Jakarta, Indonesia – UNESCO, in collaboration with the Ministry of Religious Affairs commit to improving Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in religious-based schools across Indonesia, to strengthen the resilience of students and educators to online harmful content, including disinformation and hate speech. The two entities, committed to work together in a meeting held between the Director and Representative of the UNESCO Regional Office in Jakarta, Ms. Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa and the Minister of Religious Affairs, Mr. Prof. K.H. Nasaruddin Umar, held on 22 of April at the Ministry in the Indonesian capital.
UNESCO, through the Social Media 4 Peace project funded by the European Union, has developed a teaching programme on MIL which has been adapted to the Indonesian context, with the collaboration of 37 teachers with diverse religious backgrounds. The teachers came as well from different regions in the country, including South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, Bali, North Sulawesi, and East Nusa Tenggara.
Ms. Ana Lomtadze, Programme specialist at UNESCO Jakarta, stated that UNESCO worked with a range of stakeholders for the development of this training modules, including the Indonesian International Islamic University (UIII), who helped better understand the needs of religious schools with regards to MIL, and the Solopos Institute, who facilitated the consultations with the teachers for the completion of the teaching modules.
The training programme consists of 6 chapters which cover key areas that students and teachers require to harness the power of social media, and apply critical thinking skills to navigate safely the possible harms that they might encounter online. The training addresses topics such as Digital Ethics, Combating Misinformation, Disinformation, and Hate Speech, Personal Data protection, Digital Footprints, or the importance of Representation of Diversity in the Digital Space.
To support each other in the integration of the new educational programme, a group of educators formed an MIL Mobilizer Community network, which is providing peer-support to more than at least 200 teachers across religious schools in the country.
K.H. Nasaruddin Umar acknowledged that many students receive incorrect information from the internet. Content containing misinformation to hate speech is scattered in the digital space, he said. Students’ ability to understand this needs to be improved, in addition to educational content that also needs to be developed.
READ MORE: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/nurturing-critical-thinkers-unesco-and-ministry-religious-affairs-integrate-media-and-information?hub=701
