 Hello and thank you for joining us for this web chat commemorating the 25th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day. I'm Jesse Hollis McCarthy, outreach educator with the Museum Ed, the educational arm of the Freedom Forum Institute, which provides free educational resources and experiences on media literacy and the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Journalists shine a light on many issues, keeping citizens informed, prompting robust discussion on serious issues, and holding their governments, including our own accountable. Today is an opportunity to honor the many journalists who have dedicated their lives and taken great risk to pursue this important work. During this discussion, we'll talk about the importance of media literacy in today's fragmented news and information landscape, and highlight ways that educators and students can develop their skills in evaluating the credibility of media sources while recognizing and challenging disinformation. Those of you viewing online can ask questions by submitting them in the comments section next to the video player or tweeting them using hashtag WPFD2018. Joining us today is Jennifer Thomas, an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University. Jennifer is a veteran broadcast journalist whose career spans more than 25 years in network and local news. Most recently she was an executive producer for CNN headline news. She is also the founder of Media Ready Consulting, LLC. Also with us is Geisha Gonzalez, associate director for the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. Geisha's areas of expertise at the Atlantic Council include disinformation campaigns and media literacy. Previously, Geisha worked at Freedom House, where she covered issues related to digital and physical security for human rights defenders, as well as authoring work on the rise of modern dictatorships. And joining us from Missouri is Anthony Schopp, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Social Driver, an award-winning digital agency. Anthony is an entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of digital marketing and social media. He worked previously as a journalist and was also the first new media professional elected to the National Press Club's Board of Governors. Additionally, we have with us today a viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, who will be asking the panelists questions and sharing their perspectives. We'll turn to them in a moment. First, let's watch this short video produced by the U.S. Department of State that offers five tips for spotting fake news. The panelists will share their thoughts after this clip. Fake news circulates in a variety of forms, but there are ways to spot it. Here are five tips to analyze and validate news. Number one, identify the sources. Does the publication even exist? Is there an author? Be cautious of no bylines and strange URLs like those ending in .com.co and slight variations on common news websites. Number two, look beyond the headline. Frequent grammar errors and made up names are telltale signs of fake news. Number three, recognize satire. Some publications explicitly state that they post satirical content. Others are less obvious. Look for indications that their content is meant to be humorous rather than misleading. Number four, where does the story get its support? Does the article link to or reference any research? Frequently using the words research says without disclosing it is a major red flag. Number five, consider your own bias. It's possible you feel strongly about an article or headline because it confirms your own opinions. Do your best to consider the facts objectively. Next time you scroll your newsfeed, remember these tips and do your own digging. Jennifer, can you start us off by sharing some of your thoughts on media literacy and what students and educators can do to be aware of disinformation and seek out credible news sources? Yes, thank you, Jessie. And I'm just so excited to be here for this World Press Freedom Day and to talk about some of these very important topics that are dire for us around the world right now. But right now I think with the influx of social media, media literacy is more important now more than ever. And so when we speak about media literacy, of course, we talk about understanding the forms of media and then what the messages are that might be behind them. And then of course, media, we look at there being different forms of media about eight forms of media with books being the oldest and the internet being the newest. And the internet dominates all other forms. And that's what we call convergence. So it's so important now because with everything being available online, that means that we have content creators, anyone who has access to a keyboard, a laptop, a phone can be a content creator, which is great because we all have access, right? But then the downfall is with that, we don't know necessarily who the sources are of that information. And that leads us to those issues of fake news that the video was so great and describing. So when we talk about media literacy, we have to make sure that we as consumers of this information understand where this information is coming from and how to tell whether or not it's real. And then that leads me to what we as professors, and educators must do to make sure that students recognize and understand these things. And I think, just in 30 seconds or less, that we as professors must turn to the basic tenets of journalism, and then provide historical and current examples. So we must teach students to understand how journalism is part of the fabric of society, and how we are part of the democracy of America. And that is our main goal as journalists, and then understand the historical references that we've had to America. And once we do that and use current and past examples, then we get the students engaged and being proud of what their role is, which is a very impactful and important role. And of course, there's much more to say, but I'll stop there for now. Thank you very much. Kaysha, can we hear from you? Yes, of course. And thank you so much for having me here for today's discussion. This information is it's important to understand what it is versus misinformation. I know that we've gone back and forth between the two terms. Misinformation is the unintentional spread of false information. This is a common mistake that happens with legitimate news sources and outlets. The difference between legitimate sources and illegitimate sources is that they admit their mistakes. If they unintentionally spread a piece of false information, they report it, they let you know, and they make the audience as aware. Disinformation, however, is the use of false information to manipulate, to really get at the target audience in order to make them either feel a certain way or choose a certain topic over another. And disinformation campaigns are so effective more today than they were before because of social media. Social media makes it easier for state and non state actors to target audiences to appeal to their emotions. I call this the Big Mac theory. Disinformation is a lot like burgers, they're juicy, delicious, you want them, you crave them and you consume them, mainly because they reaffirm your own beliefs. And in order to address this information, what we're doing is fighting it with facts. So broccoli, this is not a real strong effective way in order to fight disinformation. That is why while media literacy is important, more needs to be done. It is not the only option. So we have civic education. Understanding your own history makes you less susceptible to being deceived. Independent journalism, it is important not to just invest independent journalism, not just reading the articles, but actually monetarily investing, investing actually make sure that the publications remain above water and that they are able to distribute further. And then fact checking, in Brazil, you have alfapos. In the Europe, you have EU versus disinfo, and so on and so forth. And I can continue listing all the very important tools that we have. But media literacy, definitely important. But there are a lot more tools in that toolbox that need to be used. Thank you, Anthony, what are your thoughts on this? Well, thank you so much for having me and letting me join you today. I live in Washington DC, but I'm calling in from Maryville, Missouri. And I think that it's a great place for me to be as I think about today's topic, because we have a crisis of trust happening right now. We don't know what information to trust, what informations, misinformation, disinformation, true, false. And I think it's especially true when we look at communities like Maryville, where I am today, the originators of information, whether that's large companies, whether that's major media outlets, they are not part necessarily of this community and people in the communities are suspicious sometimes of information, even if it is true. That's one of the things we have to recognize in today's world. Even if we're telling the truth, people may be suspicious of that information. And so we have to really grapple with that. And even if our news is the truth, we need to make sure we're conveying it and sourcing it and reaching people in the community. And that leads me to another really important piece of research, which is that there's so much data now that tells us people trust information they get from friends or from people who even feel like them, even though they may not know them personally, then information from sources. And what that means is if one of your friends shares a piece of fake news from one of the websites we saw earlier, the community is more likely to believe it right away because it came from a trusted source. And that's really important for us to recognize. It means if we want to stop false information, we need to get other people involved. We can't just have an institution tell us that wasn't true. We need the community to buy in and realize it wasn't true. And I think this underlies a major shift we're seeing. There's a great book out called New Power. And it talks about the juxtaposition of old power and new power. And these are phenomena such as a transition from closed source communities and software to open source communities and software. We see crowd sourcing, crowd funding. I think ultimately it's a great thing that this power is being dispersed and that more groups of people have opportunities to be engaged in society and the economy. But it also comes with a challenge. It means that that information is coming from many sources. So we have to educate the public and we have to make sure we have a way to get communities engaged in this so that they are correcting one another. That's a role we each have to play. We each have to stand up. And when we see something posted, we can be the one to comment and say, actually, that's not true. I saw something else. That is one of the key ingredients for us to fight this challenge we have today. Thank you so much. Now, before we jump into viewer questions from Nairobi and the larger global online audience, let's dig into a poll question we shared on social media in the days leading up to this discussion. We asked what aspects of media literacy are you most interested in hearing about? You can see the results on the screen. The top answer was social media's role in spreading disinformation and also preventing it at 36% of the responses, followed by strategies for recognizing disinformation or fake news at 28% of the responses. And then how do you develop skills for identifying and challenging disinformation at 17%? Anthony, Jennifer and Geisha, what are your reactions to this poll? Anthony, let's start with you. Thank you. Well, I was not surprised to see social media was a hot topic in the number one on the poll. It made me think about how fast information is traveling nowadays. April 15th, 1865 is when President Lincoln was shot and it took 10 days for that information to be published in The Times of London. So almost two weeks for some of the biggest news in the world. Today, if the president tweets in seconds, people around the world know it is instant. That means information travels instantly because of social media, both great information, true information and false information, miss and disinformation. It's really important that we recognize as that information travels. It's not just what the information is, but how it's packaged. And I'll give you a specific example with some work I've been involved with. Fluoride is added to community water supplies to help ensure dental safety, the dental health. But one of the things we've seen is a rise of misinformation and disinformation about fluoride. Now, fluoride in high doses is poisonous, but that doesn't mean that it's poisonous when it's in the water supply. And so this creates this challenge with misinformation because if you say fluoride is a poison, well, it's true. But in the context of how it's being used in communities, it's false. And this shows us there's a complexity that not everything is black or white. We need context. When we looked at that conversation, we found there were three key audiences, people who were very anti fluoride, people who were very pro fluoride experts, and people in the middle who didn't know. And this is the approach we have to take when we want to combat misinformation and disinformation. Isolate and figure out what communities exist and then go to them where they are, meet them where they are and start to educate at that level. It doesn't, it's not a one size fits all solution. And that I think is one of the things we've seen with how powerful social media is in allowing information to travel instantly. Excellent. And Jennifer, do you want to expand on that a little bit more? Add your thoughts to the conversation. Sure. So I remember in the early 2000s before we had this big huge boom of everyone being on social media, there used to be a time when people would send emails and say, did you see this story? There's a face of Osama bin Laden in the clouds. This is real. Or there were all kinds of misinformation or just complete fake information that was going out. And at the time I was at CNN and I would get all of these emails and I would always respond by one question which is what I say now and what I say in class and that is, consider the source. So with social media, as I said earlier, everyone can be on social media and in a nanosecond that information is spread. So what do you do? And one of the sites back then that was very popular that still is the Snopes. And I would send a link. I would type a few keywords and then I would send it back and say, please share this with your groups. So to piggyback what Anthony was saying, we have to make sure that when we see this misinformation that we stop it. Now it's hard to identify it because a lot of times people are, their whole goal is to see if I can fool the media. So in turning back to the journalism side there are many examples where we see something that is just a mistake such as back in January in Hawaii when a worker mistakenly sent something out saying that we're under an imminent attack. That sent moral panic and that's what happens when these things take place. But then you have just last week I think it was in Canada in Winnipeg where a person behind a computer sent out a false alarm that a nuclear attack was imminent and it caused moral panic. And then police were able to track him down at his house. So there is a difference now because with social media and with everyone having a computer people are becoming more savvy with skills to misinform and to see if they can get away from it. We see numerous examples of misinformation that went out during the presidential campaigns for both sides that many people believed and many people still believe so it affects policy it affects the democracy and we have to be very careful with how we approach that. In journalism we have very strict verification processes that we use and now I think consumers have to kind of go back to using those same processes as well. Yes and one of the things we encourage our students is to always question what's the source of their information. In New Zealand we ask them to use that tool of who's this creator. Now Gesh I want to hear quickly from you before we start turning to our online and viewing groups. Yeah of course. So there was research earlier this year by MIT that found that people searching online were six times more likely to click on an article that was fake news or labeled as fake news over something that was true and this is just you know representative of how much information is being thrown out as. Social media has made it to their news feeds are constantly being uploaded with new information constantly hitting at us. And so our attention has become a commodity and that commodity is for sale. And with that comes a lot of the different business models that have made it so that social media platforms are selling our attention. That comes in different ways. For example I'll go to transparency dot org found that on YouTube even a neutral search would lead you to more radical results. For example if I search is the earth flat then I would get intense our videos that would say yes the earth is flat and hear all the different examples of how it is flat. And that is representative about attention. If you find something that is more controversial you're likely to be on that page longer and that means more ad revenue which means more money for the social media platforms. Now that is shifting a little bit with the election interference that has occurred not only in the United States but in Europe and now expanding throughout the world we see that social media platforms are taking a more responsibility about how they conduct their business models. A lot of it has to do with transparency revealing this information to the public. But again it has to do with our attention. We you know it's a business model. And so shifting that and really pushing for that is is I think key. And just one more thing as social media platforms become the number one source for a lot of people to get their news. This also represents a challenge because it is harder to tell whether or not something is true or not. And this is this is part of a wider epidemic. Well thank you. We will now turn to the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya where they have an assembled group participating in this program. Hello Nairobi and hello Ambassador Godek. Hello. A very big hello a very big humjumbo from Nairobi, Kenya. It is wonderful to join all of you back in Washington and the United States. We have a terrific group of Kenyans here today. Educators, students, journalists, all of them very interested I know in the subject that you all are discussing. It is a very important subject. It's an important subject for Kenya. It's an important subject for the world. You know freedom of the media freedom of expression are critically important and they have certainly played a huge role in Kenya's growth as a country. They're really essential I think for a stable, strong, vibrant democracy. And I know the Kenyan people are very much committed to the rights which are enshrined in their 2010 Constitution. But there have been big challenges here, particularly around last year's election with fake news, misinformation, disinformation, all of these represented huge challenges. There is a very vibrant media, more traditional media here, but there's also a very rapidly growing and very important social media presence. So here you see Facebook having a big role and even more so a service like What's App where a lot of Kenyans do get their news and information. And last year during a very extended and contentious election period Kenyans received a lot of information over social media and a lot of it or too much of it was fake. There's things like a fake CNN broadcast, a fake BBC broadcast, a fake US Embassy cable and so much more. And many of the claims and statements made and some of the things that were circulating stoked ethnic tension, really even encouraged violence in some instances and it's extremely dangerous. Obviously these things can fundamentally undermine democracy. So it's critically important that as citizens, all of us, wherever we are, understand that the risks and threat that come from this disinformation and misinformation. It can pose a huge problem. Here at the Embassy in recent weeks, we've started a campaign or an effort to help Kenyans better understand the risks of fake information, disinformation started a campaign called hashtag stop reflect verify and then hashtag Yali checks. Both of them are intended to help provide Kenyans with some of the tools and methods that they can themselves identify when there's fake information circulating and then some of the tips that you all have already given. But I think there's a lot of discussion needed about this. It is fundamentally threat, I think, to our societies and it does risk violence and it does create issues when there is a tsunami, a huge wave of disinformation, particularly around elections. And so I'm very, very pleased that this is happening today. I'm very pleased that this really extraordinary audience of Kenyans has joined the discussion. I think there's a lot that we can do together as citizens, as educators, as students, as journalists, as people to help ensure that we're getting the best possible information and therefore making the best possible decisions for our own future for our countries. Thank you. Thank you. Let's start. Do you have a question for the panelists? Hi, my name is Anita and my question is regarding the legality aspect in fake news. They are actually bloggers who may or may not have gone to media school and understood the dynamics, but they are thriving on fake news because they're controversy cells. So they have a habit of having half truths, half half truth, half lies. So most times you're really glued. So you don't know today's true tomorrow. It's not true. So when they perhaps touch on the government, they will get caught. But now the issue of legality comes in because of human rights. Again, you cannot just come and get this guy. So my question is, is there a country or is there a way to deal with this issue in terms of legality and, of course, to also protect and preserve the profession? Thank you. Well, I know here in the United States, we have the First Amendment protecting our freedom of the press. And the First Amendment doesn't verify or state that what we publish has to be 100 percent true. But let's get some thoughts from our panelists about kind of the legality question and how that works and how it can balance with a free press. Well, when we talk about the free press, we know that here in America, that is, as you mentioned, the foundation for us with the First Amendment. I had the opportunity to speak in Namibia a couple of summers ago about the media's role in fostering good governance in Africa. And so we know that when it comes to journalists and the media working with the government, you need to work together. And that's a problem where we may have somewhat of a problem of that here in the country. But a lot of times here, we take press freedom for granted, where in parts of the world, such as Africa and in the East, many parts of the world, the press isn't free. So while we have freedom of press and freedom of speech, that also, to your point, gives anyone the opportunity to publish that information, whether it's true or not. And I guess for us as journalists, we have to be more vigilant in demanding a few things, one that we can try to hold those people accountable who are doing something if it deals with a legality issue. And then secondly, advocate so that we can point this out effectively online. So if there are there Israeli checks and these other things that are there to prevent this dissemination of non truths online, if we can continue to identify it and hold those people accountable, I think we'll start to see a change. But it is very hard because people can hide behind that screen. Did you want to add something, Geisha? You know, solutions to disinformation have to be consistent with our values, and that includes freedom of expression and freedom of the press in its different variations throughout the world. However, there is a very there are some solutions that can be explored that are still consistent with our values. When you look at Google, Facebook, in terms of how you do your search, if you Google a piece of information, there is a way to de-rank content based on how reliable it is. And for example, if you did search is the earth flat, you would not get this blogger as the first result on your on your search bar. Rather, it goes down a few pages and then you're able to search and get good content on top. That way, you're not censoring content, you're not blocking content. You're simply de-ranking based on how legitimate a new source is. And I know that there are options that are being explored currently in Europe, where they're looking at a media index where they are able to rank different media outlets by how consistent they are with the truth. And so, you know, there are options. I think that would be one of the easiest fixes that the social media networks can do now. And again, we have to we have to be consistent with our values. A lot of these solutions, if we overstep or over regulate or over impose ourselves, then we're not, you know, we risk actually having those tools being used by bad actors that will use that against journalists, for example, and further repress their freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Well, let's go to Nairobi. I want to make sure that we have time for as many questions as possible. So Nairobi, do you have another question? Thank you. My name is Nya Gastevin. I'm a graduate from the University of Nairobi. My question is, to what extent has the media freedom declined and lost its objectivity due to conflict of interest between professional journalists and the media house proprietors who are businessmen and some politicians? Thank you. Thank you. Let's turn to Anthony for an answer to this question and get your thoughts. Anthony, can we hear from you? Sure. Well, what I said earlier about this crisis of trust, I think there are challenges, if not in practice, at least in perception from the public, that media outlets have companies paying to advertise with them. This has always existed for a very long time, but but we know about it and also ownership. And I think that that's why some smaller media outlets have become more popular. And when smaller outlets become more popular and we have many sources of information, it makes it harder for us to determine right away which information we can trust and which information we can't trust. We may have an established journalist with a great career who has their own blog and that's a very trustworthy source. And it's different tarred for us to tell the difference between that and a blogger who's actually being paid by companies to post information or being, you know, incentivized to share Mr. Disinformation. So this is a challenge that we face in today's world, which I think really is the result of this transition from old power to new power. I think that fortunately we do have great journalistic institutions that exist that are doing an excellent job. I think we have wonderful information. Sometimes what I fear is that the information that is packaged in really great videos and cartoons and sensational headlines that comes from other outlets catch people's attention more in today's social media world. And just to add a quick point on our last question about the legality, I think this is a shared responsibility. I think the media has a responsibility. I think the government has a responsibility when it comes to regulation. We always hear this example in free speech. You can't walk into a crowded movie theater and yell fire. That's not, you don't have the freedom of speech in that case. And I think when it comes to misinformation, we have to ask what does that look like? And then most importantly, technology companies such as Facebook and Twitter, they have a level of responsibility and we're starting to see them voluntarily take steps. The question is whether there may be more regulation. So absolutely there's a perception issue, but fortunately we still do have some great journalists and we have to help the public understand which ones they can trust and do that. All right, now let's take some questions from the comments section or those falling along on Twitter using the hashtag WPFD 2018. What? So their first question we have is what are the responsibilities for media consumers when sharing news over social media platforms? So I want to turn to Gatius and she mentioned something about this earlier. Let's turn to you for this one. Well, you know, this is going to be a difficult one for me to answer because I actually believe that so much of the responsibility is put on the consumer to be a responsible news consumer instead of actually looking at, you know, the outlets, the social media platforms and all of the other mediums in which we consume our information. I think that when and, you know, in particularly looking not at just the social media platforms, but looking at WhatsApp, for example, there's a real challenge in that, you know, if a friend sends you a news article without them checking, you know, whether or not this is a legitimate news source, then you come to the, you know, you don't question it comes from your friend, it comes from a trusted source. I think that, you know, especially since we're speaking mainly to educators and we're talking to, you know, students, you know, be careful before you share. Do follow the advice of the video, make sure that you actually are checking the sources, that this outlet actually appear overnight, or do they have a history of publishing? Do they only follow to one side or are they more balanced in terms of their reporting? And who is writing? Again, be aware of the bylines. If there is no author, this is likely an illegitimate source. At Newsy and Med, we actually produced a tool for educators and students called is the share worthy and it's a flow chart that students and educators and anyone who wants to check whether something should be shared can walk through the steps and get some insight into the process so that they can implement it in their own lives. Now, I want to go to our next online question where an online viewer asks, can we trust crowdsourced websites like Wikipedia? Are these sites reliable? Jennifer, I want to hear from you on this one. Sure, that's a great question. Actually, I had the opportunity to sit in on a panel, not be a part of a panel, but sit with someone from Wikipedia with faculty at Howard University to talk about how journalists are involved and how they get their information on Wikipedia. And it was really interesting. And what people don't realize is that Wikipedia does get information from various places. But a lot of times those people may be journalists, they may be graduate students, they may be experts in the areas and Wikipedia actually does have staff and those people go around and sort of fact check the fact checkers so that a lot of times more than not the information that's coming into Wikipedia is sourced and it's fact. And if you if you look at the bottom when something is placed in there, it's added sort of like footnotes for research papers. So every time a story is updated, you'll see the information at the bottom where the source came from and when it was updated. This is very useful on stories now that come up on news based stories that have happened specifically after some of the recent writing and protest that have gone on in the country. And they'll put the name of a victim up and then they'll give the background of that person. So that's that's an example. And then you can go and see where they get the information from. And what people don't realize a lot of time is that on Wikipedia, a lot of researchers generally in news, we often say don't use Wikipedia as a source, but you can always go to a site in general and look at the source that they use. And that's part of the verification process. Go to that source and check out, check it out. That person may have written an article that person may have done a research study. So I feel that in most cases, and from what I've learned, Wikipedia can be reliable. But again, you must consider the source and look and see who's put that information there. But they do try to do a good job with regulating that. I'm sure it's familiar to many of our educators to check into those citations and dig into that evidence. Look at those resources and the citations. Well, American Center in Lusaka asked what steps can be taken to promote press freedom? So I feel like this is a question for you, Geisha. What's that can be taken to promote press freedom? I mean, it is World Press Freedom Day. I think that continuing to highlight the importance of independent journalists from across the world that remains a top priority. You have Rappler in the Philippines. You have Hivasa in Kenya. And these are all sources that are, you know, attempting to have a balanced, you know, reporting available for old people. But I think most importantly today for those that are watching that are able, subscribe to your newspapers that you like and actually pay, pay to see good journalism because that actually supports not only good information, but it holds governments accountable. It holds businesses accountable and it is the best way to go. So please, you know, if today you have a moment, do invest in your independent journalism. Excellent. We have another online question from said Kalka. Apologies if I got your name wrong. And they ask what role has modern communication technologies played in changing politics? Anthony, I want to turn this question over to you. Well, modern communications has been. I mean, it's difficult to describe how transformational when it comes to politics. Certainly if we look back at the election of President Obama, people said that that was really the first social media election. And I think the reason it was is it created an opportunity to unleash the energy of supporters so that they could be representatives of the campaign and they could be catalysts and activists for the campaign. We saw that also during the last presidential election, where social media was very important. And of course, the current president communicates directly with the public using social media, using Twitter primarily. So politics has been shaped a lot by social media. Some may think for better, some may think for worse. I think it's generally just part of this new power phenomenon that we are seeing. And some things that we each have to keep in mind that I think are positive in the American construct is that we have the ability to communicate with our legislators and our policymakers like never before. If you send a letter to a member of Congress, they may or may not ever see your actual letter. It probably gets tallied somewhere. If you tweeted a member of Congress, there's a decent chance that they may actually see it because they all use that device, even if they're not actively tweeting to see who's talking about them, who's mentioning them. And I hear countless stories from my friends on Capitol Hill about how their bosses do pay attention. So it is incredible how we have this power nowadays to communicate with our policymakers and to learn the transparency to learn what's happening on a daily basis and not just read the summaries. We're going to continue to see this trend. I think we're seeing this trend around the world. And what we have to each do as a responsible citizen is be engaged and think about how we can use this phenomenon to become part of the process, to get our friends and family involved in the process, because that's what we have to do to move things forward. We want to add a couple quick thoughts before we head to our next question. Very quick, because this is while it is a great avenue, and it's a great thing that we're able to participate in being engaged in our politics. It's also a really big opportunity for maligned state and non-state actors to actually inject themselves in our political discourse across the world. And of course, we're, you know, the Kremlin's interference in European elections actually jolted a lot of reaction from policymakers in the U.S. and in Europe, but we still have challenges like bots driving content and really making it appear as if an issue is important as it was the case in Catalan, where you have bots and trolls from Venezuela actually driving discussions in Catalan, making it appear that an issue has more support than it actually has. And then micro targeting. This makes it very easy not only for politicians, as we're seeing in Mexico with the different candidates using social media to really push different issues, but they also allow to push your emotions to really exploit them and make you either angry or happy about a certain issue that will either get you out to vote or make you stay at home. And we continue to see that. And those are challenges that social media platforms will need to continue to address. Definitely. I want to go into our next question, which is on me round asks, what are some tactics that we can use to determine if the information on a website is true? And I'm familiar with our own tools. We give media consumers a strategy we call escape, which are six tools to help them check and see whether the information they're looking at is real or quality. But I want to turn to you on this one, Jennifer and see what are some other ways they can dig into informational websites to see if it's true. Since you've mentioned sourcing a lot. Yes. Well, a lot of times you want to I think the video is really good. And also the points that the museum uses are really good. But you really want to get to know what that sources. So when you just see a story that pops up on your screen, you go to it. And of course, the first thing, look at that URL that was there. Look at the headline that's there and then read the story. A lot of times a lot of these sites and some of the fake sites or the satirical sites will will get you with that headline. They use SEL tags which are search engine optimization tags that they may use to get people to draw them into those sites, whether it's through the headline or or through some of the content. So take time and read through and look and see who these people are that they're sourcing or that they're quoting. A lot of times the names may be some made up name. And as you keep going through, you should also check the photos now with social media and Photoshop. It's hard to really to be able to kind of maneuver yourself through. But what we would do for journalists, we had a routine where we would have a three step process of verification. So if I were reporting on a story, I would check my sources. I turn it into my editor or producer. They would check the source. And then before it goes to air, we have another set of people there who go back through and look. So we have three step process. If we're looking at something from home, you know, look and see who the URL is from, read the article, look to see who they're sourcing, look to see who they're quoting and then look that person up. We all become journalists in that way and that, you know, we're digging in and we're seeking truth. So I think if you just take some basic steps, as you're starting that process, it'll help you kind of weed out and you can kind of get in a habit the more you do it just takes practice, you can start kind of filtering through what doesn't seem real. I always say if something sometimes seems too good to be true, it might be. And there's a reason we say sometimes a jaded journalist because we're always questioning something. So I'm seeing a huge amount of questions coming in and I know we have so much great information, but I'm going to try and get through as many as I can. So we're going to be getting to as many as we can. I see one from the US Embassy in Kigali. They are asking, is it possible to develop intelligent apps that warn or flag users about potential harm from certain content? Now, Anthony, I'd like to turn this one over to you. Well, we are seeing different social media platforms experiment with ways to warn consumers, their users, if the information may be disputed or inaccurate. We're also seeing third party companies and services coming into the market. There's one called News Guard that launched recently. And what they're doing also is verifying information. I think it'll be interesting to see what consumers demand because as we look at the different responsibilities we each have, if consumers demand this, just like we heard before, websites like Snopes, there's a market for that because consumers want to be able to search and find if something's true. And if consumers demand this from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, then I think we'll be more likely to see it. So we are seeing some steps move in that direction, but nothing is perfect. And there are so many gray areas when it comes to fact and fiction, nothing will ever be perfect. We will also have to take some responsibility on ourselves to do our own research, because the way things are phrased or bits of information, we're going to have to be discerning. And that means I applaud all the educators who are part of this today and all the work that the museum does to educate because we need our educators and our students to understand this so that we can be discerning and informed when we research information, but the social media platforms can help by flagging that. Excellent. Now, before we go back to our audience in Kenya, I want to ask the panel if they have any recommended online or offline places to go for media literacy tools and advice. Now, I know, of course, my own work, which is at Newsymed.org. But I was wondering if each of our panelists could share maybe their top couple favorite tools or resources they want to share. Well, a lot of the tools that I use because because I am still a practicing journalist and I teach journalism, a lot of what I do is teach through examples. So I use real life scenarios and I use that as an opportunity to teach or to learn. So if we're talking about ethics, for example, then we can talk about real life ethical implications that may have come from covering September 11th. That was one of the producers at CNN on that day. So I'll use real case scenarios to teach about what are the best roles and ways to tackle that. And then we may research what other journalists have done. I know at the museum, there's that wonderful ethics center where students can play the game and pick out ethical choices and see if it matches up to what they've done. So I like to use real life examples. And also, I have my students go to new sources such as CNN, CBS and look to get some of the historical aspects of how journalism has changed in progress. So I like to use sort of real life examples to teach journalism because I say we have all the elements we need right there. And then I bring some of that. I also like to do quiz games. There are some fake news. There are several sites and I could give specific ones later. But I love doing quiz games where they can try to identify fake news and then we discuss what's wrong with them or different social media examples that expose issues with images and examples in that way. But I generally use news that's there in the media now. I like taking those real life sources, both present and past, to bring them into this discussion. Now, I want to check back in with our group in Nairobi, Kenya for a couple more questions. Nairobi. Thank you. My name is Fred Kikunondo. I'm a academia student from the United States International University, Africa. What is your plenary action should be taken towards technologists like recently, Facebook during last year's election around 80 million accounts users who was hacked by an analytical U.K. in Kenya. An analytical help to the Ajebeli party spreading false information about their policies and goals. Action towards their action. There has been no action that has been taken. Even to Mark Zuckerberg was about to face the Senate. So what disciplinary action should be taken towards media perpetrators? Thank you. So we're looking at sort of the spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media sites like Facebook in the context of elections. And Anthony, I know you spoke on that a little bit earlier. And if we can maybe turn to Anthony and see if we get some insight into this question. Well, I think that, you know, from our previous point too, right, what can we do about this? What can we do as an individual if you see something that you don't think seems right or you're wondering it's fishy? Sometimes the best thing to do actually is not to share it to tell everyone it's true, but to ask your friends say, you know, does anybody have any information about this or go on to Twitter because that can be a great source of information using the power of the crowd to figure out the answer. And that's a great way to educate other people through engagement. Now, when it comes to election issues, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, I think what we're seeing right now is this new technology market going so quickly that it's been a bit of the Wild West. And we need to take some control. And we're seeing the company step up to take some control. We heard from Geisha, she's absolutely right, non state actors getting engaged in elections across the world is a big challenge we're facing. It's a newer challenge that we really haven't faced in this same exact way before. And so we need to hold these companies accountable. And we also may need to have some policy solutions because this is not, you know, a foreign government can't run and add legally in most elections. And so they shouldn't be able to use social media in the way that they're using it, which is really outside the spirit of the current law. So our regulations need to catch up. Our companies need to catch up. And we as individuals have to catch up. The responsibility, in my opinion, is shared across all of us. It's not just the government, just the companies or just the individual. We all have to stand up and be part of the solution. And I have to agree with you, Anthony. We do see that students who are trained in media literacy techniques are better at spotting disinformation or misinformation or what claims are accurate. Now, I want to turn back to Nairobi to see if you have another question. Thank you. My name is Vincent. I'm an international relations student from the University of Nairobi. My question is, do you think we are headed to a point where by foreign policies will be influenced by social media, especially the public in terms of public opinion, whereby you see hashtags leading to the influence of foreign policies? Thank you. Keisha, I want to turn to you with this question. I mean, absolutely. The example that I reference earlier about how many of the bot action for the Catalonia referendum was coming from Venezuela is indicative of that. So the tools, how fast they move and how you're actually able to feign popularity around a subject using the tools that are available on social media platforms, it is a very dangerous slippery slope. And that is why when we're looking at social media companies to actually be transparent about what they're doing, we really ought to look at how they're planning on solving some of these issues. But I think bots and trolls is one of the big things that you should look at. If you need a resource for that, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab does some great open source forensic work to look at a lot of those behaviors. Okay, we have some more good questions from online viewers. We have a question from Nada, a journalist student in Rabot, Morocco. How do you get readers to believe or knowledge facts that are not necessarily in line with their views or beliefs? Jennifer, can I turn this one to you? Yes, it's, and just working in the industry a lot of times you know, it's hard, so it's hard for consumers sometimes to read something that doesn't fall in line, but it's even hard sometimes for journalists to do their jobs on something that they may not, that may not fall in line with their views or beliefs. So I think if we think about what the tenets are for journalists very quickly, with the society professional journalists, we seek truth and report it, minimize harm, we act independently. And then we want to make sure that we are transparent and accountable. So a lot of times, when we have information and we are, again, we're disseminating the information, we're not creating it, our job is to report the facts. And then we let the viewers, not the viewers, we let the subjects or the interviewees insert their opinion. So if we state what the facts are to a story and then let other people insert their opinion, we've done our jobs and it's really up to the viewer, the reader, the consumer, to take their takeaway from that. A lot of times we don't agree and that's what's so wonderful about having a society is that we have different beliefs and different views. And so I think if we just continue to do our jobs by telling the facts, then the people can decide what they want. And that's kind of a tough way to say it, but that's really all we can do because we're not a monolithic group. And sort of for the educators watching, there was an online study done here in the United States and it showed that students who receive media literacy training were 26% more likely to spot accurate headlines even if it disagreed with their political or personal beliefs. So we do see that there is this consumer when the facts are there that they can connect. It's just the facts. So I want to turn to the American Center in Lusaka. Is there any association that protects journalists when they publish a story that offends the government? I'm going to, yeah. So there are international organizations that focus on protecting journalism abroad, reporters without borders, Center for the Protection of Journalists. Unfortunately, going and look, if you offend your government getting protection within certain countries, it's very difficult to do, but sounding the alarm on the international community is very important. And that is why events like today where we're highlighting the issues and speaking to an engaged audience in Kenya, it's important to highlight and spotlight that issue. Excellent. I want to turn to a question from the American Corner at Copper Belt University in Zambia, where it asks, how do you ensure that the freedom of the press is not hindered as you try to regulate materials to be published, especially on social media? And there's really, you know, we have to think about this, how we balance that free press in this process. Now, Anthony, I want to turn to you on this question. Well, I think in the United States with our freedom of speech and freedom of the press, it's going to always be a little bit messy and frankly, it always has been because if we have freedom of the press, it means that people are going to publish opposing things that we don't necessarily agree with. That's why I think in addition to regulations, now what we can do on regulation is say, non-state actors can't play in our political campaigns. That's a role we can play from a regulation standpoint. On the company standpoint of platforms such as Facebook, they can determine that if information gets flagged repeatedly as false, that that information can no longer be shared on their platform because it's harmful. It's not a legal issue. It's not against the law. It's that this company has rules and guidelines about their platform. There's other content that they don't allow to be shared. Pornographic material cannot be shared on Facebook. And so Facebook is continuing to, they just published 25 pages of their community standards to educate everybody about how they police information. And I think that's where we're going to see that role. We don't want to diminish freedom of speech or freedom of the press. I think that that's the worst thing that we could do. What we need to do is strengthen the other players so that we can ensure that false information doesn't have a market. Because if there's not a market for it and it's not going to make money or reach money or achieve those objectives, there's not going to be as much of it. The reason it's a problem right now is because people are using it to achieve their objectives. So a viewer in LaLongue asked, Mamawi has elections in 12 months. What's the panel's advice to our media houses in terms of ensuring that they don't publish false information from social media? So in a very quick thing, I would just say check first, publish second. If you take that time to verify and check the information, and that's the problem with social media. It's who's out there and who gets it first. And that's how a lot of times the media gets it wrong is because we're so stressed about getting the information out first and getting those ratings that we're not taking that time to verify. So I say verify, verify, verify before you post. Any other last thoughts or? Well, I just really quickly want to talk about the places where you can go and get information. If you're in India, smhoxlayer.com is a great source for fact-checking. If you're in Brazil, alfatos is a great fact-checking tool that is able to review your work. Africa check is another great source, especially for Malawi as your elections are coming up. If you want to verify Africa check is a great resource. EU versus DeSinfo again in Europe and Eastern Partnership States is a great tool that actually has a database on all false narratives. So you can actually see what has been spoken before. The Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council and we will also have a website coming up disinfoportal.org that will actually collect a lot of this information. Excellent. Well, it looks like we're almost out of time. Thank you all so much for your fantastic questions and insights. We've really covered a lot of ground today. Hopefully those of you watching will continue engaging on these important media literacy and press freedom issues. Jennifer, quickly, do you have any final thoughts? Yes, I want to just thank everyone again for the opportunity to be here today and I'll just leave with sort of what's become my mantra when we talk about the role for journalists and that's that journalists are the defenders of democracy, the freedom fighters of the First Amendment and savvy and sophisticated storytellers. And I want to encourage those out there who are students, who are interested in this profession to be proud because we are a very noble profession and what we do, we are the first rough draft history as it's been said. So we take our jobs very seriously and I want to encourage all of you as well as those who teach, people going into this field to stick with it. And so that's what I'd say. Excellent. And Geisha, a really quick final thought from you as well. Be critical, question even more all the time. And last thing, every solution to these problems needs to be better than our values. We do not need to stray away from our values in order to fight the disinformation fight. And Anthony, can I get your last thoughts as well? Sure, I think there's so much positive about this shift to new power and unleashing the energy of all of us but it means that we have a responsibility and that responsibility is shared across multiple institutions but we each have to take our own responsibility. And I think if you see something that seems a little off, you should comment. You should message the person. You should engage in that conversation because if each of us does that, we're going to have much more of the right information and we will be able to spot and shut down the false information. So be responsible. Wonderful. In closing, I'd like to thank our panelists for their great insights today. Hopefully this discussion can serve as a launching point for a larger conversation on the importance of media literacy and its role in open and democratic societies. A big shout out as well for the excellent questions from our online viewers, the audience in the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya and to other live viewing groups at US embassies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Masaru, Lesotho, Monrovia, Liberia, Abuja, Nigeria, Lilangwe, Malawi, Khartoum, Sudan, Bent Hook, Namibia, Kampala, Uganda, Dakar, Senegal, Cairo, Egypt, Rabat, Morocco, Ashgabad, Turkmenistan and the US Consulate in Hyderabad, India. And American Spaces in Moscow, Russia, Vishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Ashkyrgyzstan, Jashambe, Tajikistan, Pristina, Kosovo, American Corner, Dvoj, Bosnia and Herzkivina, Jima, Ethiopia, Dhiradawa, Ethiopia, Bahirdar, Ethiopia, Lusaka, Zambia, Kitwe, Zambia, Kigali, Rwanda, the Catholic Institute of Kavgai, Rwanda, Yaunde, Cameroon, Bujambura, Burundi, Kamenghe, Burundi, Tunis, Tunisia, Suffax, Tunisia, Centro-Cultural, Brazil, and San Paolo, and Instituto Brazil Fortaleza, and the Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association. Lastly, please visit newsiumed.org for more resources, learning tools and information on media literacy. Thank you again and have a great day.