Media education to promote media literacy and counter disinformation, fake news
Countering disinformation through training educators to educate their own students on media literacy - that is the aim of Malaysia's pioneer national media literacy movement, dubbed Media Education For All (ME4A).
ME4A founder Aini Marina Ma’arof said there is currently no standardised national curriculum or curricular guidance in Malaysia for media literacy.
"Nor is there dedicated funding for supporting our teachers' professional development in this area...
Countering disinformation through training educators to educate their own students on media literacy - that is the aim of Malaysia's pioneer national media literacy movement, dubbed Media Education For All (ME4A).
ME4A founder Aini Marina Ma’arof said there is currently no standardised national curriculum or curricular guidance in Malaysia for media literacy.
"Nor is there dedicated funding for supporting our teachers' professional development in this area.
"The comprehensive, hands-on training on media literacy led by impassioned educators of Arus Academy has served as an instrumental grassroots effort to kickstart the initiative at the national level," said Aini, who is a senior lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia's Faculty of Educational Studies.
ME4A media mentor Darshini Kandasamy said the curriculum is crucial to assist educators in helping their own students understand the news.
"Educators will be better prepared to help our youth of various age groups process information, discern for themselves what is real and fake, and become more responsible citizens, both in the physical and digital spheres," said the co-founder of the Malaysia Information Literacy Education (Mile) initiative.
Overall, 15 educators have been selected as founders of ME4A.
Over the past two months, they were trained on a wide scope of media literacy topics, including the role of media literacy in creating more awareness on democracy, biases, information disorders, information verification, and how to embed these concepts into their lessons.
Hazwan Hamdan, an English teacher from SABK Maahad Ehyak Diniah Islamiah, Perak, said teachers in the past had to rely on others to dissect and verify media reports.
"However, after attending the series of workshops, now I can also start off my own investigation on the news I have read.
"As simple as doing a reverse image search to know the origin of an image to understand any media bias," he said.
"I hope that other teachers will be equipped with the same skills in order to create media that is safe for everyone," he added.
The founders, along with 11 media professionals have been working together under the ME4A movement to design the country’s first media literacy curriculum for educators, based on Malaysia’s local context and needs.
Another founder, Jessica Ch’ng from SJKC Kuen Cheng 1, said having media literacy skills would help teachers and students have important conversations on how they consume and create media.
"Everyone should be made aware that being media literate is a right, not a privilege," she said.
In response to disinformation surrounding Covid-19 and the emergency proclamation, the government gazetted a 'fake news' ordinance which critics claimed was too far-reaching and prone to abuse.
Following that, freedom of expression advocates demanded the government to instead fight "fake news with facts" rather than acts.
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