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We are Resisting Disinfodemic: Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2020
Post date:
2020/07/20
The recent pandemic has confronted the world with a new wave of disinformation, which affects the fight against the disease. This “disinfodemic” not only fuels risks to public health, but also feeds socio-political polarization, providing grounds for hate and division.
This is the reason why the Republic of Korea and UNESCO are jointly organizing the Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2020 (24 to 31 October) under the theme “Resisting Disinfodemic: Media and Information Literacy for Everyone and by Everyone”. The feature events of Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week 2020 will take place fully online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of issuing the traditional call for papers, this year’s Global MIL Week will involve select government representatives, experts, practitioners, and youth leaders to address the importance of MIL in building resilience to disinfodemic beyond the current public health crisis.
Conundrum for different sectors of society is not a new phenomenon. UNESCO has been striving for decades to tackle disinformation using MIL as a potent tool. The theme for Global MIL Week 2020 thus responds to the exponentially increasing demand for MIL worldwide. It highlights the necessity of recognizing our shared interest in improving everyone’s competencies to interact with media, technology, and information, in order that they can be engaged in societies as critical-thinking citizens. It also underlines the pivotal role of MIL in fostering quality journalism, critical access to information and freedom of expression, which all have implications on how the war against disinformation can be won.
To synergize with the International Day for Universal Access to Information on 28 September 2020, Global MIL Week 2020 will kick off with a set of webinars on MIL and access to information, involving various groups of youth leaders. It will be followed by a Global MIL Youth Hackathon, an international competition for youth to design innovative solutions (games, websites and applications) to disinfodemic.
This year, the traditional components of Global MIL Week – its Feature Conference and Youth Agenda Forum will take the shape of a series of webinars called “In-Focus Sessions”. Experts, practitioners, policymakers, and youth in related domains will share expertise and good practices and explore avenues for cooperation during these online sessions.
Global MIL Week 2020 will also aim to forge strategic partnerships around MIL by holding a United Nations Roundtable and a Virtual Partners Forum. The schedule of the In-Focus Sessions will be available shortly.
Local celebrations will take place worldwide before, during and after the Week. UNESCO invites government agencies, media organizations, NGOs, private sector organizations, schools, libraries, municipalities, and other MIL stakeholders to join the Global MIL Week celebrations. See here different ways to celebrate Global MIL Week.
The official website of Global MIL Week 2020 is https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/globalmilweek.
The annual Global MIL Week was initiated in 2011 and celebrated on (or around) 24-31 October. It is a major occasion for stakeholders around the world to gather every year, raise public awareness, share good practices, enhance international cooperation, and most importantly, review and celebrate the achievements towards “MIL for all citizens”.
To explore opportunities to become an official partner of Global MIL Week 2020, please contact Alton Grizzle (a.grizzle@unesco.org) or Xu Jing (ji.xu@unesco.org).
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