“Many of our teenagers only have access to knowledge, information and current affairs via screens,” President Macron told journalists at a recent press conference in France, as he called for a reduction on the use of technology in school. He pointed to the need for young people to distinguish truth from falsehood in this tidal wave of images, media, sources and social networks. “It’s very important for the solidity of our democracies. If we have children with a poorly constructed relationship to the truth, bonjour to the generation of conspiracists”, he concluded.
Today is International Day of Education, which is focusing on the importance of education to combat hate speech. This blog calls for countries to ensure that data and information literacy skills are included in countries’ education curricula, which enable learners to effectively browse, search, filter, evaluate and manage data and information available in digital environments. These skills are critical particularly important as the world is grappling with a surge of violent conflicts and a disturbing rise in hate speech, intolerance and discrimination so that we support learners to be able to tell truth from falsehoods and inoculate themselves against hatred and the spread of it.
Many learners do not know how to recognize fake news
In Singapore, a survey of adults found that although 80% said they were confident in detecting fake news, 91% proceeded to then misidentify at least one fake news story as real. The United Kingdom’s communications regulator found that 72% of 12- to 15-year-olds were aware of the concept of fake news, but only 40% said that they had ever seen something online that they thought was a fake news story. According to the 2018 PISA study, less than half of 15-year-old students could distinguish facts from opinions in a text. Learners don’t just need skills; they want them: A survey conducted among individuals aged 18 and older in Southeast Asia, for instance, showed that three in five respondents in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand ware concerned about misinformation online.
Over half of 15-year-old students in the 2018 PISA reported that they were trained at school to recognize biased information. Australia, Canada, Denmark and the United States had the highest coverage (more than 70%) and Israel, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland the lowest (less than 45%). However, media literacy education targeting disinformation is also unevenly distributed within countries. Students from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to be taught how to detect biased information than their peers from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Media and data literacy are key digital skills
The 2023 GEM Report shows that 90% of countries aspire to develop digital skills, but only 54% have identified digital skill standards that they want learners to achieve in framework, policy, plan or strategy. Young people need media and data literacy skills to be included as part of this list.
The European Union countries use the DigComp framework for prioritizing the digital skills to teach. Information and data literacy is listed as a key competence, aiming to ensure that learners ‘can analyse, compare and critically evaluate the credibility and reliability of sources of data, information and digital content’.
A 2019 mapping of 16 education systems by the OECD showed that they had all included media and data literacy in secondary education, albeit to varying degrees. Among the systems compared, Greece and Portugal dedicated the lowest percentage of the curriculum to data and media literacy (less than 10%) while Estonia and the Republic of Korea embedded those competencies into half of their curricula.
Media and information literacy has become prominent in European education policy in recent years. Finland’s New Literacy Programme aims to strengthen media literacy skills from early childhood through to lower secondary education. Media literacy is also integrated into Italy’s National Digital School Plan. Czechia introduced it as a compulsory cross-curricular subject in the early 2000s but implementation has not been strong as the responsibility for providing training and resources was transferred to non-governmental organizations.
Despite calls by several government leaders in sub-Saharan Africa to counter the spread of false information through schools, a review of seven countries showed no follow-up in education; any actions taken were almost exclusively banning false information by law. South Africa does include media literacy in secondary school subjects, however, and the Western Cape province introduced a programme focusing on misinformation in grades 8 to12.
Some countries in Southeast Asia take a protectionist approach to media literacy which prioritizes information control over education. As a result, media literacy is not mainstreamed in school curricula, teachers are not trained, and efforts are limited to resource development.
In Singapore, however, a four-hours-a week cyber wellness education programme has been introduced in schools, including a module on fake news. In Viet Nam, students learn to combat misinformation across subjects like English, Mathematics and Vietnamese. Thailand commissioned Mahidol University to develop a digital literacy curriculum and lesson plans for classrooms, while the Philippines made media and information literacy a core subject in grades 11 and 12.
Media literacy receives much attention in Latin America but efforts are scattered and led by civil society, with limited streamlining of media literacy in education. There is also a general perception that the focus on digital skills in education systems in the region is not combined with digital media literacy.
Evidence on the effectiveness of efforts to boost media literacy skills is mixed
The 2018 PISA found students who had received any education at all about online dangers, including a specific question about phishing emails, were just as likely to click on a link in a phishing email and provide their personal data. In contrast, the percentage of students who could correctly distinguish facts from opinions was higher in education systems where more students had been taught how to recognize subjective or biased information.
Outside of any media literacy skills, however, one critical finding covered in the 2023 GEM Report is that we should not overlook the importance of basic skills such as literacy and numeracy for helping learners better navigate a digital environment. The 2018 PISA study suggested that 14% of 15-year-olds were at risk of clicking on a phishing email, ranging from 4% in Japan to 25% or more in Chile, Hungary and Mexico. Just 5% of those with the strongest reading skills on the PISA scale reported they would click the link, compared to 24% of those with the weakest reading skills.
Digital skills are one part of the battle against hate speech, but an important one. The larger battle goes back to the message in our global report for technology in education to be on our terms only. Examples from the United States where universities have started banning TikTok and other platforms, are example of this, but there are many more. Discussions on peace must consider the role that education can play; it provides the possibility of hope by helping to build a new generation of learners that are open-minded, empathetic and, importantly, critical thinkers.
