ISLAMABAD: Keeping in view the spread of information from various sources including social and other media, speakers at a training workshop stressed the need of media literacy for all news consumers in order to make them able to access and analyse information.
Media literacy is very important consumers as many of whom have little experience in learning how to locate, evaluate, and critically analyze the information they are consuming, speakers debated at two days workshop on Tools for Media Information Literacy (MIL) organized by Individual Land Pakistan and Information for All (IFA) at the Pakistan Scientific and Technological Information Center (PASTIC).
Director General (DG) PASTIC-IFA, Prof Dr Muhammad Akram Sheikh speaking on the occasion said that media literacy is varying for all news consumer to make media consumers aware of their media environments and increase critical thinking about media’s constructions of reality.
While briefing the participants about United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO’s) MIL work in Pakistan, UNESCO’s representative in Pakistan, Vibeke Jensen said, “UNESCO has been working with various local stakeholders to promote MIL in the country. One of our most recent endeavors was focused on use of MIL for the prevention of violent extremism in Pakistan.”
She said that media literacy become major tool to excess to retrieve, understand evaluate as well as share information. By using these tools in proper way we can participate and engage in societal activities, she said.
Executive Director Individual Land Pakistan, Gulmina Bilal Ahmad was of the view that “media literacy is fast becoming a must-have skill for every consumer of media, as it can help them in becoming smart social media users with the ability to identify fake content and develop and disseminate their own content.”
In the workshop, trainers focused on the discussion on MIL in Pakistan. Moreover, tools to understand fake and doctored images, fact-checking and social media monitoring were also discussed.
