At a Global Media Congress, which was held in collaboration with the Emirates News Agency (WAM) and the Henry Jackson Society, a prominent trans-Atlantic think tank, Mohammed Jalal Al Rayssi, Director-General of WAM and Chairman of the higher Organising Committee for the Global Media Congress (GMC), along with other stakeholders, reviewed the challenges facing media organizations in the era of media disinformation.
A White Paper was launched at this event in Westminster On Monday, March 20. The meeting gathered over 60 media leaders, academics, and prominent figures from across the industry.
In the meeting, Mohammed Jalal Al Rayssi reviewed eight main themes of discussions and recommendations presented in the White Paper titled “Building Resilient Media Organizations in the Age of Disinformation,” including a whole ax about “tackling media illiteracy in the age of disinformation.”
Mohammed Jalal Al Rayssi considered the document's findings a global priority for news and media entities worldwide to establish adaptable media institutions in this age of media disinformation.
According to Emirates News Agency, the recommendations presented in the White Paper were deliberated by media professionals, international correspondents, and academic researchers during the first edition of the event organized by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) in partnership with WAM in November 2022.
For the stakeholders, this document is a significant international reference on studies and research conducted across various disciplines of media. It provides an in-depth analysis of two topics, one of them examines misinformation and disinformation.
The third part of the document, entitled: “Tackling public media illiteracy in the age of disinformation,” focuses on the individuals and media organizations’ challenges in surfing a polluted information environment. According to the White Paper, “interaction with false information has become an inevitable part of daily life.”
This paper found that “journalists are increasingly maligned as disruptors rather than gatekeepers of the truth, with a long-term impact on public trust” in this polluted information environment. For this reason, the document insisted on the benefits of offering media literacy training at schools, universities, and other professional environments, as well as the importance of fact-checking.
Another chapter of the White Paper was dedicated to the metaverse and artificial intelligence as a new revolution for the media industry that made it challenging to deliver credible reporting in the face of rampant disinformation.
Fact-Checking and Media Literacy May Heal the Wounds
As fact-checking became a new trending strategy to counter misinformation, many media institutions built fact-checking teams and designed pages or platforms devoted to tracking and monitoring information circulating online and fact-checking the outlet’s content before and after publication.
However, since limited fact-checking groups and units could not monitor floods of information circulating online, the battle against misinformation faces many struggles and difficulties.
Misinformation and media experts admitted that media literacy is undoubtedly crucial to fight misinformation. According to the European Digital Media Observatory, a public that is both critically and digitally literate is much more likely to be able to assess the information they encounter online. Those can also identify sources they can trust and make well-informed decisions based on accurate information.
“Being media literate opens up opportunities to engage more fully and creatively with the online and offline media world,” the official observatory’s website states.
In a world that witnessed a devastating mutation regarding the media industry and information collection, generation, and distribution processes, taking notes of the current challenges the audience faces while navigating the internet became crucial to build resilient media organizations.
Artificial intelligence has made it even harder to distinguish between reality and illusion. The audience is lining up behind these new inventions, and several media organizations please their customer’s curiosity by providing content in record time, making headlines, scoops, and noise which attracts advertisers and investors in order to guarantee additional sources of income.
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