As digital transmission advances rapidly, the crisis of misinformation and disinformation is greater in rural areas than in the capital. Misinformation is spreading rapidly through social media mainly due to limited media-literacy and limited access to verified information. Young women need to be aware and aware of these dangers and prepare themselves accordingly. Misinformation is a major threat to democracy, transparency and security. It affects Bangladeshi society at various levels to address hate speech, discrimination, violence and gender discrimination
On Monday, the speakers highlighted these matters at the workshop held in the hall of Radio Nalta, on the awareness of youth and young women about misinformation. 36 youth and young women from Tarali and Champaful Union of Kaliganj Upazila of Satkhira district participated as trainees in the workshop.
A workshop on ‘Youth Resilient to Misinformation: Building Local Engagement and Media Development’ was held at Kaliganj, Satkhira by Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication with the support of The Asia Foundation.
The training workshop was conducted by communication expert Rehan Uddin Ahmed Raju and Assistant Professor Minhaj Uddin of Mass Communication and Journalism Department of Jagannath University. Program Manager Md. Taherul Ilam and Program Associate Sanjida Akhter from The Asia Foundation and Station Manager Salim Shahriar were present on behalf of Radio Nalta.
In this context, the workshop titled ‘Youth Resilient to Misinformation: Building Local Engagement and Media Development’ is a unique and innovative effort, which engages Facebook users as hyper local representatives to empower youth and young women to combat the growing misinformation in social and other media. The project will primarily contribute to capacity building of youth and young women to combat misinformation, gender misinformation and build sustainable solutions for the sake of an integrated information integrity ecosystem.
In this continuation, the project selected 108 Facebook users to create a Facebook page to work with rural youth through a hyperlocal approach and join the Facebook platform to build resistance against misinformation in Kaliganj, Satkhira, Bangladesh, and at the national level. The initiation of this process aims to contribute to strengthening and intensifying existing efforts of stakeholders to identify counter-measures against misinformation at local and national levels.
To this end, stakeholder engagement is essential to enhance leadership skills and participation of youth and young women in better governance processes and to strengthen measures to prevent misinformation in Bangladesh. Consequently, the next steps are to distribute of ‘Fake News and Disinformation Handbook’ to mass communication and journalism departments of public and private universities and journalists; organizing dialogues with media professional training institutes and training of trainers on ‘Fake News and Misinformation’ to create a resource pool.
“Youth Resilient to Misinformation: Building Local Engagement and Media Development” project is managed by Hiren Pandit and AHM Bajlur Rahman. Other members of the project program implementation team include Naimun Nahar Islam and Pratibha Banerjee from BNNRC.