sample tweet to accompany the graphic:

Today's #COVIDRisk in GA: if 275 people are at a indoor music venue, there's a **X%** chance someone has #COVID19. Learn more at https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu

All of our calculations are necessarily estimates, based on imperfect data. We can't tell you the probability that someone in the event will get infected. It's important to remember that a certain amount of chance is involved in these outcomes. We'd encourage large event planners to exercise caution in the coming months, especially given the potential for one infected person to transmit the virus to many others in one super-spreading event (Biogen conference, Atalanta-Valencia soccer match, Washington choir practice).

As a final note, there is a moderate to high risk of being exposed to COVID-19 in many parts of the US right now. You can reduce your risk of getting infected or infecting someone else by practicing social distancing, wearing masks when out of your home, hand-washing, and staying home when you feel sick. Learn more on how to minimize your individual risk at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html.

How we do our calculation:

What is the chance that one person at this event will already be infected with COVID-19? To answer this kind of question, we actually calculate the opposite. For example, if we were talking about a NFL game, we'd ask what is the chance that none of the 75,000 attendees is infected?

Let's start by thinking about just one of them. If 20,000 of the 330 million people in the United States are sick, then each person has a 99.994% chance of being disease-free. In betting terms, the odds are 16,500:1 in our favor. While that sounds good from an individual perspective, the collective risk is very different.

In this scenario, the probability that all 75,000 attendees would have entered the stadium disease-free is like placing 75,000 bets each at nearly certain odds. Sure, you'll win most of the bets. But the probability that you will win every single one of those bets is extremely low. To calculate it, we multiply the winning probability (1-1/16500) by itself 75,000 times and find that there is approximately a 1% chance that we win every time. In other words, the chances that one or more attendees would have arrived infected with SARS-CoV-2 is 99%.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As many parts of the United States begin to lift shelter-in-place, it's crucial for us to be able to estimate the risks involved with resuming non-essential activities, particularly those involving large crowds.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helping Children to deal with a crisis situation.  -  Covid -19 pandemic

# data[].attributes.subject
Helping Children to deal with a crisis situation.  -  Covid -19 pandemic

# data[].attributes.body
An interesting site on how we can support children as they are experiencing a "traumatic-life-event" such as the Covid -19 pandemic. Informative and practical, it gives well-grounded advice, free activities and further articles and resources to tackle parenting under unprecedented conditions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Social distancing should not mean social isolation.

Children-especially young children-need quality time with their caregivers and other important people in their lives. Social connectedness improves children's chances of showing resilience to adversity. Creative approaches to staying connected are important (e.g., writing letters, online video chats).

Provide age-appropriate information.

Children tend to rely on their imaginations when they lack adequate information. Adults' decisions to withhold information are usually more stressful for children than telling the truth in age-appropriate ways. Adults should instead make themselves available for children to ask questions and talk about their concerns. They might, for example, provide opportunities for kids to access books, websites, and other activities on COVID-19 that present information in child-friendly ways. In addition, adults should limit children's exposure to media coverage, social media, and adult conversations about the pandemic, as these channels may be less age-appropriate. Ongoing access to news and social media about the pandemic and constant conversation about threats to public safety can cause unnecessary stress for children.

Create a safe physical and emotional environment by practicing the 3 R's: Reassurance, Routines, and Regulation.

First, adults should reassure children about their safety and the safety of loved ones, and tell them that it is adults' job to ensure their safety. Second, adults should maintain routines to provide children with a sense of safety and predictability (e.g., regular bedtimes and meals, daily schedules for learning and play). And third, adults should support children's development of regulation. When children are stressed, their bodies respond by activating their stress response systems. To help them manage these reactions, it is important to both validate their feelings (e.g., "I know that this might feel scary or overwhelming") and encourage them to engage in activities that help them self-regulate (e.g., exercise, deep breathing, mindfulness or meditation activities, regular routines for sleeping and eating). In addition, it is essential to both children's emotional and physical well-being to ensure that families can meet their basic needs (e.g., food, shelter, clothing).

Keep children busy.

When children are bored, their levels of worry and disruptive behaviors may increase. Adults can provide options for safe activities (e.g., outside play, blocks, modeling clay, art, music, games) and involve children in brainstorming other creative ideas. Children need ample time to engage in play and other joyful or learning experiences without worrying or talking about the pandemic.

Increase children's self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is the sense of having agency or control-an especially important trait during times of fear and uncertainty. Children often feel more in control when they can play an active role in helping themselves, their families, and their communities. For example, children can help by following safety guidelines (e.g., washing their hands), preparing for home confinement (e.g., helping to cook and freeze food), or volunteering in the community (e.g., writing letters or creating art for older adults or sick friends, sharing extra supplies with a neighbor).

Create opportunities for caregivers (which may mean yourself!) to take care of themselves.

Children's well-being depends on the well-being of their parents and other caregivers. Caregivers must take care of themselves so they have the internal resources to care for others. To this end, adult caregivers can engage in self-care by staying connected to social supports, getting enough rest, and taking time for restorative activities (e.g., exercise, meditation, reading, outdoor activities, prayer). Seeking help from a mental health provider is also important when adults struggle with very high levels of stress and other mental health challenges.

Seek professional help if children show signs of trauma that do not resolve relatively quickly.

Emotional and behavioral changes in children are to be expected during a pandemic, as everyone adjusts to a new sense of normal. If children show an ongoing pattern of emotional or behavioral concerns (e.g., nightmares, excessive focus on anxieties, increased aggression, regressive behaviors, or self-harm) that do not resolve with supports, professional help may be needed. Many mental health providers have the capacity to provide services via "telehealth" (i.e., therapy provided by telephone or an online platform) when in-person social contact must be restricted.

Emphasize strengths, hope, and positivity.

Children need to feel safe, secure, and positive about their present and future. Adults can help by focusing children's attention on stories about how people come together, find creative solutions to difficult problems, and overcome adversity during the epidemic. Talking about these stories can be healing and reassuring to children and adults alike.

Resources for children on COVID-19 and staying healthy

BrainPOP: Coronavirus (4-minute video, activities, and games)

National Public Radio: Just for Kids: A Comic Exploring the New Coronavirus

PBS Kids: How to Talk to Your Kids About Coronavirus (includes a list of videos, games, and activities about handwashing and staying healthy at the bottom of the article)

Resources for parents and other caregivers

Overall guides to COVID-19 and staying healthy

American Academy of Pediatrics: 2019 Novel Coronavirus (online article; en español)

CDC: Pregnancy and Breastfeeding: Information about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (online article)

Generations United: COVID-19 Fact Sheet for Grandfamilies and Multigenerational Families

National Child Traumatic Stress Network : Parent/Caregiver Guide to Helping Families Cope with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (PDF; en español)

Talking to children about COVID-19

Boston Children's Hospital: How to Talk to Your Children About Coronavirus (video)

CDC: Talking with Children about the Coronavirus Disease 2019: Messages for parents, school staff, and others working with children (online article)

Zero to Three: Tips for Families: Talking About the Coronavirus (online article)

Child Mind Institute: Talking to Your Children about the Coronavirus (4-minute video; en español)

Zero to Three: Why are People Wearing Masks? Why are People Covering Their Faces? (article)

Keeping kids busy and socially connected

The Atlantic: How Parents Can Keep Kids Busy (and Learning) in Quarantine (online article)

Louisiana State University: Supporting Young Children Isolated Due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) (PDF)

Zero to Three: Five Tips to Make the Most of Video Chats (online article)

Self-care for adults

CDC: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Manage anxiety and stress

Zero to Three: Young Children at Home during the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Importance of Self-Care (online article)

Resources for educators and child care providers

Child Care Aware of America: Coronavirus: What Child Care Providers Need to Know (online article)

CDC: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Guidance for School Settings Before and After an Outbreak (online article)

CDC: Resources for Institutes of Higher Education (online article)

Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center: Coronavirus Prevention and Response (online article)

National Alliance to End Homelessness: COVID-19: What state and local leaders can do for homeless populations

U.S. Department of Education: Addressing the Risk of COVID-19 in Schools While Protecting the Civil Rights of Students (PDF)

U.S. Department of Education: Questions and Answers on Providing Services to Children with Disabilities During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak (PDF)

Resources for communities, states, territories, and tribes

American Psychological Association: COVID-19 and Psychology Services: How to Protect Your Patients and Your Practice (online article)

CDC: Implementation of Mitigation Strategies for Communities with Local COVID-19 Transmission (PDF)

Child Trends: As COVID-19 Spreads, Most States Should Have Laws that Address How Schools Should Respond to Pandemics (online article)

National Association of Social Workers: Coronavirus (COVID-19): Supporting Clients (online article)

The Chronicle of Social Change: Coronavirus: What Child Welfare Systems Need to Think About (online article)

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Information about COVID-19 for CCDF Lead Agencies: Relevant Flexibilities in CCDF Law (online article)
Jessica L. Griffin, PsyD, is an associate professor of psychology and pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the executive director of the UMMS Child Trauma Training Center. Endnote
[1] Forkey, H, Szilagi, M, & Griffin, JL (in press). Childhood trauma and resilience: A practical guide for pediatrics. Itasca, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resources for Supporting Children's Emotional Well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic - Child Trends

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Social distancing should not mean social isolation. Children-especially young children-need quality time with their caregivers and other important people in their lives. Social connectedness improves children's chances of showing resilience to adversity. Creative approaches to staying connected are important (e.g., writing letters, online video chats). Provide age-appropriate information.

# data[].attributes.headline
COVID-19 WhatsApp (Mis)information experiment in UK & Brazil 

# data[].attributes.subject
COVID-19 WhatsApp (Mis)information experiment in UK & Brazil 

# data[].attributes.body
This experiment, carried out in two of the countries most affected by Covid-19 examined how age and exposure to differing (mis)information impacted two groups of people - younger adults (18-54) and those older (55+).

The experiment had 3 types of information: Fully False, Partly False/Incomplete and Completely True.  The initial posts were then followed up with 'corrective' posts.  The study looked at, among other things, how (and how difficult it was) to change opinions on previously accepted information and how likely the subjects were to further disseminate via WhatsApp the information that they received.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction

Background to the problem and policy needs

As the pandemic spread globally, becoming increasingly political in the process, the spectrum of COVID-19 misinformation further diversified, with pernicious impacts (Motta et al., 2020). An analysis of more than 100 million tweets demonstrated how waves of misinformation, spread by human and automated agents, preceded COVID-19 outbreaks in various countries (Gallotti et al., 2020). Conspiracy theories about the radiation from 5G towers spreading COVID-19 fueled anger leading to violence directed at telecommunication masts and engineers (Jolley and Paterson, 2020). About 1700 instances of discrimination against Asian minority communities in the United States were documented in the first few months of the pandemic even as political leaders characterized COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus"(BBC, 2020; Van Barvel et al., 2020). Aside from stoking violence and stigma, there were concerns that online misinformation might lead to risky health behaviors and a lack of adherence to personal protective measures (Islam et al., 2020).

Tackling misinformation has since become a key challenge for the global health response against COVID-19. The WHO has characterized the explosion of online information as an "infodemic" and launched EPI-WIN (WHO, 2020), an online informational resource related to COVID-19 with a dedicated "myth busters" section designed to debunk COVID-19 misinformation circulating on social media. Member countries such as the UK and Brazil followed suit by instituting their own political mechanisms to track and tackle online misinformation related to COVID-19(GOV.UK, 2020; Ricard and Medeiros, 2020). Given the ubiquity of COVID-19 misinformation and its impact, scientists from disciplines as varied as communication studies, public health and information science have thus far generated empirical evidence related to: (1) analyses of misinformation content and message characteristics (Brennen et al., 2020), (2) analyses of the volume and diffusion of misinformation (Kouzy et al., 2020), and (3) interventions to tackle misinformation (Pennycook et al., 2020).

Age and susceptibility to misinformation

Research investigating the relationship between age and misinformation has been ongoing for more than 30 years. However, consensus about whether older or younger adults are more vulnerable to misinformation has yet to be reached. Findings from a recent study of political misinformation behavior on Facebook showed that adults aged 65 or older shared links to fake domains seven times more often than young adults (Guess et al., 2019). A similar study using Twitter revealed that users aged 50 or more accounted for 80% of fake news shared (Grinberg et al., 2019). In concert with anecdotal evidence about prolific misinformation sharing behavior via WhatsApp among older adults (Bangkok Post, 2019; Quartz Africa, 2019; Walcott, 2020), academics have speculated about the potential vulnerability of older adults to COVID-19 misinformation (Vijaykumar, 2020). These concerns are not unfounded and find support in historic evidence from research on the 'misinformation effect', which suggests that our ability to recall past events can be affected by exposure to false or misleading information about the event. In effect, misinformation pollutes our memory of original events with details that do not exist, effectively making our memory malleable (Loftus and Hoffman, 1989). Reviews of psychological studies have revealed that older adults are more vulnerable to misinformation than younger adults (Wylie et al., 2014) and, more worryingly, possess greater confidence in false memories (Jacoby and Rhodes, 2006). Brashier and Schachter ( 2020) summarize three explanations that are often invoked to explain this increased vulnerability to misinformation especially in the social media age where fake news is rampant: (i) decline of cognitive function with age places a strain on abilities related to cognitive functioning and abstract reasoning, (ii) older adults' tendency to forget the source of the original misinformation (called source monitoring) (Dehon and Brédart, 2004; Mitchell and Johnson, 2009) which makes fact-checks less effective for this group, and (iii) that older adults are relatively new to digital technologies and thus possess limited capabilities to differentiate between accurate and misinforming content especially when images and text arrive in various 'shades of truth' (Nightingale et al., 2017).

In this study, we investigate how age is associated with differential psychological and behavioral responses to varied 'shades of truth', embedded in COVID-19 (mis)information, reaching WhatsApp users in the UK and Brazil. The following research questions were explored:

RQ1.1: To what extent is age associated with misinformation beliefs related to COVID-19?

RQ1.2: To what extent is age associated with perceived credibility of COVID-19 information on WhatsApp?

RQ1.3: To what extent is age associated with intention-to-share COVID-19 information on WhatsApp?

Forms of misinformation circulating online

Online communication platforms are flooded with misinformation in various forms. Two broad categories of misinformation exist: (1) Completely false information, which is based on Tan et al.'s ( 2015) definition of misinformation as "explicitly false" information as falsified by expert consensus; and (2) Partially false (or Incomplete) information, which may contain a mixture of correct, unverified, and objectively false information or rumors (Southwell et al., 2018). For example, in the context of mental health, exercising is a complementary therapy for depression treatment; however, when it is presented as an alternative therapy to standard medical treatment, it becomes incomplete information for correct treatment, thus misleading and even causing negative health consequences such as antidepressant rejection among patients (Glazer, 2013).

The intentions driving the spread of misinformation can range from (a) efforts to make sense of ambiguous and uncertain situations through rumors (DiFonzo and Bordio, 2007), (b) "honest mistakes" made in spreading inaccurate information about a complex situation without intending to mislead (Freelon and Wells, 2020; Hameleers, 2020), or (c) intentionally designing or spreading falsehood in order to harm others (Freelon and Wells, 2020; Hameleers, 2020). Regardless of the types and intentions underlying misinformation, its spread has damaging consequences, especially in public health crisis situations (Van der Meer and Jin, 2020).

In this study, we investigate how exposure to different types of (mis)information (operationalized by varied 'shades of truth' embedded in COVID-19 (mis)information) might affect psychological and behavioral responses among WhatsApp users in the UK and Brazil.

RQ2.1: To what extent does exposure to different types of (mis)information affect beliefs in COVID-19 misinformation?

RQ2.2: To what extent does exposure to different types of (mis)information affect perceived credibility of COVID-19 information?

RQ2.3: To what extent does exposure to different types of (mis)information affect intention-to-share COVID-19 information?

Efficacy of corrective information

Existing empirical results regarding the efficacy of corrective efforts against misinformation are mixed, although the complexity of debunking misinformation has been acknowledged. Corrections may be ineffective or even backfire by strengthening falsehoods (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). Meta-analyses of existing research on corrective interventions have revealed several successful strategies. Those which combine retraction with an alternative explanation are reported to be most effective compared to fact-checking and appeals to credibility (Walter and Murphy, 2018). Corrections with factual elaboration (e.g., detailing not only that there was misinformation but also why) seemed to be more effective compared to warnings of the possible presence of misinformation and social discrediting of the misinformation source (Blank and Launay, 2014).

In this study, we investigate the extent to which corrective information where WHO is included as the source can affect psychological and behavioral responses to COVID-19 (mis)information (with varied 'shades of truth' embedded) among WhatsApp users in the UK and Brazil.

RQ3.1: To what extent does corrective information from the WHO reduce COVID-19 misinformation beliefs?

RQ3.2: To what extent does corrective information from the WHO strengthen perceived credibility of the corrective COVID-19 information?

RQ3.3: To what extent does corrective information from the WHO affect intention-to-share of the corrective COVID-19 information?

Methods

We conducted two randomized online experiments in the UK and Brazil to address the aforementioned RQs. In this section, we first provide an overview of the study design, specifying how the independent variables (IVs) and their respective levels were operationalized. We then describe the experimental stimuli, procedures, and the participant profile before detailing the key outcome variables we measured.

Design

Both experiments were based on a 2 (age) × 3 (shades of truth) × 2 (exposure) mixed experimental design. Among the three IVs, age and 'shades of truth' were the between-subject factors while the two-time exposure was the within-subject factor. Specifically:

1. A.
Age (IV1) was comprised of two levels: 18-54 years of age and 55 years of age and above. This grouping was based on initial ANOVA analysis which identified sets of homogeneous groups-(i) 18-34 and 35-54, and (ii) 55-64 and 65 and above-which were then condensed into two groups (18-54 and 55 and above).

2. B.
'Shades of truth' (IV2)-henceforth referred to as (mis)information type-was comprised of three levels: full falsity, partial falsity, and full truth. Full falsity refers to a message containing completely inaccurate information relating to a remedy using garlic to cure COVID-19. Partial falsity refers to a message containing a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information. Full truth contained completely accurate information (i.e., an absence of misinformation) regarding the question of whether garlic can be used to cure COVID-19.

3. C.
Exposure (IV3) was comprised of two levels: (i) Exposure 1: initial exposure to a randomly-assigned (mis)information type (corresponding to one of the three levels of IV2 as described above); and (ii) Exposure 2: further exposure to corrective information from the WHO. Exposure was used to assess participants' responses to different 'shades of truth' of COVID-19 (mis)information and whether corrective information received later on might correct or sustain their initial responses to the (mis)information to which they were exposed earlier. The stimuli for both exposures were designed to look like WhatsApp forwards (see examples in Appendix 1).

Stimuli for exposure 1: (mis)information type

We created the stimuli by extracting specific elements from two kinds of existing WhatsApp messages already in circulation in the UK and Brazil: the first contained COVID-19 misinformation falsely attributed to UNICEF (ABC, 2020) and the second claimed the remedial powers of garlic (iNews, 2020; Poynter, 2020), representing two misinformation features embedded in all three stimuli in our study: (1) false attribution to a health authority (i.e., the WHO) and (2) garlic as a claimed COVID-19 cure. All three stimuli thus contained: (1) constant element: claimed source (#WHO), (2) manipulated levels according to our operational definition of (mis)information type with three varying 'shades of truth' (full falsity, partial falsity, full truth), and (3) constant element: a final sentence requesting the recipient to share the message.

The stimulus for exposure 2: corrective information

A stimulus with corrective information was designed for participants' second exposure in the study. An infographic from the WHO's EPI-WIN myth busters website was used which addressed the misinformation pertaining to the use of garlic as a cure to COVID-19 including the WHO logo to accredit the information in the infographic.

Procedure

Participant recruitment

Participants in both UK and Brazil were recruited through Qualtrics' panel of survey respondents who accessed the survey through a link. A quota sampling technique was used to obtain an even distribution across the three stimuli presented at Exposure 1 and across age groups. Data collection commenced on May 26, 2020, and culminated on June 4 and June 9 in the UK and Brazil, respectively. To be eligible, participants had to be a minimum of 18 years of age and users of WhatsApp. We obtained informed consent from all participants prior to the start of the online survey which was approved by the faculty ethics committee at Northumbria University.

Experimental design

To start with, all participants were asked a series of questions capturing their knowledge of COVID-19. As seen in Fig. 1, participants were then randomly assigned one of three messages based on the three 'shades of truth' of COVID-19 related (mis)information-full falsity, partial falsity, and full truth-presented in the form of a WhatsApp forward set in the wireframe of a smartphone. The nature of the message was not revealed until after the participation ended in the form of a briefing statement. The initial exposure time lasted a minimum of 90 s (Brazil: M = 114.79, SD = 51.46; UK: M = 109.10, SD = 45.10). Subsequently, participants were asked to respond to questions related to their belief in the assigned message, their perceived credibility of the information, and their intention-to-share the information. All participants were then presented one corrective message (same across three different initial-exposure groups) from the WHO for a minimum of 90 s (Brazil: M = 114.16, SD = 60.93; UK: M = 113.24, SD = 58.69), after which they again responded to the same set of questions listed above. Brazilian participants took between 5-40 min to complete the study, whilst the UK participants took between 4 and 21 min. This study design is represented in Fig. 1.

Measures

Our study first assessed pre-exposure to COVID-19 knowledge among participants. Then, after Exposures 1 and 2 we measured a set of outcome variables to gauge how participants' responses (i.e., their beliefs in the misinformation about garlic as a cure for COVID-19, perceived credibility of the message, and their intention-to-share the message) might differ as a function of the three IVs, individually or jointly.

COVID-19 knowledge

We measured participants' knowledge based on their identification of five facts about COVID-19 from the WHO website as true or false: (1) "The most common symptoms of Coronavirus (COVID-19) are fever, tiredness, and dry cough", (2) "The time between catching the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and beginning to have symptoms of the disease ranges from 1 to 14 days", (3) "Coronavirus (COVID-19) is mainly transmitted through contact with respiratory droplets than through the air", (4) "Antibiotics are not effective in preventing or treating Coronavirus (COVID-19), and (5) "Wearing multiple masks is not effective against Coronavirus (COVID-19)". A knowledge index was created for participants from each country.

Misinformation belief

Focusing on the widely-circulated misinformation about garlic as a COVID-19 cure, we assessed participants' belief in this particular misinformation (after exposure 1) and corrective information (after exposure 2) by asking their perceived accuracy of the statement "Garlic can cure me of the coronavirus (COVID-19)", using a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = completely inaccurate, 5 = completely accurate) (Carey et al., 2020). UK participants were asked to rate the perceived accuracy of the misinformation message following exposure to misinformation ( M = 2.16, SD = 1.48) and corrective information ( M = 2.21, SD = 1.49). Brazilian participants also reported perceived accuracy following misinformation ( M = 1.96, SD = 1.43) and corrective information ( M  = 1.91, SD = 1.35) using the same items.

Message credibility

Message credibility was assessed after Exposures 1 and 2 by using three items (Appelman and Sundar, 2016)-"Accurate", "Believable", and "Authentic"-on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = very poorly, 5 = very well). After Exposure 1, participants were asked to evaluate the (mis)information message they just read (UK: α = 0.95, M = 2.53, SD = 1.44; Brazil: α = 0.95, M = 1.95, SD = 1.25), and then again after Exposure 2 about the corrective information message (UK: α = 0.96, M = 3.27, SD = 1.45; Brazil: α = 0.97, M  = 2.85, SD = 1.53).

Intention-to-share

A six-item measure of intention-to-share information was applied to ask how likely participants were to share what they saw at Exposures 1 and 2 with "friends", "immediate family", "extended family", "colleagues", "strangers", and "Nobody" (reversed coded), using a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = "highly unlikely" to 5 = "highly likely". Participants were asked to indicate their likelihood to share the WhatsApp forward containing (mis)information at Exposure 1 (UK: α = 0.88, M = 2.39, SD = 1.28; Brazil: α = 0.88, M = 1.93, SD = 1.10) and the one containing corrective information at Exposure 2 (UK: α = 0.88, M = 2.85, SD = 1.26; Brazil: α = 0.92, M  = 2.71, SD = 1.36).

Data analyses

Descriptive statistics and t-tests were used to generate the participant profile and knowledge scores, respectively. Given the mixed experimental design, effects of the IVs on the outcome measures were analyzed using general linear models (GLM) with repeated measures for misinformation belief, message credibility, and intention-to-share. We first assessed the main effects of age, (mis)information type (shades of truth), and exposure to examine how each of them individually affected the outcomes and then investigated two-way or three-way interaction effects.

Findings

Our survey involved 725 participants in the UK and 729 in Brazil, respectively (total N = 1454). Both the UK and Brazil samples comprised a majority of male participants with ~66 and 59%, respectively. Nearly 59% of participants in the UK and 55% in Brazil were educated at the undergraduate level or higher. A detailed demographic breakdown is available in Fig. 2.

Participants' knowledge of COVID-19 was relatively high in the UK ( M = 4.15, SD = 0.93) and medium in Brazil ( M = 3.25, SD = 0.67). Older adults were significantly more knowledgeable than younger adults in both UK [ M = 4.43, SD = 0.74 vs. M = 3.85, SD = 1.01, p < 0.05] and Brazil [ M = 3.29; SD = 0.63 vs. M = 3.19, SD = 0.70, p  < 0.05].

Our analysis yielded findings on the effects of age, (mis)information type, and exposure on misinformation belief (RQs 1.1, 2.1, 3.1), perceived credibility (RQs 1.2, 2.2, 3.2), and intention-to-share (RQs 1.3, 2.3, 3.3) (Table 1). In the following section, for each outcome variable, we present the detected main effects of the three IVs and then significant interaction effects, if any, for the UK and then Brazil. Below, our presentation of findings for each outcome will commence with a narrative description of findings, followed by a graphical representation of mean scores, and culminate with a tabulated summary of mixed and interaction effects. A full list of means and standard deviations (SDs) by sub-group and for the study population is available in a tabulated format in Appendix 2.

Table 1 Main and interaction effects of age, (mis)information type, and exposure on misinformation beliefs.

Misinformation belief in the UK

Main effects

Means and effect sizes for misinformation belief are presented in Fig. 3 and Table 1 below. Age had a significant effect on participants' misinformation belief (RQ 1.1). Younger adults (18-54 age group) believed the focal misinformation of this study (i.e., garlic can cure COVID-19) to be significantly more accurate than older adults (55+ age group). (Mis)information type and the exposure did not have significant effects on participants' belief in the focal misinformation (RQs 2.1 and 3.1, respectively).

Interaction effects

We detected a significant interaction between age and exposure to corrective information. Misinformation belief increased among older adults following exposure to corrective information compared to the first exposure to misinformation.

Misinformation belief in Brazil

Main effects

Age had a significant effect on misinformation belief (RQ 1.1), with younger adults believing the misinformation message to be more accurate than older adults. (Mis)information type had a significant effect on misinformation belief (RQ 2.1). Surprisingly, misinformation beliefs were stronger in the full-truth group compared to the full-falsity group. Exposure did not have a significant effect on misinformation belief (RQ 3.1).

Interaction effects

We found two significant interaction effects. The first was between age and exposure to corrective information. Misinformation belief among older adults was reduced after exposure to corrective information, not significant at the Bonferroni corrected (0.025) alpha levels even though there was a trend towards significance ( p  = .033). The second significant interaction was between (mis)information type and exposure to corrective information. Surprisingly, the misinformation belief of participants in the full-truth group increased following exposure to corrective information as compared to after the initial exposure.

Perceived credibility in the UK

Main effects

Means and effect sizes for perceived credibility are presented in Fig. 4 and Table 2 below. Age had a significant main effect on participants' ratings of message credibility (RQ 1.2), with the younger adults perceiving received WhatsApp messages as more credible than older adults. (Mis)information type had a significant effect on overall message credibility (RQ 2.2). Specifically, participants in the full-truth group rated the messages they were exposed to as significantly more credible than those in the full-falsity group, and the partial-falsity group). Exposure to corrective information also had a significant effect on message credibility (RQ 3.2), with the corrective information rated as significantly more credible than the original exposure to (mis)information.

Table 2 Main and interaction effects of age, (mis)information type, and exposure on perceived credibility.

Interaction effects

We found two significant interaction effects. First, there was a significant two-way interaction effect between age and exposure to corrective information on message credibility. While both younger and older adults reported the corrective information to be more credible than the (mis)information exposure, the effect for younger adults was smaller than that of older adults. Second, (mis)information type was found to interact with exposure to corrective information. The corrective information was perceived to be significantly more credible than all three (mis)information exposures.

Perceived credibility in Brazil

Main effects

Age had a significant main effect on overall message credibility (RQ 1.2), with younger adults perceiving the messages they were exposed to as more credible than older adults. (Mis)information type also had a significant effect on overall message credibility. Specifically, participants in the full-falsity group rated the stimuli they were exposed to as significantly less credible than both the partial-falsity and full truth groups. Exposure to corrective information had a significant effect on message credibility ratings (RQ 3.2), as the corrective information stimulus was rated as being significantly more credible than the (mis)information stimuli to which participants were initially randomly assigned.

Interaction effects

Three significant interaction effects were detected. The first significant interaction effect was found between age and exposure to corrective information on ratings of message credibility. The message in the corrective information stimulus was rated as significantly more credible than the message of the (mis)information stimuli during the initial message exposure for both age groups. We also found a significant interaction effect between (mis)information type and exposure to corrective information. The corrective information stimulus was perceived to be significantly more credible than all three (mis)information stimuli. Age and (mis)information type were also found to significantly interact on scores of message credibility. Younger adults in the full falsity and partial falsity groups rated the stimuli that they were exposed to as more credible than older adults in those groups.

Intention-to-shrare in the UK

Main effects

Means and effect sizes for intention-to-share are presented in Fig. 5 and Table 3 below. Overall, younger adults were significantly more likely to share the WhatsApp messages they were exposed to than older adults (RQ 1.3). (Mis)information type had a significant main effect on intention-to-share (RQ 2.3). Specifically, participants in the full-truth group were significantly more likely than those in the full-falsity group to share the messages to which they had been exposed. Exposure to corrective information was also found to have a significant main effect on intention-to-share the corrective information message (RQ 3.3). Participants were significantly more likely to share the corrective information than the (mis)information message they were randomly assigned in their initial exposure.

Table 3 Main and interaction effects of age, (mis)information type, and exposure on intention-to-share information.

Interaction effects

We found three significant interaction effects. First, we found a significant two-way interaction between age and exposure to corrective information on intention-to-share the forwarded message. While both younger and older adults reported that they would be significantly more likely to share the corrective message than the (mis)information stimulus they were randomly assigned to read earlier, the effect among younger adults was smaller than for older adults. Lastly, (mis)information type and exposure to corrective information were found to exert a significant interaction effect. While participants exposed to all three (mis)information types reported that they were significantly more likely to share the corrective information compared to the (mis)information, the effect was greatest among the partial falsity and the full-truth groups.

Intention-to-share in Brazil

Main effects

Age had a significant main effect on intention-to-share (RQ 1.3), with younger adults reporting a significantly greater likelihood than older adults of sharing the messages viewed in the study. (Mis)information type was found to have a significant main effect on intention-to-share (RQ 2.3). Specifically, participants in the full truth condition were significantly more likely to share the message stimuli they had been exposed to compared to the full-falsity group. There was also a significantly higher likelihood of sharing corrective information as opposed to (mis)information (RQ 3.3).

Interaction effects

A significant interaction effect was found between age and exposure to corrective information. Both younger and older adults were significantly more likely to share corrective information compared to (mis)information, with the effect being more pronounced in the younger age group. (Mis)information type also interacted significantly with exposure to corrective information. Consistent with the findings for age, participants across all three (mis)information groups reported that they were significantly more likely to share corrective information compared to all (mis)information types. Lastly, we found a significant interaction effect between age and (mis)information type on intention-to-share. There was a significant effect of age on both the full-falsity and partial-falsity misinformation conditions with younger adults being more likely to share the message stimuli than older adults.

Discussion

The UK and Brazil, two countries that have reported the highest number of COVID-19 fatalities in Europe and South America are home to 27.6 million and 99 million WhatsApp users, respectively (John Hopkins University and Medicine, 2020; Iqbal, 2020). These users, straddling the age spectrum, have been at risk of exposure to COVID-19 online misinformation circulating in various forms. Building on a growing body of research in misinformation studies, we sought to examine the extent to which age, exposure to different types of misinformation, and corrective information affect WhatsApp users' misinformation belief, perceived credibility, and intention-to-share COVID-19 information. While our study did not set out to statistically compare the two countries given the obvious cultural and socio-political differences, contrasting them provides a useful rubric for discussion.

Overall, we found (1) significant effects of age on all three outcomes across both countries, (2) significant effects of misinformation type on all outcomes with the exception of misinformation belief in the UK, and (3) significant effects of corrective information on all outcomes in both countries except misinformation belief in the UK. We now discuss the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of these findings for public health research and communication.

Age

Our findings also support previous studies indicating that older adults are able to deploy their more extensive general knowledge to critically evaluate new information (Umanath and Marsh, 2014). The higher levels of COVID-19 knowledge observed among the older adults in our study are consistent with this theory. Another explanation lies in the nature of the misinformation we tested-about the curative powers of garlic for COVID19-which is not likely to generate an emotional response compared to a conspiracy theory, for example. However, its appraisal is more likely driven by new knowledge that older adults would continue to acquire (Brashier and Schacter, 2020) especially during an evolving health crisis like COVID-19.

Despite these encouraging signs, we observed that belief in fully or partially false messages increased after older participants were exposed to corrective information, particularly in the UK group. This counterintuitive phenomenon, the backfire effect, has been seen in other contexts, such as vaccination messaging (Pluviano et al., 2019), and is thought to arise by enhancing participants' familiarity with the claim. This paradoxical outcome was also found in a study of older adults (Skurnik et al., 2005), which found that repeated correction entrenched and magnified beliefs in false claims. In the absence of relevant prior knowledge to aid with judging misinformation, repeated exposure to misinformation may also give rise to an 'illusion of truth' effect amongst older people (Brashier et al., 2017). It is possible these unintended effects of repeated misinformation featured in our experimental design since participants were exposed to some form of information about garlic and COVID-19 at least four times (once each during the two exposures, and twice while reading the question stem that followed these stimuli). This effect was not observed among younger adults in the UK or any age group in the full truth groups.

(Mis)information type

Individuals' responses to health (mis)information differ as a function of varied "shades of truth ". In both UK and Brazil, participants rated the full truth messages as more credible and were intent on sharing them more than the full-falsity or partial-falsity messages. These findings demonstrate their critical message evaluation abilities and are consistent with recent research from Argentina which revealed healthy skepticism among social media users who can differentiate between facts and misinformation (Wagner, 2020). In addition, we learned that users correctly identified accurate information irrespective of its stated source, which may have implications for so-called imposter messages. As such, message credibility could be driven more from an evaluation of the message as opposed to the source of information. This may have been bolstered by systematic efforts by the Brazilian and UK governments to combat misinformation. For example, the Brazilian Health Ministry launched a fact-checking initiative by creating a WhatsApp number for community members to contribute health messages for verification, the results of which are published on the website (Ministério da Saúde, 2020). Of the 84 messages about COVID-19 that have been fact-checked so far, only five have been found to be true. The fact-checked messages include misinformation about a range of food items-such as hot water, garlic water, and even bat soup-that could prevent the disease. In addition, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation unit in Brasilia (Fiocruz Brasilia) launched a social media campaign in March 2020 to create awareness about the importance of verifying information and discouraging users from sharing fake news. In the UK, the government launched a Rapid Response within the Counter Disinformation Cell to track and tackle online misinformation (GOV.UK, 2020). Extensive media coverage about COVID-19 misinformation could have created greater public awareness about the problem. A study conducted among news audiences in the UK found that they easily identified misinformation of the kind that was tested in this study but were more concerned about misinformation or unclear and confusing communications about COVID-19 guidelines coming from the UK government (Soo et al., 2020).

Our study also echoes earlier misinformation research (Southwell et al., 2018; Freelon and Wells, 2020; Hameleers, 2020) suggesting that messages which are partially true can be particularly dangerous in entrenching misinformation belief and may trigger further sharing based on individuals' false impressions that such information appears to be correct. These characteristics of (mis)information need to be further elucidated to create a taxonomy of misinformation circulating both online and offline.

Corrective information

Across the UK and Brazil, we found that corrective information from the WHO reduced misinformation beliefs in most sub-groups, and significantly increased perceived credibility and intention-to-share across all sub-groups. These findings suggest that corrective information from public health authorities is critical in (1) sustaining previously held accurate information, (2) debunking misinformation, and (3) intervening against harmful misinformation-sharing. It also corresponds with the evidence-based fact-checking practice that appeals to credibility (Van der Meer and Jin, 2020; Walter and Murphy, 2018). Furthermore, by using an infographic as the vehicle of truth-telling, our study opens the portal for a new line of research exploring the role of modality in health communication (Lee et al., 2018) as it relates to risk communication during health crises like COVID-19 (Jin et al., 2017). Insights from such research may help to optimize the effectiveness of corrective information in debunking health misinformation by going beyond text-based warnings or factual elaboration (Van der Meer and Jin, 2020).

Theoretical and practical implications for health and risk communication

Our findings have several theoretical implications for behavioral scientists and health and risk communication researchers in public health. To begin with, we emphasize the need to consider the role of individual factors like age in both vulnerabilities to misinformation and in people's responses to corrective interventions. Health misinformation, especially misinformation about infectious disease outbreaks (Vijaykumar et al., 2015; Vijaykumar et al., 2019), brings unique misinformation mitigation challenges especially in a social-mediated and highly competitive media environment (Van der Meer and Jin, 2020). Previous empirical evidence of misinformation vulnerability associated with age (e.g., older people are more vulnerable to misinformation) does not seem to apply to the outbreak misinformation context based on our findings.

Because the viral spread of misinformation is driven by sharing behaviors, we suggest that future research identify specific cognitive factors-e.g., misinformation beliefs and perceived credibility-activated by misinformation exposure that tend to influence sharing behaviors. As corrective information has shown to by and large reduce misinformation beliefs, enhance perceived credibility and intention-to-share, we also suggest greater attention to testing the efficacy of communication interventions by health agencies using scientifically robust study designs. Such efforts will help create an evidence base of strategies to combat misinformation which could prove valuable in future infodemics.

For health and risk communication practitioners, our study highlights the need to actively engage with younger adults given their increased vulnerability to misinformation belief, lower levels of knowledge, and increasing susceptibility to COVID-19. Equally, communications reaching older adults will need to be calibrated in terms of frequency and content in order to avoid reinforcement of beliefs in misinformation that they receive on social media platforms like WhatsApp. Our findings also clearly speak to the need for public health organizations to incorporate audience segmentation activities as part of their infodemic management strategies. Ongoing efforts (e.g., EPI-WIN) that have made a promising start by creating targeted communication materials for different audience groups might need to bolster these efforts by identifying cross-cutting demographic segments through audience segmentation so that risk communication can be better tailored to suit specific informational and belief sensitivities (Adams et al., 2017). Public libraries are emerging as potential stakeholders who could contribute to these efforts to disseminate accurate information and combat misinformation as they could provide tools to verify the quality of information to a range of population groups (Coward et al., 2018; Young et al., 2020; Ale, 2020). As such, risk communication practitioners working in the context of disease outbreaks need to understand audience demographics and tailor communication efforts in a way that addresses informational and belief sensitivities. Furthermore, our findings bolster calls from previous research (Nyhan et al., 2014) to highlight the importance of pre-testing messages. This important step will help health agencies evaluate the effectiveness of these messages before making them available for public consumption, and help avoid unintended backfire effects of myth-busting activities; lest the investment in terms of monetary and human resources yield sub-optimal returns.

Our study has several limitations. First, our experiment involved a singular misinformation claim about the curative powers of garlic for COVID-19 even though social media is replete with numerous claims and other types of misinformation. A broader study involving different types of misinformation (conspiracy theories, hoaxes, rumors, etc.) each arriving in different 'shades of truth' would be a valuable addition to the misinformation literature. Using digital platforms to deliver randomized content would increase the feasibility of testing more varied types of misinformation. Our misinformation and corrective information stimuli were designed in the form of a WhatsApp forward that participants viewed on a computer or a smartphone. While this reduced the ecological validity, our decision to proceed with this mode of stimuli presentation was driven by an ethical consideration aimed at minimizing any prospect of the stimuli getting circulated in the real world. We partially addressed this limitation by using misinformation content that was already in circulation in the UK and Brazil. Lastly, in order to pre-empt practical challenges in survey recruitment, we oversampled for the 55+ age group as a result of which our study sample is not representative of the overall population in the UK and Brazil.

In conclusion, our findings provide several practical takeaways for public health policymakers, first responders, and communicators. Effective health communication, especially in times of infectious disease outbreaks, requires not only disseminating accurate information but also preparing to pre-bunk and/or de-bunk misinformation based on evidence-based research on misinformation characteristics and anticipated misinformation vulnerability among at-risk populations. A robust understanding of how different population groups in disease-stricken regions and countries consume and react to information with varied 'shades of truth' can significantly enhance the effectiveness of public health policy, mobilize individuals to take correct protective action recommended by authorities, and even activate user-generated fact-checking systems to provide additional social media shields against health misinformation spread. The counterintuitive findings regarding age (i.e., older adults, at least as evidenced in Brazil and UK participants of our study, seem to be more vigilant in discerning the actual 'shade of truth' and taking precautionary actions) provide new opportunities for enabling older adults to take an active role in misinformation preparedness despite the challenge of digital literacy (Stanford Health Education Group, 2019), which takes different forms among older and younger adults.

We recommend that misinformation researchers work with organizations like the WHO to evaluate misinformation correction campaigns involving larger and more representative respondents and develop more effective corrective message strategies. Doing so will contribute to a better understanding of demographic mediators, and enable purposive cross-country comparisons to better understand the role of culture and context in viral misinformation effects and identify approaches to best combating misinformation via persuasive corrective communication efforts.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Aarti Sahasranaman for reviewing and providing feedback on the initial and final proofs of this manuscript, and all the survey respondents for participating in our survey experiments. This study was supported by the WhatsApp Social Science and Misinformation Research Award.

Author information

Affiliations

1. Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Santosh Vijaykumar, Daniel Rogerson, Anna Maughan & Bianca Fadel

2. University of Georgia, Athens, USA

Yan Jin & Xuerong Lu

3. Independent Designer, Bengaluru, India

Swati Sharma

4. Fiocruz Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil

Mariella Silva de Oliveira Costa

5. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Claudia Pagliari

6. Independent Researcher, Portland, USA

Daniel Morris

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Santosh Vijaykumar.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Vijaykumar, S., Jin, Y., Rogerson, D. et al. How shades of truth and age affect responses to COVID-19 (Mis)information: randomized survey experiment among WhatsApp users in UK and Brazil. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8, 88 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00752-7
Download citation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How shades of truth and age affect responses to COVID-19 (Mis)information: randomized survey experiment among WhatsApp users in UK and Brazil - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We examined how age and exposure to different types of COVID-19 (mis)information affect misinformation beliefs, perceived credibility of the message and intention-to-share it on WhatsApp. Through two mixed-design online experiments in the UK and Brazil (total N = 1454) we first randomly exposed adult WhatsApp users to full misinformation, partial misinformation, or full truth about the therapeutic powers of garlic to cure COVID-19.

# data[].attributes.body
Rise First, a website dedicated to helping first-generation low-income students, created a list of links to resources for students across the United States to find relief during the pandemic. https://risefirst.org/resources/covid-19-resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This page serves as a consolidated directory of resources offered by businesses, organizations, universities, and people in response to the devastating effects of COVID-19 on first-generation and/or low-income college students across the country. Our team will continue to update this as we come across additional resources. We also encourage you to share with us additional resources by clicking here.

Together, as a community, we are here for you - and we will get through this!

For the latest news and resources related to COVID-19, visit the CDC website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This page serves as a consolidated directory of resources offered by businesses, organizations, universities, and people in response to the devastating effects of COVID-19 on first-generation and/or low-income college students across the country. Our team will continue to update this as we come across additional resources.

# data[].attributes.body
A very useful hub of information that has a range of freely available news, journal and educational articles, courses and research on COVID-19 from the British Medical Journal. It's a good way to combat misinformation, potential fake news and covers issues relating to COVID (such as vaccine inequality) across the globe as well as keeping medical professionals up-to-date on current research.

From their website: "BMJ's covid-19 hub supports health professionals and researchers with practical guidance, online CPD courses, as well as the latest news, comment, and research from BMJ. The content is free to access and updated daily."

And the link in case anyone wants/needs it: https://www.bmj.com/coronavirus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Coronavirus (covid-19) Hub - Latest News & Research - BMJ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All information is freely available

BMJ's covid-19 hub supports health professionals and researchers with practical guidance, online CPD courses, as well as the latest news, comment, and research from BMJ. The content is free and updated daily.

Research Latest from The BMJ Most read Latest from BMJ Journals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coronavirus (covid-19): Latest news and resources | The BMJ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All information is freely available BMJ's covid-19 hub supports health professionals and researchers with practical guidance, online CPD courses, as well as the latest news, comment, and research from BMJ. The content is free and updated daily. Research Latest from The BMJ Most read Latest from BMJ Journals

# data[].attributes.headline
A curated literature hub for tracking scientific information about COVID-19:

# data[].attributes.subject
A curated literature hub for tracking scientific information about COVID-19:

# data[].attributes.body
This resource helps individuals to combat misinformation, corroborate facts and make informed judgements about COVID-19 based on up-to-date scientific evidence.

Quoting from the website: "LitCovid [...] is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to 170074 (and growing) relevant articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics (e.g. Long Covid) and geographic locations for improved access."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
LitCovid is a curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus.