The federal government has awarded over £1m in grants to 17 UK organisations piloting new strategies to spice up digital and media literacy amongst individuals deemed extra prone to experiencing on-line abuse or being tricked into believing falsehoods similar to vaccine disinformation, deepfake movies, or hostile propaganda.
The awards are a part of the federal government’s on-line media literacy technique and are being made to mark Unesco’s International Media and Info Literacy Week.
“With the rise of on-line disinformation, educating individuals to determine reality from fiction has by no means been extra necessary to public security,” stated digital secretary Michelle Donelan.
“In addition to bringing ahead new legal guidelines to sort out the basis causes of those issues, we’re funding organisations to provide individuals the talents to remain secure on-line, so everybody can profit from all of the web has to supply.”
The Division for Digital, Tradition, Media and Sport (DCMS) stated analysis had proven many individuals battle to interact and profit from the vary of digital media literacy training that’s obtainable for causes similar to restricted expertise or insecurity in logging on, ignorance of how you can entry such training, and lack of availability of similar.
It created the Media Literacy Taskforce Fund earlier this yr as one in all two funding schemes pitched at focusing on hard-to-reach or weak teams by community-led tasks. The opposite scheme, the Media Literacy Programme Fund, is about to ship coaching programs, on-line studying, tech options and mentoring schemes to weak internet customers.
Grant recipients from the primary fund embrace: Fresherb, a social enterprise working with younger individuals to develop podcasts – aired on native radio stations – that discover points round on-line dis- and misinformation; Web Issues, a Manchester-based charity offering media literacy coaching for care employees and faculty leavers; the Leeds Older Individuals’s Discussion board, focusing on aged individuals on-line and in neighborhood centres within the metropolis; and Guardian Zone, which is working with councils throughout the nation to ship assets to the mother and father and guardians of teenage youngsters.
Tasks awarded cash from the second fund embrace: NewsGuard, which delivers digital literacy workshops to older individuals working by related charities; the Economist Instructional Basis, which helps lecturers in deprived areas to assist youngsters in participating critically with the information; and Glitch, a platform that gives workshops and coaching to weak and marginalised girls, with a selected concentrate on on-line abuse.
