Monday, 8 January 2018

The New Paper

It was reported that tertiary institutions have introduced courses to help students differentiate fact from fiction in order to tackle the growing problem of fake news. It was mentioned that the Department of Communications and New Media at NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences had started a new module called ‘Fake News, Lies and Spin: How to Sift Fact from Fiction’ in August 2017. About 60 students took the module and another 100 are expected to take it this semester.

Commenting on the phenomenon of fake news, Assistant Professor Elmie Nekmat from the Department of Communications and New Media said that when people are exposed to fake news, it has a “drip effect” where people build up ideas pertaining to the issue they read. He suggested that media literacy courses dealing with misinformation can be taught to secondary and even primary school students as it is good for schools to engage the young about this.

Click here to read the article.